Saudi religious establishment has its wings
clipped
Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi
Some months ago, an old debate was revived in Saudi newspapers. The subject: whether
religious leaders should be allowed a share in political power. Things have moved on
since. But in the course of that debate an unambiguous message was sent out namely,
that it is the state that makes the final decisions. The religious scholars and others may
have an acknowledged say in the decision-making process, but not the final say and no
power of veto.
This was made plain when it was announced subsequently that the General Presidency for the
Education of Girls was being merged with the Education Ministry. Previously, the GPEG was
one of the most important bastions of the religious establishment, which had exclusive
control over the education of females from kindergarten through university the idea
being that it could be trusted to ensure they would not be exploited, and no ideas
inimical to its ultra-conservative views would be put in their heads.
The occasion for ending this arrangement was a fire at a school in Mecca in which 13 young
girls lost their lives. The tragedy, and the bungled way it was handled, brought to a head
a host of public grievances about clerical mismanagement of the GPEG, prompting Crown
Prince Abdullah to make the bold move said to have been decided in principle some time
earlier of abolishing it and handing responsibility for the education of both sexes to
a single government department.
While the public welcomed the move, the religious establishment did not like being
stripped of an institution that had connected it to virtually every family in the kingdom.
Nor did the associated conservative religious current, which saw it as violating an old
agreement under which the religious establishment was given control of girls’
education in exchange for accepting it in principle. Readers may be unaware of the intense
religious opposition that originally faced the introduction of girls’ education in
the mid-1960s under the late King Faisal, who had to call in the army to protect some
schools.
To understand the relationship between the Saudi state and the religious establishment, it
is important to refer back to the debate that raged some months back. It was begun by
Prince Turki al-Faisal, the urbane former director of intelligence, in response to an
off-the-cuff comment by Sheikh Abdullah al-Turki, secretary-general of the World Muslim
League and a member of the Council of Senior Ulema, the kingdom’s highest religious
body.
The sheikh had remarked, at a meeting called by Crown Prince Abdullah to discuss the
fallout of Sept. 11, that the kingdom’s ruling body consists of its civic rulers and
religious scholars.
Prince Turki took issue with him in a newspaper article, arguing that “those
responsible for affairs of state are the rulers,” while “scholars only act in an
advisory capacity.” He quoted a number of Islamic jurists in support of his view,
before concluding that “Sheikh Abdullah al-Turki’s definition of those
responsible for the affairs of state is at variance with the agreed wisdom of most other
jurists. In fact, his point of view is only embraced by a few scholars.”
The problem is that those “few” include a scholar who is seen as an authority by
most of the kingdom’s ulema, and whose judgments are still widely followed in
religious affairs: the late Sheikh Abdel-Aziz bin Baz was the kingdom’s mufti until
his death in 1999. Sheikh Abdullah al-Turki’s view of the scholars’ role is
known to be widely shared within the religious establishment, not least because bin Baz
himself elucidated it in a 1993 lecture.
No one objected to what bin Baz said then, but much has happened since, including Sept. 11
and the demise of the Taleban model of clerical rule. This seems to have strengthened the
government’s resolve not to allow anyone to intrude on its exclusive prerogative
as in any modern state to formulate foreign policy. The feeling is that any other
arrangement is a recipe for confusion and chaos, and that the scholars’ authority
should be restricted to offering advice in the form of religious rulings, which the
government can then incorporate into legislation or policy.
These, one can confidently say, are the ground rules Saudi leaders are now trying to
uphold. And they can probably count on the support not just of the kingdom’s
intelligentsia and bureaucrats, but also a broad swathe of moderate Islamists who strongly
advocate civic reforms that would preserve the role of Islam in public life, but without
anyone claiming a monopoly on the truth.
