Free On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines - and Future by Karen Elliott House Page B

in the Hereafter.” Yet it is common for members of the royal family to dine at home with silver utensils on food served on gold-rimmed china and to drink from gilded goblets and teacups. Such ostentatious display of wealth, and the contradiction with the Islam practiced by the Prophet, who ate with his right hand from a communal plate of food, disturbs religious purists. “We have become just consumers,” laments the Imam University professor. “This leads to corruption and destruction.”
    This growing lack of respect for senior religious authorities, coupled with the increasing availability of other Islamicviews to Saudis, is prompting more independent thinking and action in the daily lives of young Saudis. The globalization of the workplace also is altering religious habits. One young Saudi in his twenties who works as a salesman for an international company describes his soul searching over whether to shake hands with a female on whom he was paying a business call for his company. He consulted his imam not once but twice; each time he was told that shaking hands is
haram
, or forbidden. In the end, he decided to shake the woman’s hand anyway as he felt it was simply good manners. “I shook her hand, and I don’t feel unclean,” he said.
    Islam is a religion of doing, not hearing or preaching; of active faith, not passive belief. Like fundamentalist Christians, pious Muslims believe they will be accountable to God at a final judgment day for everything they do on earth, so they want to know precisely what God commands and to please him in all things. The stakes are high.
    The Koran speaks repeatedly and graphically of the rewards in store for righteous believers and of the torments awaiting wrongdoers.Those who live by Allah’s commandments “will be honored in gardens of pleasure on thrones facing one another. There will be circulated among them a cup [of wine] from a flowing spring. White and delicious to the drinkers; No bad effect is there in it, nor from it will they be intoxicated. And with them will be women limiting [their] glances, with large beautiful eyes.”
    By contrast, those who have not led humble, obedient lives will find themselves in hell. “We have made it a torment for the wrongdoers. Verily it is a tree that springs from the bottom of the Hellfire. Its emerging fruit is like the heads of devils. And indeed, they will eat from it and fill with it their bellies. Then indeed, they will have after it a mixture of scalding water. Then indeed, their return will be to the Hellfire.”
    Even before this final judgment day, Muslims believe, every human being—believer and nonbeliever—must undergo a so-called “grave trial” immediately after death. Once in the grave, the believer’s soul is borne up by angels throughseven heavens, whereupon God records the person’s good deeds, and the Angel of Death conducts the grave trial asking, “Who is your God? What is your religion? Who is your prophet?” If the believer successfully answers, a window on paradise is opened for the individual with the words, “Rest in tranquillity.”
    But there is no tranquillity for the nonbeliever. His soul is ripped from his body and borne aloft by angels, although he is not permitted to view heaven. Instead, he is returned to his grave for trial. Two angels squeeze his body relentlessly as he fails to answer their questions. He is shown his place in hell, and then the angels hit him so hard his body turns to dust, only to be immediately restored and again hit so hard he crumbles into dust, and so on forever until Judgment Day.Only martyrs are spared the grave trial and allowed to go directly to paradise. Small wonder, then, that jihad appeals to devout young men.
    Still, while many Saudis are focused on the afterlife, it is entirely possible to lead a largely Western lifestyle in this birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad—and a very small minority does. While restaurants are limited to serving nonalcoholic beer