As this follow-up to the to the Saudi-led interfaith conference makes clear, the Wahhabis are more interested in presenting a better "image" than they are about making real reforms at home. Nor, apparently, do they intend to clarify their all-important theological positions -- such as the function of jihad and what a sharia-based relationship with non-Muslims looks like -- which, after all, is what much of the conflict revolves around; instead, they are looking for Westernized, English-speaking Saudis to represent the Wahhabi nation.
"Saudi Arabia to present new image at Madrid forum," by Andrew Hammond, for Reuters, July 9:
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia hopes to showcase a new more liberal face of its austere version of Sunni Islam at an unprecedented forum that will bring together Muslim, Christian and Jewish clergy in Spain next week.Read: It's meant to placate the non-Muslim world, not make real changes in the Muslim world, as what follows makes perfectly clear.[...]
It marks a new direction for Saudi Arabia, whose "Wahhabi" Islam has come in for criticism internationally after the Sept. 11 attacks of 2001 in the United States, Riyadh's main ally and guarantor of security since the 1940s.
Fifteen of the 19 Arabs who killed some 3,000 people were Saudis, acting in the name of Saudi-born al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Since then, Saudi rulers have embarked on a series of reforms to improve the image of a system in which the Saudi royal family rules in alliance with clerics who are given free rein to administer Islamic sharia law as they interpret it.
[...]
But a Riyadh-based diplomat said the wide net being cast regarding invitees, even those from Saudi Arabia, suggested there was significant opposition among Saudi clerics.
"It's an international event with no potential for domestic reverberations," he said, adding that few members of the government-appointed Higher Council of Religious Scholars have indicated they will attend.
He said the list of invitees was governed by the desire to find Saudis who know the West and speak English rather than enjoy a reputation for knowledge of Islamic theology.
Since 9/11, all that has mattered is image. It was never about Wahhabism's role in terrorism. This "conference", like any that have gone before it, is to get the West to drop its guard. All that matters to Saudis is that we let them in. If they have to lie, so be it.
If the Saudis were serious about an inter-faith dialogue they could have offered to host it. They didn't.
Ignorance Is Strength.
"RIYADH, Saudi Arabia hopes to showcase a new more liberal face of its austere version of Sunni Islam at an unprecedented forum that will bring together Muslim, Christian and Jewish clergy in Spain next week."
We've already seen the "new more liberal face" of Sunnis who travel and vacation in thw West -- except that it's not new. Their womanizing, unrestrained consumption of alcohol, and all around debauched life-styles, in major Western Cities are nothing new.
What would be truely new is if they stopped treating their women back home like cattle, stopped persecuting other religious faiths, stopped mutilating people for infractions of Islamic law.
By the way, why is this forum being held in Spain? Could it be that Christian and Jewish clergymen might want to bring their holy books into Saudi Arabia, or hold services while attending the forum? It might be kind of difficult presenting a "new more liberal face" and at the same time enforcing restrictions on freedom of worship on the non-Muslim attendees.
War is deceit.
Islam is terror.
CAIR Reps to Take Part in Madrid Interfaith Summit
MarketWatch - USA
CAIR Board Member Larry Shaw and CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper will also take part in the conference. ...
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Are Christians and Jews really going to sit idly by or is somebody organizing protests?
This would be an excellent occasion for Jews and Christians, together, to stage demonstrations of public mourning and solemn remembrance for those Jews, and those Christians, who were mass-murdered by Muslims both during the initial Muslim invasion of Spain, and then at different times during the Muslim occupation of Spain
The Catholics, I am sure, know very well who were the major Spanish martyrs and saints from that period. Processions and celebrations could be held in their honour.
Jews have their own martyrs to remember - for example, the hundreds of Jews who were killed by Muslims in Cordoba between 1010 and 1013, and the entire Jewish community of four thousand in Granada in 1066; and I am sure there are many others.
For even more devastating effect, the protestors could extend the commemoration beyond Spain, to the Jewish and Christian victims of jihad and dhimmitude throughout the rest of the Islamosphere, 7th - 20th century.
There might be a special event remembering and mourning the first claimed Jewish victims of Jihad: the Banu Qurayza, and the Jews of the Khaybar Oasis.
Women might choose to weep and tear their garments for Safiyya, and Juwariyya, and Rayhana, and for all Jewish - and, too, Christian - women raped by Mohammedan mobs, or seized, and enslaved, and forcibly 'converted' to islam, and 'disappeared' into Muslim harems, ever since. Special honour might be given to 17 year old Rayhana, who chose to retain her Jewish faith even though it meant suffering the slave status of a concubine.
I suggest, perhaps, a joint 'sitting shiva' in the streets or on the steps of synagogues and churches.
Bat Yeor's books, and Andrew Bostom's "Legacy of Jihad" and "Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism", could be publicly displayed, and book-readings held. Jacques Ellul's essay, 'Les Trois Piliers du Conformisme', which thoroughly demolishes Islam's claim to be an 'Abrahamic' faith, might be translated into English and Spanish and disseminated throughout Madrid.