Liberals Under Attack… by Fatwa!
Blogger: Mideast Youth - Thinking Ahead
Article: Liberals Under Attack… by Fatwa!
Originaly Posted On: 2007-07-17 17:21:44
“Calling oneself a liberal Muslim is a contradiction in terms … one should repent before God for such ideas in order to be a real Muslim.” “He who wants freedom with only the controls of man-made law has rebelled against the law of God,” a prominent Saudi cleric Sheikh Saleh Al-Fozan said last month.
The fatwa said that liberal in this context meant “freedom which is not subject to the bounds of sharia (Islamic law) and which rejects sharia laws, especially concerning women…”.
My God.. as if we need such a statement that will yet create a bigger gap between the majority whom are the religious extremists and the liberals in Saudi Arabia. Such statement suggests liberals are not real Muslims and is a clear implication of violence against them, at least this is how some extremists see it!
I have been checking a few web-sites on the subject, to my surprise (me being so gullible) I found many who have been just waiting for the green light to attack!
As you might have noticed, women issues are the focus of such debates! women rights=infidels!
Many liberals feared their lives after hearing this statement which forced Al-Fozan to clarify his fatwa in Al-Riyadh local Saudi newspaper.
This is part of the article by Reuters on the subject
Fozan was recently forced to issue a clarification in Saudi newspaper al-Riyadh after Islamists hailed the fatwa as a declaration that liberals are infidels. He said pronouncing someone an infidel was a separate issue in Islamic law.
Such declarations, called takfeer in Arabic, are sensitive because al Qaeda militants fighting U.S.-allied governments in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and elsewhere in the region use the idea to justify their campaign of jihad, or holy war.
“Radicals say ‘Sheikh Fozan has issued the fatwa and we should act accordingly’, which is a little alarming,” said Hamza Mozainy, a well-known critic of the Saudi system, referring to Islamist Web sites that welcomed the fatwa.
Novelist Turki al-Hamad, a long-time target of Saudi Islamists, also said the fatwa could lead to violence.
“Even if his (Fozan) intention is not calling for violence, the implication is violence,” Hamad said.
Saudi Arabia’s religious establishment has for long focussed its attention on the word “secular”, which most Saudi reformers now avoid, but “liberal” has gained currency in its place.
Liberal and Islamist reformers both call for parliamentary elections limiting the desert country’s absolute monarchy.
But many liberals also want to see clerical influence rolled back, with, for example, Saudi Arabia’s religious police force disbanded and an end to strict gender segregation.
“When they hear ‘liberalism’ they perceive it as a form of moral corruption. They don’t know it’s a whole philosophy concerning freedom of the individual,” Hamad said.
“These fatwas are a kind of defense mechanism against this spreading idea.”
Blog, General, Islam, Middle East, Religion, Saudi Arabia, Society
