While MBS government is promoting its tolerance and societal reforms, only repression, imprisonment and possibly murder appear on the political scene of Saudi Arabia. It is no longer surprising that all opponents of MBS corruption, regardless of their political lines, have been imprisoned or sent to exile.
Investigations and specialist opinions indicated that the Kingdom’s steps to whitewash his record, by proposing the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to a moderate and more tolerant Islam, did not help it in legitimizing its attempts. Political Islam, which is considered the biggest challenge to religious legitimacy of the authoritarian rulers in the two Gulf states, the most successful in Austria, and France, is keenly interested in the impact of their support for campaigns against political Islam linked to Islamophobia on the position of the Muslim minority in the two European countries.
In December last year, in coordination between the two countries, the UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs at the time, Anwar Gargash, defended the new security law adopted by French President Emmanuel Macron, and presented it to Parliament, which critics accused of undermining democratic freedoms by implicitly targeting Muslims, and seeking to complete the imposition of a broader ban on home education for Muslim children, imposing controls on religious, sports and cultural associations affiliated with all Muslim associations, and expanding the supervision and restrictions imposed on freedom of expression in everything related to Muslims in Europe.
Despite Macron’s hostility to Muslims, and that he does not want to see Muslims in the streets of the West, the government of MBS and the government of bin Zayed agreed with him, and that Muslim communities should be better integrated into society according to what Macron sees, and the French state has the right to explore ways to achieve this, whatever those ways are.
The plan adopted by MBS against the currents of societal work whose reference is Islam was not in Europe alone, but Europe was in the end, as it began with Egypt, Libya, Syria and recently Tunisia, as he believes that these freedoms for peoples to choose the ruler and the government could harm his kingdom in the future.
All these wars waged by bin Salman inside and outside the kingdom, the Saudi people are reaping their fruits in poverty, a decline in investment, and an increase in poverty and unemployment rates.
