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Surprise: Saudi clerics resist even minor reforms proposed by king

Jul 2, 2011 12:04 am By Marisol Seibold

It’s only natural: what is standing in the way of attempts to “reform” Sharia is Sharia’s own inherent resistance to reform, as it is upheld as Allah’s perfect law for all mankind, for all time. To say a given law is flawed is to imply either that Allah issued a bad law, or that humans erred in their interpretation or propagation of it.

To avoid blasphemy and all of its unpleasant consequences, pleas for reform naturally focus on the latter scenario, though that scenario is just as easily used to downplay the flaws inherent in Sharia: whatever the problem, it’s all a misunderstanding on someone’s part. However, that tactic works both ways, as both sides can say, “it’s not Sharia’s problem, it’s you.” And so the substance of Sharia generally goes un-addressed, both by would-be “reformers” and those seeking to evade reform.

Of course, there are notable exceptions among the anti-reform crowd who unabashedly acknowledge and praise Sharia’s commands to “whip, cut, or kill” as Allah commanded. “Saudi Arabia’s clerics challenge King Abdullah’s reform agenda,” by Jason Burke for the Guardian, July 1:

On a Friday at one o’clock, Sheikh Saad Bin Naser al-Shethri is leading prayers in a small mosque in an upmarket neighbourhood of Riyadh, the Saudi capital. The faithful fill two floors, listening to the cleric’s sermon on the true sense of the traditional greeting “salaam aleikum” — peace be upon you. This, Shethri says, means love thy neighbour.

Next question: “Who is my neighbor?”

It is a moderate message from a man who even in fiercely conservative Saudi Arabia, home to the most rigorous strands of Muslim practice in the world, is considered a hardliner. Only 18 months ago, Shethri, 46, was fired from the country’s high council of religious scholars by King Abdullah, who has ruled the kingdom since 2005.

His offence was to have criticised the king’s decision to allow male and female researchers to work together at the new multibillion pound science university built on the Red Sea coast. The king had called the university, a key part of Saudi Arabia’s drive towards economic modernisation, a “beacon of tolerance”. Shethri retorted that “mixing [genders] is a great sin and a great evil … When men mix with women, their hearts burn and they will be diverted from their main goal [of] education.”

Shethri remains unrepentant. In an interview with the Guardian, his first with a western newspaper, he says the duty of religious scholars is to advise sovereign rulers but also “to make governors fear God if they err from the right path and to remind them of God’s punishment if they continue to err”.

In an implicit criticism of the hugely wealthy royal family, Shethri said the Qur’an teaches money should not be admired nor should the rich be envied. The poorer you are, he said, “the less you will have to account for in this life and the next”.

There’s ample room for a moral hazard there.

Such tensions between the descendants of Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, the tribal chieftain who unified the warring states of the Arabian peninsula to form Saudi Arabia in 1932, and the country’s clerics are not new. Having used fanatical Wahhabi religious fighters to conquer his new kingdom, Saud crushed their subsequent revolt and did a deal with the country’s ultra-conservative clergy that has endured to this day. The religious establishment was allowed substantial independence, the control of key ministries and a share of the wealth of the kingdom. In return, in crisis after crisis, it has come to the aid of the family, buttressing its authority with fatwa — religious opinions.

So in 1991, clerics declared US troops could be based in the kingdom. After the 9/11 attacks, in which 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, religious scholars in the kingdom repudiated al-Qaida’s extremism, grudgingly accepted some changes to schoolbooks that encouraged intolerance, and co-operated in restricting the flow of money from Saudi Arabia to radical organisations.

This year, as demonstrations unseated leaders in Tunisia and Egypt and threatened many more, they told the faithful that protests against their rulers would be un-Islamic.

“Relations between the royal family and the clergy are very good,” says Turki al-Sudeiri, editor of the loyalist al’Riyadh newspaper. But such support is often grudging. Shethri is not the only cleric to dislike the current king’s moves towards incremental reform. […]

Last week, Prince Nayef, the most conservative of senior princes and minister of interior, told a local audience that terrorism had “wronged many, damaging the image of Islam, the Arabs and in particular the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”

Nayef is head of the religious police who continue to enforce, even if less brutally and intrusively than previously, Saudi Arabia’s fierce puritanism and is known to be opposed to any major social reforms in the country.

The erosion of Saudi Arabia’s deep conservatism is a reality but is neither a uniform nor linear process. It is extremely unlikely even the more moderate elements within the royal family will seek to accelerate the pace of reform and risk alienating the clerical establishment. Should Prince Nayef succeed — he is currently 76, second in line to the throne and eleven years younger than the king — most analysts expect a new reactionary atmosphere….

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Filed Under: Saudi Arabia, Sharia


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