By Ben Turner
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East Desk
RIYDAH, Saudia Arabia – A group of over 100 Arab rights groups and intellectuals condemned a Saudi religious edict calling for the death of two newspaper columnists, saying the fatwa was the result of “clerics of darkness” performing intellectual terrorism.
“All we can see in this fatwa is intellectual terrorism which sees ‘Islam’ as its exclusive monopoly and only sees in the ‘other’ blood which can be shed freely,” said the statement sent out by the rights groups. The statement also said that religious scholars who branded other Muslims as infidels were “clerics of darkness, fooled through their arrogance and inflated by their status into thinking that they speak in the name of God.”
Sheikh Abdul-Rahman al-Barrak, one of Saudi Arabia’s most revered clerics, said in a rare religious ruling in March that two newspaper columnists should be put to death unless they renounced their “heretical articles” in public.
“Anyone who claims this has refuted Islam and should be tried so that he can take it back. If not, he should be killed as an apostate from the religion of Islam,” Barrak said. “It is disgraceful that articles [of] this kind of apostasy should be published in … the land of [Mecca and Medina].”
Writing in al-Riyadh newspaper, Yousef Aba Al-Khail and Abdullah bin Bejad questioned the Sunni Muslim view in Saudi Arabia that Christians and Jews should be considered unbelievers. Barrak, who was backed by a group of 20 Saudi clerics, said their statement implied that Muslims were free to follow other religions. None of the clerics speak for the Saudi government, which is represented by the Grand Mufti, Sheikh Abdel-Aziz Al al-Sheikh.
Barrak is seen as one of Saudi Arabia’s leading religious authorities and his fatwa, or religious ruling, was praised by clerics who asked God to support him in the face of liberals with “polluted beliefs.” Fatwas by radical Muslim clerics led to the assassination in 1992 of the Egyptian writer Farag Foda and to an attempt in 1994 in Cairo to murder the Egyptian Nobel prize-winner Naguib Mahfouz.
“We are extremely worried about the safety of our colleagues and ask the Saudi government to ensure their safety,” Committee to Protect Journalists Executive Director Joel Simon said. “It is ironic that writers advocating tolerance and reform are subject to incitement and death threats.”
For more information, please see:
Washington Post – A Hint of Tolerance – 4 April 2008
Guardian – Intellectuals Condemn Fatwa Against Writers – 3 April 2008
New York Times – Saudi Ruling Assailed – 2 April 2008
Reuters – Arab Rights Groups, Figures Slam Saudi Death Fatwa – 1 April 2008
Arab News – Of Fatwas and Infidels – 27 March 2008
CPJ – Saudi Cleric Issues Fatwa Against Two Journalists – 20 March 2008
