Saudi’s top cleric warns against mixing of genders

[Slav Defence]

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — Saudi Arabia’s top cleric on Friday warned against the mixing of the genders, saying it poses a threat to female chastity and society, as the kingdom prepares for the first time to grant women seats on the country’s top advisory body.

Delivering his traditional Friday sermon, Grand Mufti Sheik Abdul-Aziz Al-Sheik said authorities must adhere to Shariah, or Islamic law, by ensuring men and women are separated as much as possible at all times. The cleric’s comments come just weeks ahead of allowing women to be members of the 150-member Shura Council, the country’s top advisory body.

Since 2006, women have been appointed as advisors to the council — an appointed, consultative body that has the authority to review laws and question ministers but cannot propose or veto legislation. There are currently 12 female advisors, but they do not have a right to vote in the assembly.

The move by King Abdullah to allow women a voice on the Shura Council is part of a larger reform effort by the monarchy to give women greater space in the public sphere. Last year, the kingdom began enforcing a law that allows women to work in female apparel and lingerie stores.

RELATED ASSETS
Religious leaders, including the grand mufti, have spoken out against such reforms.

The country is guided by an ultraconservative interpretation of Islam called Wahhabism. In the kingdom, women cannot travel, work, study abroad, marry, get divorced or gain admittance to a public hospital without permission from a male guardian — typically a husband, brother, father or uncle.

While Al-Sheik has spoken out in support of granting women the right to vote in 2015 alongside men in the nation’s only open elections, he has criticized the decision to allow women to work in apparel stores, saying that it puts them in contact with men unrelated to them.
“It is necessary for women to be separated from men as much as possible, because this great religion protects the chastity of women against evil and corruption,” Al-Sheik told worshippers at the Imam Turki mosque in Riyadh.
While his Friday sermon focused mainly on corruption in the kingdom, the grand mufti stressed that it is forbidden in Islam for a woman to stand before a man unveiled, warning that to do so will destroy the morals and values of society. The veil in Saudi Arabia refers to the full face covering worn by most women in the ultraconservative kingdom.
The Saudi government has not said how many women will be given seats on the Shura Council. Some local papers have suggested that women would be separated from the men in the assembly hall by a barrier, while others have suggested that women communicate via an internal video system.

However, those pushing for reform point to a recent council session where the country’s top female official, deputy Education Minister Nura al-Fayez, sat in a full face veil and took part in the dialogue alongside the men.
“It sends a message to the conservatives that this is the example for women’s participation in the Shura Council,” Hatoon Al-Fassi, a columnist and professor of women’s history in King Saud University said, adding that it also suggests this is what the king supports.
She said she is among many in Saudi Arabia who are rejecting a symbolic presence of women in the assembly.
“At the end we are not behind the scenes,” Al-Fassi said. “We are asking for equality and for half of the council, or what is 75 seats.”

Al-Fassi and other Saudi women have been pushing the government for social reforms and greater rights for women, including allowing women the right to drive and for the dissolution of male guardianship laws. Saudi women have staged protests defying the driving ban.
She said that there is pressure from the religious establishment to keep to a minimum the number of seats for women in the advisory body.
“I believe that the religious establishment will insist on forcing its opinion to resist the kingdom’s progressive reforms, but as women we are insisting on building society hand in hand.”

———
Source>>Saudi’s top cleric warns against mixing of genders - The Daily Tribune

 

[Bubblegum Crisis]

Nobody will stop the King Abdullah. Absolutely nobody. And Salman bin Abdulaziz will be just like him.

These stupid people still believe that they have a power in 2013.

Especially since ‘Nayef bin Abdulaziz Al Saud’ - the Crown Prince -, their last card is over.

Game Over.

Saudi king sacks cleric who attacked social reform

By Reuters
Sunday, 13 May 2012 8:59 AM

Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah has sacked a senior cleric after he decried cautious reforms in the world's top oil exporter that allowed women to mix with unmarried men, Saudi Gazette reported on Saturday.

