Amir Handjani Saudi Arabia Quotes

Amir Handjani is a Senior Advisor at KARV Communications. ~ Amir Handjani

Amir Handjani - Member of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors, at the Atlantic Council. ~ Amir Handjani

You know, in Saudi Arabia, there is a body of 40 people - 34 people exactly, that once the succession comes, they will meet and they will elect a king in there. ~ Al-Waleed Bin Talal

Saudi Arabia has lost one of its dutiful sons, a leader among the most dear of its leaders and men. ~ Hosni Mubarak

Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer's travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country. ~ Thomas Friedman

We shouldn't have a program where we just say that we're going to take care of the world's refugees. Nobody in the Middle East is doing anything. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait - all the Gulf nations are doing nothing. ~ Rand Paul

If they lived in Saudi Arabia, under Shari'a law, these college girls in their pretty scarves wouldn't be free to study, to work, to drive, to walk around. In Saudi Arabia girls their age and younger are confined, are forced to marry, and if they have sex outside of marriage they are sentenced to prison and flogged. According to the Quran, their husband is permitted to beat them and decide whether they may work or even leave the house; he may marry other women without seeking their approval, and if he chooses to divorce them, they have no right to resist or to keep custody of their children. Doesn't this matter at all to these clever young Muslim girls in America? ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Who on earth do the Americans suppose their allies are amongst the Arab world? Even Saudi Arabia they seem to regard as nothing more than a resevoir of oil and money. ~ Mohammed Reza Pahlavi

Any religion-based state has a mission to limit the minds of its people, to fight the developments of history and logic, and to dumb down its citizens. It's important to stand in the way of such a mentality, to deny it from continuing its mission to murder the souls of its people, killing them deep within while they are still alive and breathing. ~ Raif Badawi

It surprised me that the university was for women yet Sylvia wasn't able to get much out of it by being a woman. Everything came down to what Malik was, wasn't, had or didn't have. I would think a university for women would empower women, not turn them out. I believe Dr. Wafah liked to pretend to have good intentions. She acted as if she was doing a lot to change the way women were treated in Saudi Arabia but she was truly doing nothing."--Maria E. ~ Sylvia Fowler

Saudi Arabian oil production is at or very near its peak sustainable volume (if it did not, in fact peak almost 25 years ago), and is likely to go into decline in the very foreseeable future. There is only a small probability that Saudi Arabia will ever deliver the quantities of petroleum that are assigned to it in all the major forecasts of world oil production and consumption. ~ Matthew Simmons

To allow the construction of places of worship other than Islamic ones in Saudi Arabia, it would be like asking the Vatican to build a mosque inside of it. ~ Abdullah Of Saudi Arabia

This week the White House proposed fingerprinting and photographing foreign visitors so they can do background checks. Officials in Saudi Arabia said this will only increase anti-American feelings in the Mideast. Is that possible? Gee, you hate to have people dislike us for no reason. Things were going so well. ~ Jay Leno

The axiomatic thing about Saudi society is that while there are a seemingly infinite number of rules, it is also possible for people in authority to go outside those rules, and, if not break them, at least bend them quite a bit. ~ Manal Al-Sharif

India is the Saudi Arabia of 21st century. ~ Rahul Gandhi

But what will happen, and I got this from reliable sources, is that the International Monetary Fund will skedaddle from D.C., possibly to Singapore or Beijing, and then they're going to make an IMF recovery plan for America, divide the country into concessions, and hand them over to the sovereign wealth funds. Norway, China, Saudi Arabia, all that jazz. ~ Gary Shteyngart

When the first contingents of U.S. troops were being sent to Saudi Arabia, in August of 1990, Corporal Jeff Patterson, a twenty-two-year-old Marine stationed in Hawaii, sat down on the runway of the airfield and refused to board a plane bound to Saudi Arabia. He asked to be discharged from the Marine Corps:
I have come to believe that there are no justified wars. . . . I began to question exactly what I was doing in the Marine Corps about the time I began to read about history. I began to read up on America's support for the murderous regimes of Guatemala, Iran, under the Shah, and El Salvador. . . . I object to the military use of force against any people, anywhere, any time. ~ Howard Zinn

In my land, in the event of a divorce, the mother has the right to retain her children if they are still suckling. But in most cases, a mother maintains custody of daughters until a girl child reaches puberty. In the case of male children, the boy should be allowed to remain with his mother until he is seven. When he reaches his seventh birthday, he is supposed to have the option to choose between his mother or father. Generally it is accepted that the father have his sons at age seven. A son must go with his father at the age of puberty, regardless of the child's wishes. Often, in the case of male children, many fathers will not allow the mother to retain custody of a son, no matter what the age of the child. ~ Jean Sasson

