King Faisal is sort of known to be the modernizer. What he was like?
Faisal was an extraordinary man, in my view. He did not exude the charisma of his father. Yes, he had been [a] military leader in the 1934 war in part, one of the two leaders against Yemen, and had been involved in other military things, but his principal claim, I think, to prominence was his excellent mind. … He was an alim [singular form of “ulama”]; he was a religious leader in his own right, one who recognized the need for progress and who recognized the nature of the country he was ruling. You couldn’t try to impose this on the country. You had to do two steps forward and one step back, and this is what he constantly did. Sometimes he sided with the ulama on matters. I remember there was an American school problem in which he first sided with the ulama, and then we worked out a way of having the American school reopen, which was essential to us. He felt very deeply about the Palestinians and the Arab-Israeli problem. In any meeting with Faisal, you could count upon it, the first
