by Jean Sasson
September 28, 2004 The use of cell phones with built-in cameras are banned by Saudi Arabia’s highest religious authority. The edict claims that the phones are “spreading obscenity” throughout Saudi Arabia.
December 6, 2004 Nine people are killed at the U.S. Consulate in Jidda when Islamic militants throw explosives at the gate of the heavily guarded building. They force their way into the building and a gun battle ensues.
2004 The kingdom beheaded thirty-five people in 2004.
January 13, 2005 Saudi judicial officials say a religious court has sentenced fifteen Saudis, including a woman, to as many as 250 lashes each and up to six months in prison for participating in a protest against the monarchy.
February 10, 2005 While women are banned from casting ballots, Saudi male voters converge at polling stations in the Riyadh region to participate in city elections. This is the first time in the country’s history that Saudis are taking part in a vote that conforms to international standards.
March 3, 2005 Men in eastern and southern Saudi Arabia turn out in the thousands to vote in municipal elections. It is their first opportunity to have their say in decision making in Saudi’s absolute monarchy.
April 1, 2005 Saudi Arabia beheads three men in public in the northern city of Al Jawf for killing a deputy governor, a religious court judge, and a police lieutenant in 2003.
May 15, 2005 Three reform advocates are sentenced to terms ranging from six to nine years in prison. Human-rights activists call the trial “a farce.”
Saudi author and poet Ali al-Dimeeni is sentenced to nine years in prison for sowing dissent, disobeying his rulers and sedition. His 1998 novel A Gray Cloud centers on a dissident jailed for years in a desert nation prison where many others have served time for their political views.
May 27, 2005 King Fahd, Saudi Arabia’s monarch for twenty-three years, is hospitalized for unspecified reasons.
August 1, 2005 King Fahd dies at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre in Riyadh. His half-brother Crown Prince Abdullah is named to replace him.
August 8, 2005 Hope rises in Saudi Arabia after the new king, Abdullah, pardons four prominent activists who were jailed after criticizing the strict religious environment and the slow pace of democratic reform.
September 15, 2005 The Saudi government orders a Jidda chamber of commerce to allow female voters and candidates.
September 21, 2005 Two men are beheaded in Riyadh after being convicted of kidnapping and raping a woman.
November 17, 2005 A Saudi high-school chemistry teacher, accused of discussing religion with his students, is sentenced to 750 lashes and forty months in prison for blasphemy following a trial on November 12.
November 27, 2005 To the delight of Saudi women, two females are elected to a chamber of commerce in Jidda. This is the first occasion when women have won any such post in the country, as they are largely barred from political life.
December 8, 2005 Leaders from fifty Muslim countries promise to fight extremist ideology. The leaders say they will reform textbooks, restrict religious edicts, and crack down on terror financing.
Saudi Arabia enacts a law that bans state employees from making any statements in public that conflict with official policy.
2005 The kingdom beheaded eighty-three people in 2005.
January 12, 2006 Thousands of Muslim pilgrims trip over luggage during the hajj, causing a crush in which 363 people are killed.
January 26, 2006 Saudi Arabia recalls its ambassador to Denmark in protest at a series of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad published in the Danish Jyllands-Posten newspaper. Discontent spreads across the Muslim world for weeks, resulting in dozens of deaths.
February 19, 2006 Following the publication of the twelve cartoons of the Prophet—highlighting what it described as self-censorship—the Jyllands-Posten newspaper prints a full-page apology in a Saudi-owned newspaper.
April 2006 The Saudi Arabian government announces plans to build an electrified fence along its 560-mile border with Iraq.
April 6, 2006 Cheese and butter from the Danish company Arla are returned to Saudi Arabian supermarket shelves following a boycott sparked by the country’s publication of offensive cartoons.
May 16, 2006 Newspapers in Saudi Arabia report that they have received an order from King Abdullah telling editors to stop publishing pictures of women. The king claims that such photographs will make young Saudi men go astray.
August 18, 2006 According to the Financial Times, Great Britain has agreed to a multi-billion-dollar defense deal to supply seventy-two Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft to Saudi Arabia.
