I think that a positive change is happening within Saudi Arabia but it will be an excrutiatingly slow process, and will have a timeline measured in several decades at least.
I worked in Saudi for a while in the mid 70's on the engineering side (Lightnings); I was also an OJT instructor. The mindset that was faced when dealing with our OJT cadets (newly promoted to Warrant Officers on graduation from Technical Training, without so much as getting a pair of hands dirty) was much like observed in many posts here in 2010. I used to think very much like the poster above; yet here we are, 35 years or so down the track, and it would seem not much has changed. Sad.