Astral Codex Ten

Saudi

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Saudi

Article

Saudi is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between June 23, 2021 and September 13, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as “most Saudi men support women working outside the home”; “he left the comfort of his Saudi home”; “from their Saudi circles”. It most often appears alongside Wikipedia, 1999 apartment bombings, 9/11.

Metadata

  • Category: Places
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: June 23, 2021
  • Last seen: September 13, 2024

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Links For June
June 23, 2021 · Original source
25: Related: when surveyed privately, most Saudi men support women working outside the home. But in public they oppose it because they think everyone else opposes it and don’t want to get in trouble! Relevant Scott Aaronson lecture and SSC story.
Inline links: when surveyed privately, most Saudi men support women working outside the home, Scott Aaronson lecture, SSC story
Your Book Review: Nine Lives
September 13, 2024 · Original source
This is a good moment to note that that jihadists in the book are all obsessed with Israel, mostly not because they are angry at the oppression of Palestinians (Muslims are oppressed in many places around the world), but because Jerusalem features in a lot of prophecies, so it’s really important for it to be under Muslim rule. They also passionately hate the USA, partly because of its support of Israel, but maybe even more importantly because the US has stationed troops in Saudi Arabia since the Gulf War. This was a reasonable thing to do against a potential Iraqi invasion that was a very real threat while Saddam was in power. But Infidel soldiers staying in the country of Mecca and Medina was considered a huge sacrilege by the jihadists and made them hate the US a lot.
I was somewhat disturbed reading how many normal Muslims Dean interacted with were on board with all of this in theory. Dean comes from a nice urban middle-class family in Saudi Arabia, and several of his relatives joined the jihad at various points, and all other relatives supported that. His neighborhood Islamic study group, that I imagine as the equivalent of Sunday School, was all in favor of very radical interpretations. Some Muslim communities Dean interacted with in London were even more radical than the ones he grew up with, constantly preaching about Hellfire and the only sure way to avoid it. On a plane from Kuwait to the Philippines, a flight attendant figured out they were traveling to join the jihad, but didn’t turn them in, but instead introduced them to the captain of the plane, because they were both proud supporters of the jihad. People did successful door-to-door fundraising for jihadist causes in Kuwait. Everyone was on board, it was just that not that many took the implications as seriously as Dean.
Born in 1978, he was 16 when he left the comfort of his Saudi home, learned to fire a mortar, and fought in the battles of the Bosnian War. He and two friends ran a million dollar fraudulent charity to smuggle supplies to the Chechens when he was 18. He was 19 when he swore an oath of allegiance in front of Osama bin Laden, and started making chemical weapons. He was 20 when he got disillusioned with al-Qaeda, left, got caught by the Qatari secret police and became a British informant. He was 24 when he unraveled a plot to release poison gas in the New York subway. And by the time he was 28, due to an embarrassingly stupid leak from the American intelligence agencies, his spying career was over and he was a man in hiding.