Saudis to Begin Religious Reforms?

There have been a number of developments in Saudi Arabia recently. The royal family is infighting. Women are being allowed to drive. Dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria!

But seriously, there are some interesting things getting underway which explain why the royal family is infighting. Change is never easy.

Everyone knows about the tension between Shi'a Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia that has pretty much existed since the fall of the Shah in '79.

Since fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979, Iran and Saudi Arabia have confronted each other across the waters of the Persian Gulf. The presence of the U.S. naval forces in the region still deter overt Iranian military action in the Gulf. Iran’s Shia regime, however, is expansionist. The ayatollahs seek to control or influence Shia Muslim communities globally, but particularly in the Middle East. . .

The Saudis conduct air strikes on Houthi targets [in Yemen], which is why the Houthis portray the SRBM attacks as retaliatory. The Saudis, however, are certain that the November 4 missile was fired by members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and Lebanese Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia militia that Iran trains and finances. Hezbollah also provides proxy fighters for Iran elsewhere in the region (Syria).

All of this has been more than covered here in other threads, including the Israeli cooperation angle. It is in neither country's interest to have a nuclear armed Iran.

But the reason I'm writing this thread has more to do with this next part:

“The message is that everything that used to be Saudi Arabia is no longer the case,” said a senior minister, who like all other officials refused to put his name to his views. “This is a revolution,” he explained. “Everything is so sensitive. We must be patient until it all settles down.”

Underpinning the cultural reforms is Prince Mohammed’s pledge last month to “return Saudi Arabia to moderate Islam”, in effect a commitment to break the founding alliance between clerics who adhere to the rigid teachings of 17th century preacher Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab and the kingdom’s modern rulers.

The crown prince said a hardline interpretation of Islam had taken root in Saudi Arabia after the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. “We didn’t know how to deal with it,” Prince Mohammed told the Guardian. “And the problem spread all over the world. Now is the time to get rid of it.”

No Saudi leader has previously come close to confronting the accommodation between clerics and rulers.

Part of the social reforms we have been seeing that have led, among other things, to women driving are to include breaking the power of the Wahhabist clerics if this is true.

That by itself would be massive, but it goes even further.

In other news in the kingdom, a missile fired from Yemen was intercepted over Riyadh, the possibility of listing Aramco stocks on the NY Stock Exchange was discussed (though that’s complicated), Lebanon’s Prime Minister Hariri displayed some virtuoso ironic sensibility by resigning in Riyadh because he felt Lebanon was being controlled by an(other)other country (Iran), and King Salman established a complex (named after himself) in Medina to sort out the Hadiths. (Or more properly, Ahadith.)

According to the Saudi Minister of Culture and Information Awwad Bin Saleh al-Awwad, a council of senior scholars will be established for the complex and will consist of prominent Hadith scholars in the world. They will, the UAE’s National tells us:

…look to “eliminate fake and extremist texts and any texts that contradict the teachings of Islam and justify the committing of crimes, murders and terrorist acts”.

So, did you get that?

This new complex with its noted scholars is going to start sorting through secondary Islamic texts with the aim of eliminating fake or extremist texts, and this place is supposed to go over texts like the Hadith. That's HUGE. The Hadith are supposed to be subordinate to the Qu'ran, but sometimes they are given equal, even primary abrogating importance to it by some scholars.

Hadith are regarded by hadithists as important tools for understanding the Quran and commentaries (tafsir) written on it. Some important elements, which are today taken to be a long-held part of normative traditional Islamic practice and belief, for example, the detailed ritual practice of the five salat (obligatory Islamic prayers), are in fact not mentioned in the Qur’an at all, but are derived solely from the hadith.

This is how important to daily Muslim practice they are. Many common elements derive solely from the Hadith. I would, of course, not expect many of these kinds of practices to go away. Why abolish praying five times a day?

But can you imagine the ire from the more theocratic countries in the area once wind of this gets out?

While I applaud the effort and do think certain things could be removed from practice to make Islam a more moderate and world-friendly religion than what we have today, I think this is going to draw a lot of ire.

a reply to: ketsuko

Pepe Escobar touched on this in his last piece ... They pretty much have too many growing pains to go through and too many text to burn .

Before the purge, the House of Saud’s incessant spin centered on a $500 billion zone straddling Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, on the Red Sea coast, a sort of Dubai replica to be theoretically completed by 2025, powered by wind and solar energy, and financed by its sovereign wealth fund and proceeds from the Aramco IPO. In parallel, MBS pulled another rabbit from his hat swearing the future of Saudi Arabia is a matter of “simply reverting to what we followed – a moderate Islam open to the world and all religions.” In a nutshell: a state that happens to be the private property of a royal family inimical to all principles of freedom of expression and religion, as well as the ideological matrix of all forms of Salafi-jihadism simply cannot metastasize into a “moderate” state just because MBS says so. Meanwhile, a pile-up of purges, coups and countercoups shall be the norm.

www.atimes.com... They might be better or safer converting to Judaism

As I See it....

"The crown prince said a hardline interpretation of Islam had taken root in Saudi Arabia after the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. “We didn’t know how to deal with it,” Prince Mohammed told the Guardian. “And the problem spread all over the world. Now is the time to get rid of it.”

No Saudi leader has previously come close to confronting the accommodation between clerics and rulers."

