SAUDI ARABIA RATCHETS UP PRESSURE ON ISRAEL TO ACCEPT PALESTINIAN STATEHOOD WITH NEW DEMAND
However, challenging situations remain, both in terms of the prince’s external reputation following the 2018 murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, and internally with the conservative Islamic customs that have ruled his sandy lands for decades.
The store is next to a supermarket in Riyadh’s diplomatic district, said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a socially sensitive factor in Saudi Arabia. The diplomat stopped by the store on Wednesday and described it as similar to a high-duty supermarket at a major foreign airport.
The sale of alcohol had been banned in this conservative country of Saudi Arabia.
Lately the store offers alcohol, wine and only two types of beer, the diplomat said. Store workers asked consumers for their diplomatic IDs and asked them to place their cell phones in their bags when they were inside. A cell phone app makes it possible to imagine making purchases in a dispatch system, the diplomat explained.
Saudi officials did not respond to a request for comment related to the store.
However, the opening of the store coincides with a report through the English-language newspaper Arab News, owned by the Saudi media group and affiliated with the state, about new regulations governing the sale of alcohol to diplomats in the kingdom.
It described the rules as meant “to curb the uncontrolled importing of these special goods and liquors within the diplomatic consignments.” The rules took effect Monday, the newspaper reported.
For years, diplomats have been importing alcohol through a specialized service of the kingdom, for consumption in diplomatic bases.
Those without access in the past have purchased liquor from bootleggers or brewed their own inside their homes. However, the U.S. State Department warns that those arrested and convicted for consuming alcohol can face “long jail sentences, heavy fines, public floggings and deportation.”
Drinking alcohol is haram, or forbidden, in Islam. Saudi Arabia remains one of the few countries in the world to ban alcohol, along with neighboring Kuwait and Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates.
Saudi Arabia has banned alcohol since the early 1950s. Former King Abdulaziz, Saudi Arabia’s founding monarch, halted its sale following an incident in 1951 in which one of his sons, Prince Mishari, had become intoxicated and used a shotgun to kill British Vice Consul Cyril Ousman in Jeddah.
After Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution and a militant attack on the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi rulers temporarily embraced Wahhabism, an ultraconservative Islamic doctrine that originated in the kingdom. This has led to the implementation of strict gender separation, a driving ban for women, and other measures.
Under Prince Mohammed and his father, King Salman, the kingdom opened movie theaters, allowed conducting and held primary music festivals. But political speech and dissent remain strictly criminalized and potentially punishable by death.
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As Saudi Arabia prepares for a $500 billion futuristic city allocation called Neom, reports have circulated that alcohol would possibly be served there at a resort.
However, sensitivities remain. After an official reported that “alcohol is not excluded” at Neom in 2022, within days he stopped participating in the project.