SAUDI ARABIA: Modernists vs. Islamic fundamentalists
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A verbal row between reformers and hardliners is raging in Saudi Arabia.
The king’s recent efforts toward modernization of this oil-rich, ultra-conservative nation have ruffled the feathers of some uncompromising Saudi clerics.
On Sunday, a group of hard-line clerics exhorted authorities to ban women from appearing on television, newspapers or magazines in a blunt statement that has been catching the public eye today.
On the same day, in an unusually bold move, Saudi human-rights groups criticized the country’s religious police, who enjoy wide powers in the kingdom to ensure the application of the strict Wahabi strain of Islam.
The National Society for Human Rights urged the Saudi government to redefine the authority of the powerful Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, which it asserted was violating individuals’ rights.
Bearded members of the religious police can raid private homes on suspicions that mixing between men and women or alcohol consumption are taking place there.
They also can arrest men and women unrelated by blood or marriage for simply sharing a table at a coffee shop.
The report by human-rights groups accused the religious police of “interrogating and sometimes assaulting and forcing [individuals] to confess under duress to acts they did not commit.”
The report lambasted the country’s discrimination against women, stressing the need to give women more facilities and opportunities at workplaces and to halt the marriages of underage girls.
Saudi Arabia is one of the most repressive countries toward women; they are not allowed to drive or travel without the permission of their husbands, fathers or brothers.
The country’s clerics do not seem ready to budge. The statement issued by the 35 hard-line clergymen called for prohibiting the playing of music and music shows on television.
They denounced what they called “the well-rooted perversity” at official cultural institutions and even book fairs.
All this agitation comes following a series of forward-looking steps by Saudi King Abdullah Bin Abdul-Aziz, including the appointment last month of the first woman to a ministerial post.
The monarch’s decisions also included the dismissal of leading fundamentalist clerics such as the head of the religious police, as well as the chief of the country’s highest religious tribunal, who called for killing TV executives who spread “vice” in society through their broadcasts.
-- Raed Rafei in Beirut