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| Indian Muslims uninterested in Saudi affairs |
No doubt it was under his rule that the oil-rich state made further strides in education, governance, modern infrastructure, some reforms apart from advancements in Science and Technology.
He opened colleges and universities and it was a period of greater prosperity for the nation and his people but overall the prestige of the King among the Muslim masses across the world went down.
Not only it was the Iraq war and the arrival of the US soldiers on the holy land, but the manner in which his country that was looked upon by more than a billion Muslims as their model state, becoming a stooge of US.
No wave of sorrow across Islamic world
No wonder that the death has been received with shock across the world but there is no such wave of sorrow as in the case of leaders like Shah Faisal or even Yasser Arafat or say Hafiz Al Asad. Isn't it a sad moment for the rulers of Arabia?
Ignoring the popular sentiment, they play second fiddle to the US and thus surreptitiously support the Jewish state, thereby sabotaging the cause of Palestine. How right was Urdu poet Abdul Ahad Saaz wrote the famous verse...
'Shyookh apnee atlasi qabayen zebtan kiye..zameen ka tel aakhirat ke daam bech kar jaza kama chuke*. When Arafat died the masses went hysteric in countries as far as Malaya. Youths came out on the streets of cities in India to express their sorrow.
This is despite the fact that Arafat had failed to redeem himself after the Oslo accord. The fact that Muslim world has leaders who do not have any following among people, speaks of the widening gulf between the stooges of the US and the masses in most of the Muslim countries.
Indian Muslims are no longer attached to Saudi kingdom. They don't feel the emotional attachment with the ruling class at all. Of course, there is love and attachment for the country that has the holiest sites of Islam, but no longer a blind following for the monarchs.
Period.