In the accompanying article, quoted by Ibrahim al-Duwaish, considered a moderate in Saudi Arabia:
"...there is nothing wrong with women driving in theory but that he opposed it in practice because women taking to the road would cause too many accidents."
The sweeping "Arab Spring" winds obviously have not cleared the cobwebs of a 7th century cult from the minds of Saudis, one can hope that they will, eventually blow the backwardness and fundamentalism into the cornfield.
From the Guardian July 1 by Jason Burke
Saudi Arabia's clerics challenge King Abdullah's reform agenda
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.
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".
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.
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"...there is nothing wrong with women driving in theory but that he opposed it in practice because women taking to the road would cause too many accidents."
The sweeping "Arab Spring" winds obviously have not cleared the cobwebs of a 7th century cult from the minds of Saudis, one can hope that they will, eventually blow the backwardness and fundamentalism into the cornfield.
From the Guardian July 1 by Jason Burke
Saudi Arabia's clerics challenge King Abdullah's reform agenda
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.
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".
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.
Read it all
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