The decision to relieve Sheikh Abdulmohsen al-Obeikan of his position as royal adviser was made in a decree issued on the recommendation of Crown Prince Nayef, himself a reputed conservative.

The move fits a pattern of recent years in which senior clerics who oppose the government's cautious social reforms too openly have lost their jobs.

Although Obeikan has previously backed government positions on reforms including gender mixing at university, he recently gave a radio interview attacking the government for changing the position of women in society.

"He's taken a lot of positions in the past against the royal family and this is another one," said Hossein Shobokshi, a Saudi newspaper columnist.

Under King Abdullah, the ultra-conservative Islamic state has made it easier for women to work and study alongside men, and tried to promote more tolerant views of other religions.

Earlier this year, the head of the religious police was replaced by a cleric who was seen to be more liberal, and in 2010 King Abdullah fired the judiciary head, Sheikh Saleh al-Lohaidan, for attacking a new university that was the centrepiece of government education reforms.

Most senior religious jobs in the conservative Islamic kingdom are government appointments, including the positions of Grand Mufti and imam of the great mosques at Mecca and Medina, Islam's holiest sites.

The government started trying to rein in what it saw as extremist viewpoints in the clergy after Islamist militant attacks inside the kingdom began in 2003, pushing hardline clerics to renounce al Qaeda and violent tactics.

In 2010, King Abdullah also restricted the ability to pass fatwas, or religious edicts, to a small group of senior clerics, an important step in a country ruled by sharia, or Islamic law.

However, the government and the ruling Al Saud family have to tread carefully to avoid angering religious conservatives.

"Abdullah has to reckon with the political and social weight these guys carry. Although it is the very opposite of their image outside the country, inside the country the Al Saud are seen by conservatives as dangerous modernists who are undermining the traditional values of Saudi society," said Robert Lacey, author of "Inside the Kingdom".

Obeikan stirred controversy for his 2010 ruling that a man could spend time unsupervised with an unrelated woman if he drank some of her breastmilk.

The Al Saud have always retained a close alliance with clerics of the strict Wahhabi school of Islam, which controls the judiciary and parts of the education system in the world's largest oil exporter.

Wahhabis endorse a political philosophy that demands obedience to the ruler and have issued fatwas banning anti-government protests, but they have themselves opposed many of King Abdullah's social reforms.

Saudi cleric sacked over co-ed university spat

Sunday, 04 October 2009
By DUBAI (Lamis Hoteit and Courtney C. Radsch)

Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah removed a top cleric in the wake of controversy over his statements opposing gender mixing at the first co-ed university in the Kingdom, the state news agency SPA said on Sunday.

Sheikh Saad bin Nasser al-Shithri was first reported to have resigned from the board of the Council of Senior Clerics.

His resignation from the senior ulema came just days after he appeared on the Qatar-based al-Majd satellite channel and lashed out at the newly-opened flagship King Abdullah Science and Technology University for offering co-education.

Shithri was one of several clerics who objected to the mixed gender university, which is outside the purview of the conservative cleric-dominated education ministry.

Saudi king Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, who has promoted reforms since taking office in 2005, accepted Shithri's resignation.

The senior cleric said religious scholars should vet the curriculum to prevent alien ideologies such as "evolution" and set up a committee to ensure it does not violate sharia, or Islamic law.

"We are looking at some of the sciences that have included some irregular and alien ideologies, like evolution and such other ideologies," the daily al-Watan newspaper quoted Shithri as saying last week in response to a viewer’s question.

He later withdraw his statements and stressed the importance of the university in the progress of education. He also accused journalists of taking his statements out of context.

Al-Majd TV sought to distance itself from the channel, saying it is not responsible for Shithri’s statements. Executive director Ahmed Saqr stressed that the comments reflected the sheikh’s personal opinion

Media campaign

Shithri’s statements sparked outrage among Saudi liberals and columnists, who have been supportive of the university and liberalizing education and accused both the Shethri and the station of overlooking the significant educational role of the university and of focusing on minor issues that are likely to spread controversy.

