For decades, Saudi Arabia had a message to foreign visitors that was clear: come for pilgrimage, contracts or conferences and not for leisure. Alcohol, banned since 1952, was both a legal prohibition and a cultural signal about where the kingdom drew its red lines.
That line is now being cautiously redrawn.
Without public announcement, Saudi authorities have begun allowing wealthy non-Muslim foreign residents to buy alcohol from a tightly controlled outlet in Riyadh. What looks like a niche policy tweak is, in reality, part of a broader
