JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia, April 23 -- Saudi Arabia's limited 10-week experiment with electoral democracy ended here Saturday in a sweeping victory for slates of Islamic activists marketed as the "Golden List," who used grass-roots organizing, digital technology and endorsements from popular religious leaders to defeat their liberal and tribal rivals, even here in Jiddah, for decades Saudi Arabia's most diverse and business-driven city.
The staggered contests for seats on half of the kingdom's 178 municipal councils, the first governmental elections here in more than three decades, offered a rare measure of public opinion and political strength across Saudi Arabia -- or at least the opinions of men, as women were barred from voting or running as candidates, as were active soldiers and police.
While candidates from the kingdom's Shiite Muslim minority showed well in some of their eastern strongholds and a handful of independents were elected along the Red Sea, by far the greatest number of winners countrywide came from the legions of Islamic activists.
Even as the last ballots were being counted, voters, candidates and Saudi analysts in relatively open-minded Jiddah debated the meaning of the broad Islamic victory, divided over whether the winners should be viewed as pragmatic moderates or radicals, and whether the result signaled that the kingdom should fear democracy or embrace it sooner.
Public debate about such questions is rare in a country that bans political parties, where three imprisoned intellectuals face trial for advocating a written constitution and where the ruling Saud family and its allies in the official Islamic establishment have dominated civic discourse since the 1930s.
In the Jiddah election, the Golden List of religiously approved candidates surfaced initially as anonymously dispatched text messages on thousands of cell phones, seven names out of the more than 500 candidates competing for the Jiddah council. The spammed messages were sometimes accompanied by a religious homily or endorsement.
The candidates were then backed in speeches and media interviews by religious scholars, including some well-known preachers who speak mainly about personal improvement, as well as dissidents such as Safar Hawali, who was jailed in the mid-1990s for anti-government preaching and who has spoken often about the virtues of armed jihad.
For some of the businessmen, tribal leaders, lawyers, professors and independents who sought to compete with the Golden List slate, the last phase of the campaign became a struggle to defend their city's tradition of trade and tolerance against rivals who were better organized, in touch with ordinary voters and whose piety proved hard to challenge.
Typical was Osama Jamjoom, scion of a well-known local merchant family, who figured that his candidacy might be lifted by the endorsement of his own Islamic scholar. With Saudi analysts touting him as one of the best hopes of the Jiddah business class against the Golden List, Jamjoom invited a young religious teacher, Tawfiq Sayegh, to join him on the stage on his last night of campaigning, held in a billowing tent erected in a dusty parking lot, equipped with plasma TV screens that beamed crisp images of the candidate's biography and platform.
Sayegh's discussion of urban problems was just 10 minutes along when a hand shot up from the audience. "Is it a sin not to vote for the Golden List?"
"If I choose seven out of 500, they might be very religious and good at their prayers," Sayegh answered cautiously, "but is that what we need at the municipal council?"
That same night in a nearby district, businessman Mohammed S. Dardeer sat in a hotel lobby as the campaign ended, dialing for votes and lamenting the strength of his Islamic activist opponents. "I'm fed up [with] listening to the TV -- haram, haram, haram ! " he said, using the Arabic word for acts forbidden by Islam. "I am a Muslim. I have it in my heart. Now I want to develop my country."
At a campaign rally, one potential voter had suggested that if Dardeer was not selected for membership on the Golden List by some of the kingdom's best-known religious scholars, it would be haram for him to compete with those who were.
His reply, as he recalled it: "We are all good Muslims. We pray. We fast. So what, I'm going to heaven for voting for this list?"
When the votes were counted, both Dardeer and Jamjoom had been defeated by their Golden List rivals. In the end, all seven Golden List candidates were elected in Jiddah. Their counterparts also did well in nearby Mecca and Medina, sites of two of the Muslim world's most sacred places of worship, as well as in the more conservative northern and southern areas of the kingdom. The winners must share power with an equal number of government-appointed council members, and it is not clear whether they will have much practical authority.
As with many aspects of Saudi Arabia's vast religious networks, the origins and management of the Golden List were a mystery. The candidates chosen by the list's architects were mainly well-credentialed professionals, some educated in the United States, who have long records of religious and social activism, according to their Web sites, rival candidates and Saudi journalists.
They ran on platforms that emphasized practical local issues such as roads and public facilities, but they also made clear that on social issues such as gender segregation, education and enforcement of religious rules, they supported the kingdom's austere traditions.
The difference between the Golden List winners and the kingdom's more dangerous Islamic activists, argued Khaled Batarfi, a columnist and editor at the Arabic-language al-Madina newspaper here, is that the winning activists are willing to work with rivals who do not share all their beliefs. "The one dividing attitude is tolerance -- tolerance toward the other, whether inside the country or outside," he said.
On Election Day, at a polling station in central Jiddah, voters emerging from the booth offered a split verdict on that question, with some emphasizing their fear that the Golden List candidates were just the electable face of a more dangerous Islamic movement, and others arguing that they were honest men who would do a better job than self-interested businessmen or tribal bosses.
Some described the election as only a start, saying they expected more elections in the future involving offices with greater powers, and that the kingdom's political equations could change quickly as the country gained experience.
"It's the first time -- everyone is sitting and waiting to see who these seven are and what they will do," said Issan Mulla, 43, an architect.
For some of those left out of the process, such as Fatin Bundagji, an activist for women's issues, the election showed how far those who promote alternatives to Saudi Arabia's deeply conservative Islamic orthodoxy must go before they can compete successfully with religious networks that have been organizing with government resources and approval for decades.
"Our problem as moderates is that we are not organized," she said. "We suddenly woke up to discover that something was very wrong. But the damage had been done. The system has been built up over 30 years."
Bundagji and many other Saudis see the royal family as committed to at least gradual democratic reforms. "The government's political will is there," she said. "Now it's the popular opinion that needs to be addressed."