“Amidst the Kingdom’s celebrations marking the opening of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) there were some calls which bore the dust of Tora Bora and belittled this gigantic national accomplishment by raising the issue of co-education,” Khalaf Al-Harbi wrote in the Arabic daily Okaz.

A columnist for the London-based Asharq al-Awsat described the singular focus on co-education as “the chronic state of obsession with virtue creeping in once again.”

"This is a strategy for the conservatives to control the university or at least have a major say in it. This is the old trick for them to have the upper hand to sabotage reform," said Jamal Khashoggi, editor-in-chief of al-Watan.

King Abdullah's University of Science and Technology (KAUST), designed to produce Saudi scientists, is the only educational institution in the kingdom where men and women can mix. It is located near a Red Sea village away from the clutches of religious police.

It has attracted top scientists from around the world with research potential unmatched in many advanced countries and one of the largest endowments in the world.


Al Arabiya

Saudi monarch replaces head of religious police

Friday, 13 January 2012
By AFP RIYADH

Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz dismissed on Friday the head of the powerful religious police, Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Humain, state news agency SPA reported without giving reasons.

Humain was replaced by Sheikh Abdul Latif Abdul Aziz Al Sheikh as head of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.

King Abdullah appointed Humain in 2009 to head the organization that ensures the strict application of the country’s ultra-conservative version of Islam, as a step towards reforming it.

Humain hired consultants to restructure the organization, met local human rights groups and consulted professional image-builders in a broad public relations campaign.


Al Arabiya

Saudi Arabia religious police chief announces new curbs

3 October 2012 Last updated at 15:05 GMT

The head of Saudi Arabia's notorious religious police has told the media he will curb his force's powers in a bid to clamp down on excesses.

Some functions, such as arrests and interrogations, will be handed over to other state bodies, Abdul Latif Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh told al-Hayat daily.

The force is supposed to police dress codes and religious observance.

But there has been growing anger among Saudis at examples of aggressive behaviour by the "mutawa".

In recent months, a mobile phone clip of a religious policeman ordering a young woman to leave a mall because of her make-up went viral.

Many Saudis also blamed the mutawa for causing a fatal car crash when they chased a man who had refused to turn his radio down.

Mr Sheikh was appointed in January amid growing public criticism of the mutawa - officially known as the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.

Their sanctioned duties include preventing women driving, enforcing modest dress codes, policing bans on public entertainment and making sure all businesses close for prayers five times a day.

Two weeks into the job, Mr Sheikh banned volunteers from serving in the force, and in April warned that those found to have harassed people would be punished.

He has publicly dressed down officers deemed to have applied themselves overzealously to their duties.

Now Mr Sheikh has announced a new raft of measures to curb their powers.

Arrests, interrogations, house raids and searches will now be carried out by other police or judicial bodies, he told al-Hayat.

Elsewhere he promised his officers would be forced to adhere to a new code of practice.

He said he would target the practice of preventing women unaccompanied by family from entering shopping centres.

But he still faces resistance from within his own organisation to any curb on its powers, says the BBC's Arab affairs analyst Sebastian Usher.


BBC

 

[Hyperion]

@Bubblegum Crisis, you mean to say there is a rift between the hardline clergy and the royals? Are current royals on a reformist path?

 

[Bubblegum Crisis]

@Bubblegum Crisis, you mean to say there is a rift between the hardline clergy and the royals? Are current royals on a reformist path?

Yes, exactly!

 

[Hyperion]

In that case I hope these bloodthirsty prehistoric mullahs can be brought under full check.

Yes, exactly!

