Robert Lacey

“We try to transform each detainee from a young man who wants to die to a young man who wants to live. Prince Mohammed bin Nayef”

“Whoever wins society will win this war.”says Prince Mohammed bin Nayef”

“on December 7, 2001, Osama announced that he was leaving. “He deserted us,” remembers Al-Hubayshi bitterly. “After five weeks his people came round telling us to make our way to Pakistan as best we could and surrender to our embassies there. We had been ready to lay down our lives for him, and he couldn’t make the effort to speak to us personally. Today I think that I was made use of by Bin Laden—exploited,just like all the young kids who went to jihad. What did he care when he sent us over the horizon to die? He was as bad as the religious sheikhs back in Saudi who preached jihad in theirsermons every Friday. How many of them ever sent their own sons to Afghanistan?”

“When Winston Churchill wanted to rally the nation in 1940, it was to Anglo-Saxon that he turned: "We shall fight on the beaches; we shall fight on the landing grounds; we shall fight in the fields and the streets; we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender." All these stirring words came from Old English as spoken in the year 1000, with the exception of the last one, surrender, a French import that came with the Normans in 1066--and when man set foot on the moon in 1969, the first human words spoken had similar echoes: "One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." Each of Armstrong's famous words was part of Old English by the year 1000.”

“There was no law that explicitly banned women from driving in Saudi Arabia. There is none today—the Kingdom’s notorious female driving ban is a matter of social convention, fortified by some ferocious religious pressures. So some Saudi women started looking thoughtfully at their Kuwaiti sisters.”

“That woman,” Bandar liked to say of the British prime minister, “was a hell of a man.”

“We were not willing to be the tool of a foreign government,” remembers Sheikh Hassan today. “There were a number of people in authority in Iran who wanted to recruit us againstthe Saudi government. They came to us—they made quite a few approaches to us. But we told them that we wished to remain independent.” His aide Jaffar Shayeb did the political talking on the sheikh’s behalf. “We listened to what they said,” says Shayeb of the Iranians. “But we were never willing tobe part of their games.”

“If you see a poor man come into your majlis, try to speak to him before you speak to the other people,” the king told his son. “Never make a decision on the spot. Say you will give your decision later. Never sign a paper sending someone to prison unless you are 100 percent convinced. And once you’ve signed, don’t change your mind. Be solid. You will find that people try to test you.” Fahd was delivering his basic course in local leadership—Saudi Governance 101.“If you don’t know anything about a subject, be quiet until you do. Recruit some older people who can give you advice. And if a citizen comes with a case against the government, take the citizen’s side to start with and give the officials a hard time the government will have no shortage of people to speak for them.”

“MODERN SAUDI HISTORY IN FIVE EASY LESSONSIf you did not go hungry in the reign of King Abdul Aziz, you would never go hungry.If you did not have fun in the reign of King Saud, you would never have fun.If you did not go to prison in the reign of King Faisal, you would never go to prison.If you did not make money in the reign of King Khaled, you would never make money.If you did not go bankrupt in the reign of King Fahd . . .”

“If an election were held here tomorrow,” Fahd once confided to a colleague, “Bin Baz would beat us without even leaving his house.”

“America certainly did its part. But doing the sums, it is now clear that through the eight years of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, 1981-89, Saudi Arabia actually provided more material assistance to the world’s varied assortment of anti Communist “freedom fighters” than did the United States, thus hastening the end of the Cold War and helping accomplish the downfall of the “Evil Empire.”

“Better that anger should be directed into jihad abroad than into Iran-style revolution at home.”

“The House of Saud had executed Juhayman. Now they were making his program government policy.”

“When Ali was killed by a Kharijite wielding a poisoned sword during Ramadan in A.H. 40 (A.D. 661), he became one of the earliest victims of Islamic terrorism.”

“فكّروا في الكلمات الجديدة التي كان علينا أن نتعلمها خلال الثلاثين سنة الماضية : وهّابي، جهادي، أفغان عرب، عاصفة الصحراء، فتوى، القاعدة .ما الذي تشترك فيه هذه الكلمات؟”

“Of all the varieties of modern pollution, noise is the most insidious.”