Fatima Al-Sulami, who works at King Saud University, also told Ashraq Al-Awsat that people in the province were also generally less patriotic.
This led a group of Northern Border residents to file a formal complaint against her.
Al-Sulami’s research, carried out through interviews with a large number of women aged around 20 and related to convicts and wanted men, was conducted in cities including Arar, Hafr Al-Baten and Rafha.
They refused to participate in any school activity that bore even the slight relationship to the Kingdom, according to the study.
The research also claimed that some of them believed security officials and government employees were not Muslims.
One girl mentioned in the research refused to marry a man simply because he was a government employee. The study highlighted tribalism and its danger in breeding extremist tendencies.
The study caused a huge controversy. Al-Watan columnist Saleh Al-Shehi attacked Al-Sulami in an article, accusing her of having a hidden agenda against people in the area.
He also criticized Ashraq Al-Awsat’s editor in chief for allowing a report on the study to be written.
“Why would such strange research based on the mood of the researcher be allowed to be published? How can she attack a large percentage of the Saudi population?,” he wrote in the article.
In response, Asharq Al-Awsat published an article claiming that the newspaper was justified in publishing the report and that the study was based on legitimate research.
In their lawsuit, the angry residents have called on Al-Sulami to prove the claims made in the study. They added that they might also file a complaint against the newspaper.
