In Saudi Arabia, a grasp of the English language has gone from a business convenience to a requirement
by ALLISON DOUGLAS
photos by NATHAN CORDOVA
In an ever-changing world where adaptability is key to survival, economies must evolve to sustain their countries. In Saudi Arabia, where the reality of a diminishing oil supply threatens the longevity of the Kingdom, newly crowned King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz is taking progressive steps in order to ensure the nation’s success in coming years.
With the establishment of the King Abdullah Scholarship in 2005, the Kingdom will send approximately 18,000 of its most promising students abroad to study in Western universities. The students can choose to study professional fields such as medicine, engineering, computer science, math, business, economics, or finance — fields that will increase self-sufficiency in the Saudi economy. The government gives each student about five years to earn either their bachelor’s or master’s degree abroad with the hope that they will return home at the end of their education and diversify the Kingdom’s oil-based economy.
Raised in a society governed by Islamic law, the Saudi students enter a new world as they immerse in the campus lifestyles of universities across the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and Japan.
At the University of Oregon, where more than one hundred Saudi students study, the kind of experiences that come with living a new life in a non-Islamic culture range. From Saudi women being able to drive for the first time, to other Saudis feeling reluctant to pray openly among non-Islamic students, they are experiencing a foreign culture and new ideologies. And in the midst of these experiences, they adapt and grow — just as their Kingdom must do in order to survive in an evolving global economy.
Opening photo: Newly arrived Saudi Arabians make up the largest group of Muslims who visit the Abu-Bakr As-Siddiq Islamic Center in Eugene, Oregon.
Top left: The Oregon-Idaho Methodist Conference founded the Wesley Center more than fifty years ago, as a place where people can come and go regardless of their religious views. In 2005, The Reverend Jeremy Hajdu-Paules made more space available for Muslims to pray, a reaction to the growing number of Muslim students.
Left: College students aren’t the only ones affected by an educational migration; families experience change too. “They are like little monkeys!” Abdulrahman Shaker says of his three children, Abdullah, two (left); Fatinah, four (above); and Abdulaziz, six (not pictured). While Shaker prepares for graduate school and his wife Arwa Balilah (center) studies English, the children attend day care and preschool where no one speaks Arabic. Originally from Jiddah, the children had a hard time adapting to the new environment, Balilah says, but “now they correct our English ... they fight in English!”
Right: After his last class of the day, twenty-two-year-old Fahad Al Dossari (left) of Dhahran prays with other students in a once-vacant room at the Wesley Center across the street from the University of Oregon campus.
Top: Twenty-year-old best friends, Abeer Albashrawi (left) and Sajida Almatrook (right), of Qitif, are inseparable even while studying in a foreign country. The two share similar values, although Albashrawi chooses to shed the head covering that is mandatory in Saudi Arabia.
Above: “Now she is always out of the home!” Arwa Balilah’s husband, Abdulrahman Shaker, jokes. Balilah recently learned how to drive, a practice not normally afforded to women under Saudi law.
Below: In preparation to study accounting, twenty-year-old Ali Alhusain of Riyadh takes English classes on the University of Oregon campus. He holds a photograph of his father, who studied at the university in the late seventies. Unlike his father, Alhusain’s educational experience is based on necessity.
