In the plush public spaces of Dubai International Airport, wealthy Saudi men swagger through the concourses in pristine white robes, fingering their prayer beads absent-mindedly while veiled women trail behind in robes of black.
As night approaches, clusters of Pakistani men with henna-dyed beards stretch out on the carpet to sleep, blocking walkways. Harassed and be-suited airport officials with walkie-talkies, pass by at the head of two long, orderly lines of Asian women, like teachers escorting children on a school trip. Outside, where departure gates announce destinations including Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam, the women queue separately, divided from the men and from the people of wealthier nations.
Less than an hour later, high over the Rub al-Khali, the Empty Quarter, the bright lights of Dubai already seem a distant memory. Saudi Arabia is obscured by clouds. The cabin has fallen quiet.
The silence is broken by a cowed and whispering Bangladeshi man. He asks if I will fill out his Saudi arrivals card. He is illiterate and speaks neither English nor Arabic. He has been to Saudi Arabia before, many times. I help as best I can and he is grateful, perhaps more so for the fact that he is returning to a job offering wages which he could never earn in Bangladesh. He shuffles away, the anxiety of his alienation etched on his face and bowing, his demeanour making him one of the most miserable and dejected figures I have ever encountered.
Soon after my arrival in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, I travel north into the conservative Islamic heartland of the Najd. Here, local tribes consider themselves to possess the purest aristocratic Arab blood, and to be the most faithful custodians of Islam’s legacy.
En route to Buraydah, Saudi Arabia’s most conservative city where even Western women must be veiled and Saudi security forces are in a constant battle against al Qaeda militants, we pass the turn-off to the small oasis of Al-Uyaynah. It was here that, in 1703, Mohammed ibn Abd al-Wahhab was born. His family origins were modest, his family pious but poor. With little means of subsistence in his village, al-Wahhab left to travel the region as a religious student, passing through Mecca, Medina, Basra and Hasa before returning to Al-Uyaynah to preach a puritanical message calling for the purification of Islam and a return to the religion’s 7th-century roots.
The village sheikhs tolerated al-Wahhab for as