{"id":5345,"date":"2011-04-15T08:02:07","date_gmt":"2011-04-15T07:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=5345"},"modified":"2011-04-15T08:06:49","modified_gmt":"2011-04-15T07:06:49","slug":"forgotten-world-240-saudi-arabia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=5345","title":{"rendered":"Forgotten World (240): Saudi Arabia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>While revolutionary fervour sweeps the Arab world, one country so far hardly affected &#8211; except for its intervention to support the ruler of Bahrain &#8211; is <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Saudi_Arabia\">Saudi Arabia<\/a>. It sits on  more than 25% of the world&#8217;s known oil reserves and it is capable of  producing more than 10 million barrels per day and rising which gives it enormous geo-political importance.<\/p>\n<p>Named after the ruling Al Saud family, which came to power in the 18th  century, the country of 26 million includes the Hijaz region &#8211; the birthplace of the  Prophet Muhammad and the cradle of Islam. This fact, combined with the  Al Sauds&#8217; espousal of a strict interpretation of Sunni Islam known as  Wahhabism, has led it to develop a strongly religious self-identity.<\/p>\n<p>Municipal elections in 2005 were a first, limited exercise in  democracy. But political parties are banned &#8211; the opposition is  organised from outside the country &#8211; and activists who publicly broach  the subject of reform risk being jailed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While revolutionary fervour sweeps the Arab world, one country so far hardly affected &#8211; except for its intervention to support the ruler of Bahrain &#8211; is Saudi Arabia. It sits on more than 25% of the world&#8217;s known oil reserves and it is capable of producing more than 10 million barrels per day and rising [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5345"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5432,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5345\/revisions\/5432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}