Official thinking in this regard was summed up in a recent article by Prince Talal bin
Abdel-Aziz in which he challenged the “potentially very confusing” claim that
affairs of state should be decided jointly by rulers and scholars. In Islam, Prince Talal
argued, religious scholars are not supposed to exercise political power or compel their
followers to do anything. “Scholars do not carry swords, they cannot run government
ministries, and cannot send the guilty to prison,” he wrote. “A scholar’s
authority is derived from his ability to influence people, as well as his capacity to
advise the country’s rulers. It is, in short, a different kind of authority, that
turns scholars into guardians of the nation and representatives of the people, if that is
indeed what they are. But it does not endow them with any political power, which should be
restricted to the country’s rulers. Political power is gained by the rulers through
the choice of the people, and the way it is exercised varies in different countries and
political systems.”
Prince Talal characterized the granting of political power to ulema as both alien to Islam
and an impediment to “the democratic progress that we are striving for” in the
Arab and Muslim worlds.
“How can we give political powers to individuals who the people have no role in
choosing? I know of no principle in Islam that puts religious scholars on a level higher
than the people, permitting them to exercise political power just because of their
religious credentials.”
This line of reasoning should not be seen as an attempt to detract from the central role
of Islam in the state. What this debate (which carries on in public and private
gatherings) makes clear is that while Saudis agree on the supremacy of Islam as
society’s point of reference, they aspire to a sort of Islamic pluralism. What they
don’t want is for one circle to have a monopoly on the faith. Some Saudis, indeed,
have been calling for a reappraisal of all the prevalent tenets of Islamic political
jurisprudence. They include Abdullah al-Hamed, who was active in the Islamist reform
movement that emerged after the 1991 Gulf War, and argues that political conventions and
traditions, unlike religious rituals, must be adapted to changing times and social values.
“The political jurisprudence we inherited from the Abbasids is inadequate for running
a modern state,” he wrote. “We must remedy this situation before secularism
overwhelms us with its concepts of justice, rights, education, technology, and
organization the reasons behind the ascendancy of Western civilization.”
The Saudi religious establishment now faces a choice: It can be a partner in the process
of change spearheaded by the leadership (which began years before the Sept. 11 attacks),
giving advice; or cling to its old ways. But the signs are not encouraging. Saudi scholars
still have reservations about photo ID cards for women, insisting they be identified by
fingerprints rather than revealing their likeness in photographic form. The government
decided not to wait for their agreement and went ahead with the new image-bearing cards
anyway. In so doing, the government demonstrated that in matters of public policy, it was
not going to let the ulema stand in its way. Its move was generally welcomed by the
public, as evidenced by the deluge of requests for the new cards (the old photo-less ones
caused countless bureaucratic and legal problems for Saudi women). The only objections
voiced were in a few internet forums and letters to the press bemoaning the demise of
female modesty and chastity.
Stiffer resistance was encountered in plans for education reform, another area where the
religious establishment has failed to keep up with public opinion.
When Education Minister Mohammed al-Rashid, seen as a reformist Islamist, criticized the
way students are made to memorize lessons by rote (he described it as
“parroting”), he was savaged by a leading member of the Council of Senior Ulema.
Sheikh Saleh al-Fozan expressed his disgust that “some of our own people want us to
become like the infidels who want us to renounce our religious beliefs and follow in their
footsteps by changing our education curricula that are based on the Koran and the
teachings of the Prophet.” Without mentioning the minister by name, he added that
“a parrot is he who repeats the demands of the enemies of Islam that we should stop
teaching the Koran, in order that we abandon our faith.”
Not the most constructive exchange and not one that instills optimism about the future of
education reform in the kingdom. The process of reform began many years ago. Numerous
committees were formed to produce studies and recommendations which, according to
officials, could have revolutionized education and adapted it to the country’s
changing economic needs had the religious establishment not vetoed them.
It is doubtful that the religious establishment still retains such powers. Saudi writers
respond daily to Sheikh al-Fozan’s hard-line perorations. No one stops them, in
contrast to the old days when the good sheikh could have silenced anyone who challenged
his opinions. Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi is a Saudi
political analyst and deputy editor in chief of Saudi Arabia’s English-language Arab
News. He wrote this commentary for The Daily Star
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