Life in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

I live in the King­dom of Sau­di Ara­bia (KSA) and feel the need to share some of my expe­ri­ences with a, if I may say so, naïve Pak­istani audi­ence.

I want to talk about some of the dread­ful inci­dents that I have expe­ri­enced because of my eth­nic­i­ty. I’ll also try to shed some light on the dilem­ma of what Islam teach­es and the irony of how it is being prac­ticed in this so-called Islam­ic coun­try — KSA is known as the only coun­try in the world with full-fledged Islam­ic law, which in real­i­ty is a joke. I can­not under­stand how the author­i­tar­i­an sys­tem of ‘king­dom’ can go togeth­er with the teach­ings of Islam.

I have always been taught of the con­cepts of equal­i­ty and broth­er­hood in Islam. But on reach­ing KSA, what I expe­ri­enced was com­plete­ly unex­pect­ed. At the air­port, I had to stand in a queue for almost four hours. Admit­ted­ly, this hap­pens often but after some time a flight from the USA land­ed and we were direct­ed to go to the back of the queue and give space to our Amer­i­can broth­ers, who were out of the air­port in ten min­utes. I was stunned. What a blend of hypocrisy by these ‘cus­to­di­ans’ of Islam!

Anoth­er inci­dent again remind­ed me that being from Pak­istan, even though I was a fel­low Mus­lim, I was con­sid­ered infe­ri­or. I went to the bank and saw two queues; one for Saud­is and one for for­eign­ers. The Sau­di line was enter­tained quite swift­ly while the for­eign­ers were made to wait. The aston­ish­ing part was that only Asians and Africans came under the for­eign­er cat­e­go­ry; Euro­peans and Amer­i­cans could stand in the Sau­di queue.

Very soon, I made anoth­er dis­cov­ery. The bank man­ag­er told me that with­out a kafeel (spon­sor) I could not open an account. Grad­u­al­ly, I came to find out about the all-encom­pass­ing role of the kafeel. To open an account, to buy a car, to do busi­ness, or to leave the coun­try — from pet­ty to par­tic­u­lar issues, I need­ed per­mis­sion from my kafeel.

What’s more, when­ev­er I roamed the city I was afraid of being arrest­ed by the strict Sau­di police force because they always have a sus­pi­cious eye on us desis, even with­out any trace of rea­son. And here, the role of your kafeel is no less than your sav­iour. With­out him, you can­not leave the police sta­tion. In unfor­tu­nate case of someone’s death, the dead body can­not be tak­en with­out kafeel’s per­mis­sion.

This dis­il­lu­sion­ment hurts more when I meet up with my Euro­pean friends; when we are stopped at a police check­point; my friends are greet­ed like they are princes, while I am looked down upon. On top of that, I have to face the taunts of my friends who say things like ‘See… this is your Mus­lim broth­er­hood’.

Being a bach­e­lor means there are not many places to go to. Most restau­rants and pub­lic places are meant only for fam­i­lies.

I often won­der what kind of Islam this is. Islam for­bids racism, dis­crim­i­na­to­ry laws and strin­gent, undue restric­tions. The Saud­is under­stand­ing of equal­i­ty is dras­ti­cal­ly dif­fer­ent from what Islam pro­pounds. I must say that this coun­try has sur­passed all lev­els of big­otry and hypocrisy.

KSA is also active­ly involved in ignit­ing ten­sions on sec­tar­i­an lines, i.e. between the Shi­ites and Sun­nis. Proxy wars in Pak­istan are a true exam­ple for that. We are fac­ing many prob­lems like that of reli­gious rad­i­cal­iza­tion in our coun­tries because of Arab influ­ence. KSA has export­ed mil­i­tant ideas to Pak­istan and now blame us for lack of peace.

The only good thing about KSA is the sense of rel­a­tive secu­ri­ty one feels when trav­el­ling at 2 am on a desert­ed high­way. Alas, that is not pos­si­ble in our own home­land i.e. Pak­istan. Had the sit­u­a­tion in Pak­istan been bet­ter, none of us would have felt forced to work in such a hos­tile place.