October 20, 2006 In an attempt to defuse internal power struggles, King Abdullah gives new powers to his brothers and nephews. In the future, a council of thirty princes will meet to choose the crown prince.
February 2007 Ten Saudi intellectuals are arrested for signing a polite petition suggesting it is time for the kingdom to consider a transition to constitutional monarchy.
February 4, 2007 A Saudi Arabian judge sentences twenty foreigners to receive lashes and prison terms after convicting them of attending a mixed party where alcohol was served and men and women danced.
February 17, 2007 A report published by a U.S. human-rights group reveals the Saudi government detains thousands of prisoners in jail without charge, sentences children to death, and oppresses women.
February 19, 2007 A Saudi court orders the bodies of four Sri Lankans to be displayed in a public square after being beheaded for armed robbery.
February 26, 2007 Four Frenchmen are killed by gunmen on the side of a desert road leading to the holy city of Medina in an area restricted to Muslims only.
April 27, 2007 In one of the largest sweeps against terror cells in Saudi Arabia, the Interior Ministry says police arrested 172 Islamic militants. The militants had trained abroad as pilots so they could duplicate 9/11 and fly aircraft in attacks on Saudi Arabia’s oil fields.
May 5, 2007 Prince Abdul-Majeed bin Abdul-Aziz, the governor of Mecca, dies, at age sixty-five, after a long illness.
May 9, 2007 An Ethiopian woman, Khadija Bint Ibrahim Moussa, convicted of killing an Egyptian man over a dispute is beheaded. She is the second woman to be executed in 2007. Beheadings are carried out with a sword in a public square.
June 23, 2007 A Saudi judge postpones the trial of three members of the religious police for their involvement in the death of a man arrested after being seen with a woman who was not his relative.
November 9, 2007 Saudi authorities behead Saudi citizen Khalaf al-Anzi in Riyadh for kidnapping and raping a teenager. Saudi authorities also behead a Pakistani for drug trafficking. This execution brings to 131 the number of people beheaded in the kingdom in 2007.
November 14, 2007 A Saudi court sentences a nine-year-old girl who had been gang-raped to six months in jail and two hundred lashes. The court also bans the lawyer from defending her, confiscating his license to practice law and summoning him to a disciplinary hearing.
December 17, 2007 The gang-rape victim who was sentenced to six months in prison and two hundred lashes for being alone with a man not related to her is pardoned by the Saudi king after the case sparks rare criticism from the United States.
January 21, 2008 The newspaper Al-Watan reports that the Interior Ministry issued a circular to hotels asking them to accept lone women as long as their information was sent February 14, 2008 A leading human-rights group appeals to Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah to stop the execution of a woman accused of witchcraft and performing supernatural acts.
May 19, 2008 Professor Matrook al-Faleh is arrested at King Saud University in Riyadh after he publicly criticized conditions in a prison where two other human-rights activists are serving jail terms.
May 24, 2008 Saudi authorities behead a local man convicted of armed robbery and raping a woman. The execution brings the number of people beheaded in 2008 to fifty-five.
June 20, 2008 Religious police arrest twenty-one allegedly homos
exual men and confiscate large amounts of alcohol at a large gathering of young men at a rest house in Al-Qatif.
July 8, 2008 A human-rights group says domestic workers in Saudi Arabia often suffer abuse that in some cases amounts to slavery, as well as sexual violence and lashings for spurious allegations of theft or witchcraft.
July 30, 2008 The country’s Islamic religious police ban the sale of dogs and cats as pets. They also ban owners from walking their pets in public because men use cats and dogs to make passes at women.
September 11, 2008 Sheik Saleh al-Lihedan, Saudi Arabia’s top judiciary official, issues a religious decree saying it is permissible to kill the owners of satellite TV networks who broadcast immoral content. He later adjusts his comments, saying owners who broadcast immoral content should be brought to trial and sentenced to death if other penalties do not deter them.
November 2008 A U.S. diplomatic cable says donors in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates send an estimated $100 million annually to radical Islamic schools in Pakistan that back militancy.
December 10, 2008 The European Commission awards the first Chaillot Prize to the Al-Nahda Philanthropic Society for Women, a Saudi charity that helps divorced and underprivileged women.
