A mirage of rights

AS EVERY monarch in the Gulf knows, even geysers of oil cannot keep all your subjects happy all of the time. Still, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia may have been surprised that his recent appointment of 30 women to the kingdom’s 150-person shura council should provoke a public protest. The all-appointed body, a sort of proto-parliament, has limited influence; the move, announced on January 11th, was the long-expected response to demands for reform by a king who has gingerly promoted women’s rights since assuming the throne in 2005. Even so, dozens of conservative clerics picketed the royal court in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, on January 15th, to condemn what one cowled sheikh decried as “dangerous changes” in the arch-conservative kingdom.

It was perhaps natural that fundamentalist Wahhabists, who have long been given leeway to impose their will in return for counselling obedience to the royal family, should be angered by a small step towards female empowerment. More surprising was their defiance of the Saudi ban on public demonstrations imposed two years ago in the wake of Arab uprisings elsewhere. But increasingly across the Gulf, once-cordial relations between rulers and ruled are strained. Not only has the small coterie of liberals long-critical of autocracy grown bolder. The political complacency of pampered religious conservatives can no longer be counted on, either.