Saudi Arabia is not a country. It is a pure and uncluttered vision of God

- Prince Mohammed AlFaisal bin AbdulAziz

The true identity of Saudi Arabia does not lie in its geographical borders nor in the ethnic and cultural map of it's people. This land we call Saudi Arabia today is a physical embodiment of the collective aspirations, hopes and ideals of a diverse and dispirit people. It is the fruit of a long and arduous struggle to create a Just and Noble society. The men and women who gave birth to this nation surpassed the boundaries created by national identity and regarded Saudi Arabia as just another piece in the large map of the Muslim world.

However, today and with the passing of a few centuries we find their descendants have forgotten their vision and the goals for which they lived and died. We have reduced their ideal to a mediocre collection of ethnic and economic concerns, forgetting our history and believing that Saudi Arabia’s influence in the world was born only with the discovery of petrol and the wealth it engendered. This belief that Saudi Arabia would cease to exist or recede into a minor role in world history where it not for the existence of petrol is not only false but, very ignorant of the historical role it has played through out the centuries. Even as a poor and defenseless country its message reached the farthest corners of the Muslim world influencing and inspiring many people. The battles and tribulations of Sheik AbdelWahab and the Alsaud dynasty went far beyond the nomadic society of the Arabian Peninsula and echoes into the farthest reaches of Asia and Africa. Time has come for us to look back at our nation in the light of history and assess our own contributions to this special land. This is not a mediocre country with a mediocre destiny-it never has and never will be-. This is the Sacred Land and those who live on it are the custodians of it wither they wish to be or not.

From ancient times to our day the tribes of this land where never tamed or concurred by any leader, king or nation. This was a cruel and harsh place cut off from the sources of civilization, ignored by conquerors and forgotten by the world up until the advent of Islam. Yet, even then, these tribes created a world of controlled chaos ruled by a sacred oral law of nobility and generosity whereby the Prophet himself– may God bless him-said “I was not sent save to bring to completion the finest virtues of human behavior”.

When the Prophet –may God bless him- was sent to this land the message he carried was able to assuage the tribes thirst for the Absolute and channel its energy in establishing a civilization built on the ideals of Islam. This energy that was unleashed was so powerful that the tribes of the peninsula were able to spread the message of Islam within a few years to most of the known world of their time. No civilization in history has ever spread so quickly or on such a scale. After the death of the Prophet and the early Islamic Khilaphat the tribes of the peninsula relapsed again into a marginalized universe and the world forgot about them. They were left to roam their eternal desert and search for a world they thought they had dreamt. Trapped and ignored they traveled from century to century surviving on the only fruit, which could grow in this land, the hardy fruit of Hope.

Then in the early eighteenth century the tribes of the peninsula decided to shake the Muslim world again and remind them that they still existed. Out of the chaos, poverty and hunger emerged a great soul and fearless visionary the sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdelwahab. This man was able to revive and inspire a lost and abandoned people not by promising them wealth or power or pandering to racial or ethnic ambitions, but by awakening their dormant desire for the Absolute. His vision was echoed by Alsaud and the Dariyah covenant and gave birth to the Ikhwan movement. He liberated such a force that it was able to re