January 14, 2009 Saudi Arabia’s most senior cleric is quoted as saying it is permissible for ten-year-old girls to marry. He adds that anyone who thinks ten-year-old girls are too young to marry is doing those girls an injustice.
February 14, 2009 King Abdullah, eighty-six, dismisses Sheik Saleh al-Lihedan. King Abdullah also appoints Nora al-Fayez as deputy minister of women’s education, the first female in the history of Saudi Arabia to hold a ministerial post.
March 3, 2009 Khamisa Sawadi, a seventy-five-year-old widow, is sentenced to forty lashes and four months in jail for talking with two young men who are not close relatives.
March 22, 2009 A group of Saudi clerics urges the kingdom’s new information minister to ban women from appearing on TV or in newspapers and magazines.
March 27, 2009 King Abdullah appoints his half-brother Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, as his second deputy prime minister.
April 30, 2009. An eight-year-old girl divorces her middle-aged husband after her father forces her to marry him in exchange for $13,000. Saudi Arabia permits such child marriages.
May 29, 2009 A man is beheaded and crucified for slaying an eleven-year-old boy and his father.
June 6, 2009 The Saudi film Menahi is screened in Riyadh more than thirty years after the government began shutting down theaters. No women were allowed, only men and children, including girls up to ten.
July 15, 2009. Saudi citizen Mazen Abdul-Jawad appears on Lebanon’s LBC satellite TV station’s Bold Red Line program and shocks Saudis by publicly confessing to sexual exploits. More than 200 Saudi Arabians file legal complaints against Abdul-Jawad, dubbed a “sex braggart” by the media, and many Saudis say he should be severely punished. Abdul-Jawad is convicted by a Saudi court in October 2009 and sentenced to five years in jail and 1,000 lashes.
August 9, 2009 Italian news agencies report that burglars have stolen jewels and cash worth 11 million euros from the hotel room of a Saudi princess in Sardinia, sparking a diplomatic incident.
August 27, 2009 A suicide bomber targets the assistant interior minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef and blows himself up just before going into a gathering of well-wishers for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in Jidda. His target, Prince Nayef, is only slightly wounded.
September 23, 2009 A new multi-billion-dollar coed university opens outside the coastal city of Jidda. The King Abdullah Science and Technology University, or KAUST, boasts state-of-the-art labs, the world’s fourteenth fastest supercomputer, and one of the biggest endowments worldwide. Enrolled are 817 students from 61 different countries, with 314 beginning classes.
October 24, 2009 Rozanna al-Yami, age twenty-two, is tried and convicted for her involvement in the Bold Red Line program featuring Abdul-Jawad. She is sentenced to sixty lashes and is thought to be the first female Saudi journalist to be given such a punishment. King Abdullah waived the flogging sentence, the second such pardon in a high-profile case by the monarch in recent years. He ordered al-Yami’s case to be referred to a committee in the ministry.
October 2009 The bin Laden family go under the spotlight in Growing Up Bin Laden: Osama’s Wife and Son Take Us Inside Their Secret World, written by American author Jean Sasson. The book is based on interviews with Sasson conducted with Omar bin Laden and his wife, Najwa bin Laden.
November 9, 2009 A Lebanese psychic, Ali Hussain Sibat, who made predictions on a satellite TV channel from his home in Beirut, is sentenced to death for practicing witchcraft. When he traveled to Medina for a pilgrimage in May 2008, he was arrested and threatened with beheading. The following year, a three-judge panel said that there was not enough evidence that Sibat’s actions had harmed others. They ordered the case to be retried in a Medina court and recommended that the sentence be commuted and that Sibat be deported.
January 19, 2010 A thirteen-year-old girl is sentenced to a ninety-lash flogging and two months in prison as punishment for assaulting a teacher who tried to take the girl’s cell phone away from her.
February 11, 2010 Religious police launch a nationwide crackdown on stores selling items that are red, as they say the color alludes to the banned celebration of Valentine’s Day.
March 6, 2010 The Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association says that Saudi security officers stormed a book stall at the Riyadh International Book Fair and confiscated all work by Abdullah al-Hamid, a well-known reformer and critic of the royal family.
