Saudi Heartland Dictates Pace of Modernization for King Abdullah - Bloomberg:
"Abdulrahman al-Moshaigeh remembers leaving his mud-brick house and walking on unpaved roads to what was then the only elementary school serving Buraidah.
“There’s no comparison,” said the former member of King Abdullah’s advisory Shoura Council, born in 1945, as he contemplates the changes that have swept his hometown, the capital of Qassim province in Saudi Arabia’s conservative heartland. “Now we have more than 150 elementary schools for boys, and it’s difficult to find a girl not in school,” al-Moshaigeh said as he sat at a banquet where two roasted lambs were served with local dishes in a villa in the city.
Even by the standards of a country where women are barred from driving cars and shops close at prayer-time, Qassim has the reputation for being conservative, strictly adhering to the austere interpretation of Wahhabi Islam practiced in the Arab world’s biggest economy. That makes it an important testing ground for King Abdullah’s drive to modernize the country and draw women into the workforce."
'via Blog this'
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