Скачать или смотреть From oil to coffee A prince's campaign to rebrand Saudi identity

As diplomatic victories go, it may not seem like much: The United Nations recognized the Khawlani coffee bean as part of the “intangible cultural heritage” of Saudi Arabia. But for the country’s rulers, the designation late last year capped an all-out push to instill some national pride in their beloved bean. In case you missed the official declaration, 2022 was the “Year of Saudi Coffee” — after kingdom authorities issued a decree renaming the syrupy brew long known across the Middle East simply as “Arabic coffee. ” Over the next decade, they plan to pump hundreds of millions of dollars into the national coffee industry. The coffee campaign is a small but telling part of Vision 2030, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s plan to diversify the economy and open up the culture of his country — even as he tightens his grip on power. Not only is he trying to reduce Saudi Arabia’s dependency on oil, but he’s also attempting to rebrand Saudi identity.“Coffee is part of our culture for ages, ” said Almohanad Marwai, co-founder and CEO of the privately owned Arabian Coffee Institute in Riyadh. “We’re a people that drink it morning, afternoon, at night, we give it to guests. It’s prepared the Saudi way, with Saudi tools, for Saudi occasions. ”The prince’s emphasis on culture amounts to an assault on Wahhabism, the puritanical brand of Islam whose adherents allied themselves with the royal family in 1744 and propelled its rise to power. When the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was created in 1932, the clerics gave the government the religious imprimatur to demand obedience from citizens. In exchange, the monarchy allowed the Islamists to dominate public life.“The influence of the religious class downplayed nationalism and symbols associated with the nation, ” said Ali Shihabi, a political analyst close to the Saudi royal court. “It always upheld symbols associated with Islam, so Saudis didn’t grow up with national symbols like others did. ”National Day, marking the proclamation of Saudi Arabia as a kingdom in 1932, was not a official holiday, and imams would go so far as to issue fatwas against celebrating it, according to Mohammed Alyahya, a Saudi commentator who is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute think tank in Washington.“The entire idea of national pride in Saudi Arabia was about Pan-Islamism, ” he said, explaining that Saudi Arabia was to be celebrated not as a nation-state but as the land of Islam’s two holiest mosques — in Mecca and Medina — and as the heart of a larger Islamic community. And because Wahhabist clerics saw preservation of heritage as a form of idolatry, most historic sites — even religiously significant ones such as the house where the prophet Muhammad is thought to have been born — were neglected or even bulldozed to make way for expansion of cities. Traditions were ignored too. Though the U. N.


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