![]() Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has shaken up the conservative kingdom with head-spinning reforms while quashing any threats to his status since becoming de facto ruler of the world's biggest oil producer five years ago. intelligence ordered the killing of Jamal Khashoggi Meet MBS, the Saudi crown prince who owns a $500m yacht and French chateau, plays 'Call of Duty,' reopened theaters, and according to U.S. In 2017 he had an angry showdown with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson who accused him of undercutting his authority. ![]() ![]() He was widely reported to use WhatsApp to communicate with the crown prince, keeping other staff and Cabinet secretaries in the dark. Throughout Trump's time in office, Kushner's close relationship with MBS was a source of friction between officials. Trump shrugged off the episode as an anomaly that should not get in the way of relations between Washington and Riyadh.Īnd although President Joe Biden has talked of building a foreign policy based on values and of making Saudi Arabia a pariah for its actions, earlier this month he met with MBS as part of an effort to improve relations and bring down oil prices. intelligence agencies, which concluded that MBS had directly approved an operation to kill or capture Khashoggi. Kushner also said he accepted the Saudi leader's claim that he was not personally involved. 'The kingdom was poised to build on this historic progress, and I believed it would.'īreaking History is published by Broadside Books on August 23 'All of these reforms were major priorities for the United States, as they led to further progress in combating extremism and advancing economic opportunity and stability throughout the war-torn region. 'While this situation was terrible, I couldn't ignore the fact that the reforms that MBS was implementing were having a positive impact on millions of people in the kingdom-especially women,' he writes, according to excerpts published by the Wall Street Journal. In 'Breaking History: A White House Memoir,' which will be published on August 23, Kushner defends working with MBS, even after dissident journalist Khashoggi was killed in 2018 at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Six months after leaving the White House, his new private equity firm secured a $2 billion investment from a fund led by the 36-year-old Saudi crown prince, raising questions about whether Kushner was being rewarded for acting as a go-between. Kushner's ties to MBS have been under intense scrutiny this year. ![]() However, Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti disagreed with al-Ghamidi and said on Monday that Muslim women had a duty to wear full hijabs.Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner defends his relationship with the notorious crown prince of Saudi of Arabia in a forthcoming memoir, saying that Mohammed Bin Salman was a reforming power in the kingdom and that he believed his denials of any personal involvement in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Saudi religious figure Sheikh Ahmad al-Ghamidi has stoked debate in Saudi society and piqued interest in foreign observers of the Kingdom and advocates of women’s rights, by appearing on Saudi television with his wife to reiterate the acceptability of unveiled women in the eyes of Islam, according to media reports.Īl-Ghamidi appeared on “Badria,” a talk show hosted by the renowned Saudi media personality Badria al-Bishr on the MBC television channel, and “discussed a fatwa (religious edict) which he had issued previously, permitting women to show their faces and wear make-up,” Al Arabiya reports.Īl Arabiya notes that al-Ghamidi received threats and that “as expected, his views were not welcomed by some ultra-conservatives who opted, as was apparent on social media, to attack him rather than to argue with his religious argument which states that Islam doesn’t require women to cover their faces.”
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