Robert Lacey · 432 pages
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“أعدم ال سعود جهيمان لكنهم جعلوا من افكاره نهجا للدولة”
― Robert Lacey, quote from Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia
“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.”
― Robert Lacey, quote from Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia
“الكلاب والنعال من القاذورات التي يبتعد عنها المسلمون، لهذا السبب انتشر الفرح عند العرب عندما قام محتج عراقي برمي حذائه على جورج بوش في عام 2008م.”
― Robert Lacey, quote from Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia
“If an election were held here tomorrow,” Fahd once confided to a colleague, “Bin Baz would beat us without even leaving his house.”
― Robert Lacey, quote from Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia
“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, quote from Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia
“Better that anger should be directed into jihad abroad than into Iran-style revolution at home.”
― Robert Lacey, quote from Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia
“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.”
― Robert Lacey, quote from Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia
“MODERN SAUDI HISTORY IN FIVE EASY LESSONS
If 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 . . .”
― Robert Lacey, quote from Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia
“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 against
the 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 to
be part of their games.”
― Robert Lacey, quote from Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia
“That woman,” Bandar liked to say of the British prime minister, “was a hell of a man.”
― Robert Lacey, quote from Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia
“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 their
sermons every Friday. How many of them ever sent their own sons to Afghanistan?”
― Robert Lacey, quote from Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia
“Whoever wins society will win this war.”says Prince Mohammed bin Nayef”
― Robert Lacey, quote from Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia
“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.”
― Robert Lacey, quote from Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia
“The House of Saud had executed Juhayman. Now they were making his program government policy.”
― Robert Lacey, quote from Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia
“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”
― Robert Lacey, quote from Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia
“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؟”
― Robert Lacey, quote from Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia
“كان الأمير طلال قريبًا من عبدالله، ويشترك معه في رأيه الذي يقول إن الجرعات الكبيرة من الدين أدّت إلى التفكير الذي يدفعُ الشبابَ السعوديّين إلى الانتحار وقتل الناس جماعيًا تحت اسم الله”
― Robert Lacey, quote from Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia
“In fighting its war, the Ministry of the Interior has resorted to a novel tactic–
marriage. No Saudi official will admit on the record that the Kingdom’s terrorist problem might boil down to sexual frustration, but if a social system bans hot-blooded young men from contact with the opposite sex in their most hot-blooded years, perhaps it is hardly surprising that some of them channel this frustration into violence. One cornerstone of the extremist rehab program is to get the “beneficiaries,” as they are called, settled down with a wife as soon as possible. The Ministry of the Interior pays each unmarried beneficiary 60,000 riyals (some $18,000), the going rate for a dowry, or bride price. The family arranges a marriage, and whenever he can, Prince Mohammed turns up for the wedding.
When Khaled Al-Hubayshi was released from Al-Haier prison early in 2007, he wasted no time finding himself a bride at government expense.”
― Robert Lacey, quote from Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia
“When faced with the illogical, one must expand the sphere of logic to include rules of logic for that which is not logic. This is the only possibility in a world that works according to the rules of rationality.”
― Judith Merkle Riley, quote from The Oracle Glass
“You string people along long enough, the string withers, then it breaks - Seamus”
― James Patterson, quote from I, Michael Bennett
“The relationship between a father and his daughters, Joe had discovered, was a remarkably powerful thing. They looked to him to accomplish greatness; they expected it as a matter of course because he was their dad and therefore a great man.”
― C.J. Box, quote from Open Season
“After the lights were turned out I heard girls toss and turn and here and there weep quietly. The night was starry and beautiful. From my bunk I could see the hills through a window. Slowly the full moon rose. I spoke dreamily to her. I asked her if she saw Papa and Mama. It seemed as if she said yes. In the years to come the moon became my loyal friend, my only friend that was free. Each month I counted the days until she returned, and often when she hid behind clouds of thought that she was avoiding the horror on earth.”
― Gerda Weissmann Klein, quote from All But My Life: A Memoir
“A young man came to a sage one day and asked, "Sire, what must I do to become wise?" The sage vouchsafed no answer. The youth after repeating his question a number of times, with a like result, at last left him, to return the next day with the same question. Again no answer was given and the youth returned on the third day, still repeat- ing his question, "Sire, what must I do to become wise?" Finally the'sage turned and went down to a near-by river. He entered the water, bidding the youth follow him. Upon arriving at a sufficient depth the sage took the young man by the shoulders and held him under the water, despite his struggles to free himself. At last, however, he released him and when the youth had regained his breath the sage questioned him: "Son, when you were under the water what did you most desire?" "The youth answered without hesitation, "Air, air! I wanted air!" "Would you not rather have had riches, pleasure, power or love, my son? Did you not think of any of these?" queried the sage. "No, sire! I wanted air and thought only of air," came the instant response. "Then," said the sage, "to become wise you must desire wisdom with as great intensity as you just now desired air. You must struggle for it, to the exclusion of every other aim in life. It must be your one and only aspiration, by day and by night. If you seek wisdom with that fervor, my son, you will surely beeome wise.”
― Max Heindel, quote from The Rosicrucian cosmo-conception: or, Mystic Christianity; an elementary treatise upon man's past evolution, present constitution and future development
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