This is a start in the right direction.

But this is very concerning www.atimes.com...

a reply to: Plotus

It's also misleading. It wasn't the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran that caused the shift; it was the 1979 Grand Mosque Seizure that marked the shift!

In 1979, an extremist paramilitary cult led by a false messiah who claimed to be the Madhi attacked and occupied the Al Aqsa Mosque that contains the Kaaba. For the record, that's our holiest site and the Qur'an literally commands all Muslims to aim our prayers towards it (Qur'an Surah 2, Ayat 144). I'll spare the other details, but it shook the Muslim world to its core and resulted in a long siege that saw multiple countries sending special ops to dislodge the fake Madhi.

This also shook the Saudi govt because they realized that the harsher and more belligerent branches of Wahhabis were getting to strong for them to handle. So in order to appease them, the Saudi govt started implementing religious crackdowns & other hardline Wahhabi policies.

Note that this is completely different from getting rid of Wahhabism as a whole. The alliance between Wahhabism & the House of Saud goes back to the founding of Wahhabism in the 1700s, so he's clearly not talking about that. But I can still hope that he'll shift away from Wahhabism as a whole. After all, the son of the Nation of Islam's founder converted the original Nation of Islam into an orthodox Sunni branch in the 1970s. (Farrakhan and his followers left in protest and he started his own incarnation of the Nation of Islam afterwards, which is the small faction that exists today.)

Drain the... desert?

a reply to: Konduit

Swamp plus sand = solid ground? Eventually?

Times, they are a changin'.

Finally! A powerful muslim not just calling for religious reform but taken major steps to implement it.
This is the thing we have been asking the muslim community to do. Man oh man I hope this ends up being good for the world.

a reply to: scraedtosleep

(Facepalm) Wahhabism itself is the reform movement. It's only existed since the 1700s and it was limited to remote parts of Saudi Arabia until the 1900s. The extremely conservative Shiite Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 is also a reform movement. However, both of those reform movements have strict interpretations and believe that the other interpretations of Islam are too weak, tolerant, lenient, etc.

The whole reason extremist Wahhabi groups & their backers in Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been taking down secular Muslim govts is because they're trying to force their reforms onto other Muslims. Boko Haram is another Wahhabi-based "reform group" who's entire purpose is to force the rejection of Western styled academics, cultural norms, beliefs, etc. And remember when Wahhabi-based ISIS was blowing up historical shrines and threatening to blow up historical monuments like the pyramids? Those monuments and shrines had been under the care of normal Muslims this whole time, but it was only the reformers who wanted to destroy them.

So be careful what you wish for. Those reform movements have managed to trick most of you into believing that they represent the true Islam, even though they're the newcomers who need to leave. Surely you've seen the pictures of Iranian life before the 1979 revolution? Surely you've seen Afghan life before the Wahhabi-based Taliban came to power? Surely you've seen the difference between Syrian life in its normal areas and life in the areas that were controlled by the Wahhabi & Salafi groups like ISIS, al Nusra, etc? It's no coincidence that those reform groups have been trying to take down the modern & secular Muslim govts, but they've convinced many of you to overlook that.

a reply to: ketsuko

Dogs and cats living together.

That alone is enough to outrage the Wahhabist clerics!! When the Saudi women shed their burqas, all hell will break loose and Saudi men will become sex molesting zombies unable to control themselves.

originally posted by: enlightenedservant
a reply to: scraedtosleep

(Facepalm) Wahhabism itself is the reform movement. It's only existed since the 1700s and it was limited to remote parts of Saudi Arabia until the 1900s. The extremely conservative Shiite Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 is also a reform movement. However, both of those reform movements have strict interpretations and believe that the other interpretations of Islam are too weak, tolerant, lenient, etc.

The whole reason extremist Wahhabi groups & their backers in Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been taking down secular Muslim govts is because they're trying to force their reforms onto other Muslims. Boko Haram is another Wahhabi-based "reform group" who's entire purpose is to force the rejection of Western styled academics, cultural norms, beliefs, etc. And remember when Wahhabi-based ISIS was blowing up historical shrines and threatening to blow up historical monuments like the pyramids? Those monuments and shrines had been under the care of normal Muslims this whole time, but it was only the reformers who wanted to destroy them.

So be careful what you wish for. Those reform movements have managed to trick most of you into believing that they represent the true Islam, even though they're the newcomers who need to leave. Surely you've seen the pictures of Iranian life before the 1979 revolution? Surely you've seen Afghan life before the Wahhabi-based Taliban came to power? Surely you've seen the difference between Syrian life in its normal areas and life in the areas that were controlled by the Wahhabi & Salafi groups like ISIS, al Nusra, etc? It's no coincidence that those reform groups have been trying to take down the modern & secular Muslim govts, but they've convinced many of you to overlook that.

You seem to know a lot more about it than I do.

a reply to: ketsuko

A civil war in Saudi Arabia is coming between the old guard and the reformers.

a reply to: scraedtosleep

I just get tired of people always saying "Islam needs to reform" when they don't realize it's the reform movements that are causing the vast majority of problems today.

Dropping this excellent Corbett Report off . James is Talking with a reporter from Lebanon who's got a good grip on what has been happening and to who ...

a reply to: the2ofusr1

This all ties in with the White Rabbit thread too.