Radio Islam News and Agencies | 15 October 2017

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Saudi Arabia earlier this month aired a concert of the late female singer Umm Kulthum on state television.

The airing of a show by Egyptian singer on the culture and arts channel Al-Thaqafiya was the first such broadcast on Saudi state TV in decades, BBC Monitoring reported.

The announcement of the programme on Al-Thaqafiya’s Twitter feed was reportedly retweeted over 1000 times and it remained a key talking point on social media for several hours. At least 54 000 tweets were posted under the Arabic hashtag “Umm Kulthum returns to the Saudi channel”.

Saudi fans of the late Egyptian singer celebrated the decision, sharing their favourite lyrics songs, as well as pictures from her live performances.

In contrast, many other users shared messages containing Quranic verses warning of Divine punishment.

The broadcast was seen as part of the sweeping liberalisation Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has sought to implement through an ambitious national project, dubbed Vision 2030.

Of late, the restructuring has seen decrees passed setting into motion the process that will allow women in the Kingdom to drive. It has also seen scores of Ulama and other activists deemed to have the capacity to be at loggerheads with official policy being detained.

Vision 2030, according to NPR, saw to the Saudi government establishing a special bureau called the General Entertainment Authority (GEA) that is “responsible for regulating the entertainment sector in the Kingdom, developing it, and elevating all its components and capabilities.” That includes musical performances as well as other entertainment offerings. The GEA has already staged some events, like a Saudi version of Comic Con, which took place in February in the city of Jeddah and which drew a reported 20 000 attendees; a January concert by Saudi-born crooner Mohammed Abdo, who has been well known in the wider Middle East for more than a decade abroad but was never allowed to perform publicly in his home country; and, in April, a concert by a Japanese orchestra that was notable not just for its mixed-gender audience, but for the women performing alongside men in the ensemble.

In an April interview with Reuters cited by NPR, the chairman of the GEA, Ahmed al-Khatib, reportedly said that his goals include recreating the cultural scenes of cities like London and New York and that ‘conservatives’ could “stay at home if they did not care for the events.” In a later statement also given to Reuters, al-Khatib said that “authorities would provide other entertainment options for conservatives and that all participants in the events would be required to adhere to Islamic principles.”

During US President Donald Trump’s much publicised visit to Saudi Arabia in May, American country music artist Toby Keith was one of the attractions alongside Saudi singer and oud player named Rabeh Saqer at an all-male concert in Riyadh.

In August, bin Salman unveiled plans for a luxury Red Sea resort on a stretch of coastline in the country’s northwest that would allow women to wear bikinis instead of observing a dress-code in line with Hijab guidelines.

Saudi authorities said the resort will be “governed by laws on par with international standards”.

Saudi media also reported last week of expectations of cinema openings in the Kingdom before the end of 2017.

Saudi Arabia still had some operational cinemas in 1970, but they have been banned since.

According to the Saudi Gazette, the regime has commissioned the Boston Consulting Group to identify venues like parks and theaters for the Kingdom to develop through a mix of government funding and private sector investment.

Among the leisure projects being slated at current, is an ambitious giant entertainment city earmarked for the outskirts of Riyadh, which would aim to draw regional visitors with resorts, golf courses, car racing tracks and a Six Flags theme park.

In his Reuters interview, the GEA chair al-Khatib stated that his goal was to create entertainment that “will be like 99 percent of what is going on in London and New York.”

Saudi Arabia’s top religious authority, Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz Al al-Sheikh, has called cinemas and concerts corrupting. Round-the-clock entertainment could open the door to “atheistic or rotten” foreign films and encourage the mixing of the sexes, he said in January.

There have been no public pronouncements reported from Saudi Ulama on the latest developments in the Kingdom.