Attacks on my childhood home

The country I grew up in, Saudi Arabia, is being attacked by the Houthis in Yemen. I lived in the city of Al-Khobar mostly and literally down the street is the city of Dhahran, which now looks like this:

'Insert picture of Dhahran explosion here¹

This is what's happening in the capital city, Riyadh.

'Insert picture of Riyadh here²

So why is that instead of siding with the country that gave my family so much opportunity and provided inspiration for my novel "Under The Full and Crescent Moon" now available everywhere, am I siding with the people who are systematically dismantling it via explosions?

The most important reason, and the only one needed honestly is the human one. Since 2015 Saudi Arabia has been subjecting Yemen to a horrific blockade³ which has caused immense human suffering and I am always going to side with the people resisting something like this:

'Insert picture of starving Yemeni child.⁴

Over the people causing it.

But there's more to it and the second is that yes, Saudi Arabia did provide inspiration for my novel, but as the villains. The novel is a conflict between a matriarchal understanding of Islam and a misogynist one and the Saudi Arabia I grew up in, in the late 1900s was straight up misogynist. There's a reason the main villain is named Wasaf, as that's a play on the version of Islam Saudi Arabia spreads, which can be termed either Wahhabi or Salafi.

Which brings up the third reason and also a reason why it took me so long to write my novel, and that's Saudi Arabia's spread of its preferred version of Islam⁵, which is not only misogynist, but incredibly intolerant of differing interpretations of Islam. Which mine and my novel's definitely are. That intolerance drove me to spend years researching my faith and the history of how Islamic Law evolved over the centuries to make sure as much as possible that the core idea in my novel was as bulletproof as possible. That idea being you can have a society run by women that is also compatible with Islamic ideas of right and wrong.

The main effect of what the Yemeni Ansarallah movement is doing in Saudi Arabia is bringing freedom, safety, and prosperity finally to the people of Yemen Inshallah. A side effect though is that Saudi Arabia and its rich oil sheikhs will hopefully no longer have billions of dollars at their disposal to spread their divisive and hateful version of my faith as they has been doing for decades now. Inshallah that will lead to it withering, and we as Muslims will be able to move forward to a future for our community, our Ummah, in which we will no longer have an expectation of uniformity, which is the only real way to have unity. And we will never inflict upon ourselves what Saudi Arabia has to Yemen and we will be able to come together and fight off a common enemy, such as in Palestine, with no regard for the inevitable theological and cultural differences between us.

All sources on my blog. If you want to support my novel, click my profile for that as well as information on a family in the strip that could really use your help. All opinions my own, in the end only God knows best.