Raid Qusti, rqusti@arabnews.com 

The Saudi way of solving problems is simple. We plunge our heads in the sand and pretend that the problem has gone away, exactly like an ostrich.

Sept. 11, the Iraq war, and the terrorist attacks in Riyadh on May 12, and the appearance of so many sleeping terrorist cells in our country after that should have been wake-up calls for Saudi society that we need reforms and immediate government plans for a revamp of the social, economic, political and cultural level. Sadly, that has not happened. Using the ostrich method, we continue our journey toward the unknown, not knowing that that the cancer is eating away at our structure slowly but effectively.

Though the government has been launching a fierce battle against terrorists, officials are not doing anything to look at the roots of the matter. What has led a group of young Saudis to blow themselves up and kill innocent people? Who are the people that brainwashed them? What are the reasons for their extremism? Did frustration also play a role in what happened?

What we really wanted to see after May 12 was cooperation between the Ministry of Islamic Affairs and the Ministry of Education. We wanted moderate sheikhs to address students on all levels once a week about tolerance of other faiths and the explanation of the word “jihad” in Islam. This is the least that we could have done — since our curriculum does not stress these topics at all. Students would also have had the chance to ask these sheikhs questions about the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims, Islam as a moderate religion, and universal Islam. There are thousands of Saudi students who are eager to listen and ask questions about those topics. If they do not find answers that are convincing to them at school, they will look for them elsewhere.

And that is where the danger lies. If we ignore the root causes, it is only a matter of time that bad weeds will start springing up again.

One day while I was flipping through the channels, I learned that ART was celebrating its 10th anniversary. “My God,” I said to myself. “Has it been 10 years since ART was launched?” But then I asked myself: What have we accomplished as a nation in the past 10 years? Have we solved our social problems?

I sighed when I realized that not only have our problems stayed unresolved, but they actually increased. And now we have to add “extremism” as a cherry on the top.

The surprise came on Sept. 23, our National Day. Few educators, thinkers, writers or journalists actually talked about the challenges we face now as a nation and the need to resolve them. Jamal Khashoggi was the only writer I found on National Day who asked the daring question: “What will Saudi Arabia be like in 20 years?” Judging from what I see now: Joblessness, corruption, oppression of youth, a huge decline in the per capita income, poverty, phobia between men and women, a population explosion, bureaucracy, intolerance of diversity, and a rise in the number of unmarried women and divorcees — it does not look promising at all.

What is also unfortunate is that in the midst of all this, when someone on the official level like the minister of health makes surprise visits to hospitals and clinics to check on the conditions there first hand, our local media bombards him with criticism. Several weeks ago when the minister pretended he was suffering from a heart attack so he could be rushed in the emergency room of a local hospital to see for himself the staff on duty at the early morning and the conditions of the hospital, he was accused of being an actor.

I wish all our ministers were like the new minister of health, who goes out to the field to see how things are instead of taking decisions and making lame statements from a cozy office.

Perhaps the Saudi style that would have been accepted by our writers is if he had announced that he would visit the ER in the hospital so that the hospital manager could call absent doctors to come forward and be prepared. The media with all their cameras would be waiting for his excellency’s arrival to take pictures, and the hospital staff would have fixed any flaw before he got to the building. That, folks, is the Saudi style.