The New York Review of Books

Will Saudi Arabia Ever Change?

Hugh Eakin

On September 25, 2011, the aging ruler of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah, gave a remarkable speech to the Majlis al-Shura, the formal advisory body to the Saudi monarchy in Riyadh. Beginning in 2013, the king said, women would be allowed to serve on the 150-member body; and beginning in 2015, they would also be permitted to vote and run for office in municipal council elections. To most outside observers, these moves were hardly worth noting. Yet in a country whose only written charter asserts the Koran as its basic law and in which women have few legal rights, let alone the right to vote, the announcement struck many as revolutionary.