April 20, 2010 When Saudi cleric Ahmed bin Qassim al-Ghamdi suggests that men and women should be allowed to mingle freely, the head of Saudi Arabia’s powerful religious police fires al-Ghamdi from his position as chief of the Mecca branch.
June 10, 2010 After a Saudi man kisses a woman in a mall, he is arrested, convicted, and sentenced to four months in prison and ninety lashes.
June 22, 2010 Four women and eleven men are arrested, tried, and convicted for mixing at a party. They are sentenced to flogging and prison terms.
August 15, 2010 Ghazi Al-Gosaibi, a Saudi statesman and poet, dies from colon cancer after a long illness. Al-Gosaibi was close to the ruling family, although his writings were banned in the kingdom for most of his life. The Saudi Culture Ministry lifted the ban on his writings the month before his death, citing his contribution to the nation.
November 17, 2010 King Abdullah steps down as head of the country’s National Guard. His son assumes the position.
November 20, 2010 A young woman in her twenties defies the kingdom’s driving ban and accidentally overturns her car. She dies, along with three female friends who were passengers.
November 22, 2010 King Abdullah visits New York for medical treatment and temporarily hands control to Crown Prince Sultan, one of his half-brothers.
November 23, 2010 Saudi media announces that a Saudi woman accused of torturing her Indonesian maid has been sent to jail, while the maid, Sumiati Binti Salan Mustapa, is receiving hospital treatment for burns and broken bones.
An estimated 4 million Saudi women over the age of twenty are unmarried in a country of 24.6 million. It is reported that some male guardians forcibly keep women single, a practice known as adhl. The guardians have the right to keep the salaries of the women for themselves. Saudi feminist Wajeha al-Huwaider describes male guardianship as “a form of slavery.”
January 16, 2011 A group of Saudi activists launches “My Country,” a campaign to push the kingdom to allow women to run in municipal elections scheduled for spring 2011.
January 24, 2011 New York-based Human Rights Watch says in its World Report 2011 that Saudi Arabia’s government is harassing and jailing activists, often without trial, for speaking out in favor of expanding religious tolerance and that new restrictions on electronic communication in the kingdom are severe.
February 9, 2011 Ten moderat
e Saudi scholars ask the king for recognition of their Uma Islamic Party, the kingdom’s first political party.
February 15, 2011 The Education Ministry says the kingdom plans to remove books that encourage terrorism or defame religion from school libraries.
February 24, 2011 Influential intellectuals say in a statement that Arab rulers should derive a lesson from the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, and listen to the voice of disenchanted young people.
March 5, 2011 Saudi Arabia’s Interior Ministry says demonstrations won’t be tolerated and its security forces will act against anyone taking part in them.
March 11 2011 Hundreds of police are deployed in the capital to prevent protests calling for democratic reforms inspired by the wave of unrest sweeping the Arab world.
May 2, 2011 Osama bin Laden, the founder and head of the Islamic militant group Al-Qaeda, is killed in Pakistan shortly after 1 a.m. local time by U.S. Navy Seals of the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development.
March 18, 2011 King Abdullah promises Saudi citizens a multi-billion-dollar package of reforms, raises, cash, loans, and apartments in what appears to be the Arab world’s most expensive attempt to appease residents inspired by the unrest that has swept two regional leaders from power.
May 22, 2011 Saudi authorities re-arrest activist Manal al-Sharif, who defied a ban on female drivers. She had been detained for several hours a day by the country’s religious police and released after she’d signed a pledge agreeing not to drive. Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that bans women, both Saudi and foreign, from driving.
June 18, 2011 Ruyati binti Satubi, an Indonesian grandmother, is beheaded for killing an allegedly abusive Saudi employer.
June 28, 2011 Saudi police detain one woman driving in Jidda on the Red Sea coast. Four other women accused of driving are later detained in the city.
September 25, 2011 King Abdullah announces that the nation’s women will gain the right to vote and run as candidates in local elections to be held in 2015 in a major advance for the rights of women in the deeply conservative Muslim kingdom.
