I happened to come across this movie when I picked up an Arabic newspaper yesterday morning. After reading the huge headline about the three blasts that rocked Riyadh, a certain well-known writer began his exposition. And then the magical words came to the surface “You are not Saudis. You could not have been Saudis. Your actions are despised by us all.” The exact same denial was seen in other publications. Nobody wants to admit that the perpetrators, the terrorists who carried out these heinous acts, were Saudis, many bearing well-known Saudi family names.

We did it after Sept. 11, denying that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals and we continue to do so now. Of course, how could the perpetrators have been Saudi from this blessed land? We Saudis would never do such things. We Saudis are special. We’re superior creatures. Those who have committed these acts must have received their training abroad. It’s outside influence, for sure. Oh, and the Saudi who was responsible for the blast — well, he is not an original Saudi but a foreigner who recently got Saudi nationality. A pure Saudi would never do such things. What nonsense! And it has been going on forever. If, when a terrorist act happens in our country, we flatly deny that citizens of our own flesh and blood were the ones behind it, then I think that it quite likely that we will see many such incidents in the future.

Who are we trying to fool? Ourselves or the international community? Neither can be fooled.

It’s about time we got our act together. The time of pretending that radicalism does not exist in Saudi Arabia is long past. The time for pretending that we are above errors and could not possibly commit terrorist attacks is no longer with us. It has got to stop. Change must come now. We as a nation cannot afford to leave it to its own slow pace. It’s either now or never. It also must cover all aspects of our life — the school, the mosque, the home, the street, the media.

How can we tell the rest of the world that we are tolerant of other religions and faiths when some of us are not even tolerant of other schools of Islamic thought?

How can we expect others to believe that a majority of us are a peace-loving people who denounce extremism and terrorism when some preachers continue to call for the destruction of Jews and Christians, blaming them for all the misery in the Islamic world?

And the media? It seems that if the media are not flatly denying, they are following the see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no evil method.

Just a few days ago, when a large terrorist plot was foiled in Riyadh and the terrorists’ hideout was raided, what we read the following day in the local media was the head of the Muslim World League denouncing the act, saying that Islam and terrorism are not linked. The sheikh said that killing innocent people was a crime in Islam. We already knew that. But we needed to hear more than that.

We needed to hear three questions that are never asked. Like dust, they are swept under the carpet: Why are more and more Saudi young men being fed with radical ideas? Who are the people brainwashing them? How are they being radicalized?

And so it happens that so much dust is swept underneath the carpet that it finally bursts out in full view of everybody. At last, the truth that was hidden has come out.