Another casualty of Feisal's return to power was Abdullah Tariki, the general director of petroleum and mineral resources. Tariki is a well-known figure in global oil politics, mostly because in 1960 he cofounded, along with Venezuelan oil minister Juan Perez Alfonso, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, better known as the OPEC cartel. ~ Ellen R. Wald

The rejection of Western democracy derives from the same rejection of secularism but was further sharpened by the Saudi Arabian establishment's aversion to democracy's subversive streak and the threat it posed to the Saudi monarchy if unleashed. Saudi scholars such as Sheikh Bakr Ibn Abu Zaid consistently attacked democracy and the freedoms it flaunted as anti-Islamic. Mohammed Yusuf was heavily influenced by the writings of Saudi-based scholars such as Bakr Ibn Abu Zaid, Sheikh Abdul Aziz Ibn Abd-Allah Ibn Baaz (1910-99), and Sheikh Muhammad al-Amin ash Shanqiti (1907-73). As mentioned before, all of Yusuf's opponents side-stepped the issue of democracy being un-Islamic, thereby making the issue appear incontestable or settled. ~ Kyari Mohammed

India is going to be the 21st century's Saudi Arabia in terms of human resources ~ Rahul Gandhi

Saudi Arabia might proceed toward Sharia slower than Al-Qaeda wants. Al-Qaeda wants pedal-to-the-metal, nothing else in focus, we're heading to Sharia, and the Saudis might not be going there fast enough, so Al-Qaeda hits them. ~ Rush Limbaugh

If you compare the size of our reserves of Saudi Arabia and the whole Middle East, it's like three times as much as all of that combined and that's just the easily, readily available 1800 billion barrels and there are probably 3 billion barrels that are commercially just under that, available. ~ Chris Cannon

Like Afghanistan before it, Iraq is only one theater in a regional war. We were attacked by a network of terrorist organizations supported by several countries, of whom the most important were Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. ~ Michael Ledeen

Millions of people have become refugees and beggars when violent extremists have overthrown governments. Should this happen in Saudi Arabia, the first action taken would be to behead or burn to death every Saudi royal. ~ Jean Sasson

Additionally, any Human Rights Council reform that allows countries with despicable human rights records to remain as members, such as China and Saudi Arabia, is not real reform. ~ Michael McCaul

If China was like the moon, then arriving in Saudi Arabia was Mars. At least you can see the moon from Earth. ~ Basmah Bint Saud

Saudi Arabia has also changed. People today are connecting with each other all across the world through small gadgets and television. It's a different society. ~ Sultan Bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud

The Western World is very strict on culture In Asian countries like Saudi Arabia, the pressure to keep a certain personal distance is not as heavy. It does not matter whether you are familiar to them or a stranger, Saudi Arabians will always keep a close distance to you whenever interacting. This can be attributed to the Islamic influence which is known to offer some friendliness. The biggest part of the Asian continent is dominated by Muslims who are known to be friendlier than even Christians. China is another country of the world where people are ~ Josh Cantrell

If Islam opposes terrorism, then Saudi Arabia should announce that no one supportive of ISIS or Al Qaeda is welcome in Mecca to make Hajj. ~ Bob Enyart

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. ~ Robert Lacey

I am the Saudi Arabia of unhappiness. I have so many reserves of misery that you wouldn't understand. I actually think that's part of why I connect with Canadians. I think they understand grinding misery underneath. ~ Craig Ferguson

Saudi Arabia will have to decide its own path, and I don't know if it will decide a path like any other nation in the region or if it will design something that is unique to Saudi Arabia. ~ Colin Powell

Even non-democratic allies no longer trust America. Barack Obama has alienated our most important and longest standing Arab allies, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Both the anti-Muslim Brotherhood and the anti-Iran Arab states have lost respect for him. ~ Dennis Prager

DB: There's a lot of talk about terrorism. In fact, it's become almost an obsession for the media in the United States. But it's a very narrow definition of terrorism.
AR: Yes. It completely ignores the economic terrorism unleashed by neoliberalism, which devastates the lives of millions of people, depriving them of water, food, electricity. Denying them medicine. Denying them education. Terrorism is the logical extension of this business of the free market. Terrorism is the privatization of war. Terrorists are the free marketeers of war - people who believe that it isn't only the state that can wage war, but private parties as well.
If you look at the logic underlying an act of terrorism and the logic underlying a retaliatory war against terrorism, they are the same. Both terrorists and governments make ordinary people pay for the actions of their governments. Osama bin Laden is making people pay for the actions of the US state, whether it's in Saudi Arabia, Palestine, or Afghanistan. The US government is making the people of Iraq pay for the actions of Saddam Hussein. The people of Afghanistan pay for the crimes of the Taliban. The logic is the same.
Osama bin Laden and George Bush are both terrorists. They are both building international networks that perpetrate terror and devastate people's lives. Bush, with the Pentagon, the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank. Bin Laden with Al Qaeda. ~ Arundhati Roy