 

[Rusty]

Is this another one of those "fatwas" that are found to be fake after, like the one about raping Syrian women?
the cycle goes like this:
-Stupid fatwa is posted
-Bigots let the world know they are bigots
-Fatwa is found to be fake
-everyone quietly pretends like they never said the stupid sh!t they said

Rinse and repeat

 

[Rajaraja Chola]

No Offence. But the rest of the world are busy discussing about sending man to Moon and Mars, and in one part of the world, still discussing about womens talking or mixing with mens.

 

[somebozo]

game over for the mutaweens now..! May be King Abdullah can built them a mini-qassim somewhere in dessert where they can practice and live in their backward ways!

 

[Slav Defence]

game over for the mutaweens now..! May be King Abdullah can built them a mini-qassim somewhere in dessert where they can practice and live in their backward ways!

Ok, I understand clearly their complain of wahabis for forcing govt to diminish the number of seat for women....I also understand clearly their right for vote......but I don't get it,whether it is tribune,nytimes or the newstatesman,bbc or cnn,WHY THEY ARE CRTICIZING THE CLERIC FOR FORCING THE GOVT TO AVOID MIXING OF MASCULINE AND FEMININe?

I think this is good for system and socity because it will be very helpful for avoiding harrasment cases or rape cases of women during jobs specially when they are working along with their husbands...!

 

[somebozo]

Ok, I understand clearly their complain of wahabis for forcing govt to diminish the number of seat for women....I also understand clearly their right for vote......but I don't get it,whether it is tribune,nytimes or the newstatesman,bbc or cnn,WHY THEY ARE CRTICIZING THE CLERIC FOR FORCING THE GOVT TO AVOID MIXING OF MASCULINE AND FEMININe?

I think this is good for system and socity because it will be very helpful for avoiding harrasment cases or rape cases of women during jobs specially when they are working along with their husbands...!

Rameesha...please go and join some madrassah in wana..you dont belong here!

 

[Azazel]

Ok, I understand clearly their complain of wahabis for forcing govt to diminish the number of seat for women....I also understand clearly their right for vote......but I don't get it,whether it is tribune,nytimes or the newstatesman,bbc or cnn,WHY THEY ARE CRTICIZING THE CLERIC FOR FORCING THE GOVT TO AVOID MIXING OF MASCULINE AND FEMININe?

I think this is good for system and socity because it will be very helpful for avoiding harrasment cases or rape cases of women during jobs specially when they are working along with their husbands...!

LOL,This is the most oxymoronic way of thinking.Gender segregation won't solve problem of rape,it will only make it worse.Sexual harassment of women are rampant in Saudi Arabia.The segregation gender is completely abnormal.It will only cause more problem

Statistics on incidents of rape were not available, but press reports and observers indicated rape was a serious problem.The government did not maintain public records on prosecutions, convictions, or punishments.Most rape cases were unreported because victims faced possible societal reprisal, diminished marriage opportunities, criminal sanction up to imprisonment, or accusations of adultery.

The extent of sexual harassment was difficult to measure with little media reporting and no government data.The government’s interpretation of Sharia guides courts on cases of sexual harassment. Employers maintained separate male and female workspaces where feasible.

http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/186659.pdf

 

[Slav Defence]

Excuse me,gentleman......don't be judgemental..if you disagree with posts of mine then you are welcome...but don't you dare to be offensive!

 

[shanipisces2002]

Excuse me,gentleman......don't be judgemental..if you disagree with posts of mine then you are welcome...but don't you dare to be offensive!

don't worry mate peoples tend to get aggressive just simply ignore

 

[somebozo]

Excuse me,gentleman......don't be judgemental..if you disagree with posts of mine then you are welcome...but don't you dare to be offensive!

Rameesha nobody gives a crap or want to go back to lifestyle of most backward people from 7th century.
The faster you realize that the better.
No one is being aggressive, you are being offensive with stupid threads!

Saudi top cleric can go to top class hell for all anyone would care..!

 

[Redbull]

Sexual segregation is why people search sexual material the most in Muslim countries.