Saudi Arabia - to go, or not to go

[Duke]

A project in Saudi Arabia that has come up as a possibility, and my first instinct was that I'd sooner go to Singapore. Singapore is near the top of my "will never go to" list, alongside North Korea and much of the middle east.

I did some searching on the internet, and there are apparently some travel warnings, a whole lot of religious police looking for excuses to stick people in prison, any number of ways to get arrested, and many more to be stuck in the country without much hope of ever getting out. I haven't yet had a chance to contact my "Arab consultant," but as I said, I'm leaning more than Michael Jackson in the Smooth Criminal video toward not going. About a year ago I was afraid of going to Mexico, but I'm thinking that this fear is more well founded.

Now, I don't know how bad it really is over there for someone like me, so was wondering if anyone in this forum has ever been there, or knows anyone there, or lives there (pretty unlikely I'm guessing). Any and all advice is welcomed, and hopefully this thread can limit itself to the actual security concerns for someone who could never pass for a local, given the current global climate. Politics is a different forum.

Assuming it's a game of Russian roulette, how many chambers have bullets in them? Assuming you make $500 a day normally (this is not my real number, but I figure most people can relate to that), what would it take to get you to go? Am I an idiot for even considering it?