If production does not increase in Iraq in an exponential way between now and 2015, we have a very big problem, even if Saudi Arabia meets its obligations. The figures are very simple, you do not need to be an expert. It is enough to know how to do a subtraction. China will grow very quickly, India also, and even Saudi Arabia projections of the 3 Mb/day will not be enough to meet the rise of Chinese demand. ~ Fatih Birol

The rise to prominence of the Saudi novel in Arabic is the great man-bites-dog of recent world literature. Saudi Arabia is a country without a free press, where European styles and forms are distrusted and where the female half of the population became literate only in this generation. ~ James Buchan

The efficient use of energy is as much an issue for Saudi Arabia, with its huge natural resources, as it is for all countries. Increased efficiency makes sense environmentally, but also economically. ~ Ali Al-Naimi

There are two perspectives on the oil sands. You have companies that want to make it the next Saudi Arabia. The other is that it's a transitional resource to a low-carbon economy, and to regard it as anything else is to drain the continent's financial resources. ~ Andrew Nikiforuk

The fact is ... that when totalitarian nations like China and Saudi Arabia play ball with U.S. business interests, we like them just fine. But when Venezuela's freely elected president threatens powerful corporate interests, the Bush administration treats him as an enemy. ~ Robert Scheer

I think we can make a contribution to their [Saudi Arabia] thinking as they decide how they should deal with the economic and social challenges that they are facing. ~ Colin Powell

The big risk in Saudi Arabia is that Ghawar's rate of decline increases to an alarming point. That will set bells ringing all over the oil world because Ghawar underpins Saudi output and Saudi undergirds worldwide production. ~ Ali Morteza Samsam Bakhtiari

Indeed, Robert Jordan, the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, noted in 2003: "We have noticed lately in influential mosques the imam has condemned terrorism and preached in favor of tolerance, then closed the sermon with 'O God, please destroy the Jews, the infidels, and all who support them.' "53 And while it was true that the Saudis managed to get Sheikh Ali bin al-Khudair, in late November 2003, to renounce his radical jihadi stance on prime-time Saudi television, 54 al-Khudair actually dealt largely with the doctrine of takfir - proclaiming Muslims to be infidels. His renunciation might help stop militant Muslim violence against other Muslims, but it simply did not address the problem of jihadi violence against Americans or others outside of Saudi Arabia. His statement seemed designed primarily to preclude attacks against the Saudi government and foreigners inside Saudi Arabia. ~ Dore Gold

If the Sunni and Shia, or those nations that surround Saudi Arabia and those nations that gather around Tehran or Iran fight each other, that is the trigger that will bring about the War of Armageddon. ~ Louis Farrakhan

There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia, ~ Newt Gingrich

America is the Saudi Arabia of coal. ~ Charles Duhigg

The route to his hotel had been committed to memory a long time ago. From the overflowing trashcan on the corner to the feral cats that frequented the dumpsters behind the nearby shawarma shop, Jamison knew every detail. ~ Christian F. Burton

But the key thing is that Iraq, while it's got very large oil reserves, has marginalized itself as an oil exporter and these days its exports are only about one tenth that of neighboring Saudi Arabia. ~ Daniel Yergin

After the revolution of 1979, Iran embarked on a policy of sectarianism. Iran began a policy of expanding its revolution, of interfering with the affairs of its neighbors, a policy of assassinating diplomats and of attacking embassies. Iran is responsible for a number of terrorist attacks in the Kingdom, it is responsible for smuggling explosives and drugs into Saudi Arabia. And Iran is responsible for setting up sectarian militias in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen, whose objective is to destabilize those countries. ~ Adel Al-Jubeir

I believe strongly in the rights of women ... my mother is a woman, my sister is a woman, my daughter is a woman, my wife is a woman. ~ Abdullah Of Saudi Arabia

Extremism frequently turns its champions into angry people, driven by conflicting desires. At first, I pitied my less enlightened parents and siblings. Then I felt superior to them, poor sinners that they were. Then I lost patience with their unwillingness
to see the one true path and resorted to threats, intimidation, and yelling. At night, I was tormented by thoughts of what would happen to all us of when we reached our graves. ~ Manal Al-Sharif