The first is to bring Saudi Islam back to its more open and modern orientation — whence it diverted in 1979. is on a mission to bring Saudi Islam back to the center. would not discuss the strange goings on with Prime Minister Saad Hariri of Lebanon coming to Saudi Arabia and announcing his resignation, seemingly under Saudi pressure, and now returning to Beirut and rescinding that resignation. There was something a 30-year-old Saudi woman social entrepreneur said to me that stuck in my ear. “We need to restore our culture to what it was before the [Islamic] radical culture took over,” a Saudi woman friend who works with an N.G.O.

Source: New York Times November 23, 2017 23:15 UTC