Whats the nature of the history that you learn in school in Saudi Arabia?
Saudi Arabia, you learn Islamic history only. You don’t learn history of Europe, you know, of the Americas, of Asia. You only learn Islamic history, and you learn the Saudi state history, and you learn what they call the Salafi Da’wah, the Salafi movement … in the West, the so-called Wahhabi movement. And of course, doesn’t teach you anything about the world. It teaches you about Islamic history, and the Islamic states, until today. But nothing about the rest of the Western world, or Asia, or anything else. … Prince Bandar says that they are a government who are ahead of their people. The people are more conservative than the government, and they can’t get too far ahead of the people. The people of Saudi Arabia are, as he would put it, very fundamentalist, very strict, and very much in favor of this view. It’s untrue. Yes, a lot of Saudis are conservative, you know. They follow Islam. But there are a lot of Saudis who are liberals….They want the government to move ahead. When it
