Saudi Affairs
Reading newspapers and listening to television commentators in the wake of the May 12 bombings in Riyadh, one may be led to believe that our youth have turned violent. Some commentators and writers have gone too far, with the result that the word young is now synonymous with extremism, terrorism and the culture of hatred and intolerance.
It is our duty as writers to be objective and fair when we discuss an issue. We shouldn’t behave like writers in the West who boast about being objective and use this as a cover to attack religious people, whom they label terrorists.
This is not to belittle the effect of crime or deny the existence of crime. It is not to deny that some delinquent youth engage in drug abuse, theft and destruction of public property. A crime is a crime regardless of who committed it and how.
But to be fair we have to ask: Is all our youth, who make up 60 percent of the country’s population, terrorist, as some would like to portray them? Is a crime committed by 15 or 20 individuals enough reason to issue collective judgment accusing the entire population of adopting a culture of violence and hatred of the other?
Some would portray our youth as angry and disgruntled young men who roam the streets shooting indiscriminately at people. Who said these youth hate the foreigners working in the Kingdom? I have been receiving letters from many youth whose one demand is to be treated and judged fairly.
Let us sit down and see what went wrong, where and why. If the fault lies with the schools, we should ask where have the educators been all this time: busy celebrating tree weeks? If the media is to blame, we should ask where the officials have been all this time and why they didn’t address problems facing the young instead of concentrating on sports.
An Arab friend who worked and lived in the Kingdom for years phoned me saying she wanted to know why there were all these attacks on Saudi youth and the country’s school curriculum. She said her children, who studied at public schools here, learned how to behave and observe religious duties the right way. None of them, she said, had developed extreme or hostile tendencies toward others and none has become a terrorist. This is the testimony of a mother who lived among us who is saddened by what is being written and said, by attacks on youth, teachers, the school system and on everyone associated with religion. It is a carefully orchestrated campaign sparing no one. If a few err, why generalize and accuse an entire population?
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