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Arab Community Pushes Back on Cleric’s Fatwa

It’s good to see the sane Muslims pushing back on the lunatics. 

Arabs across the ideological spectrum, from secular-minded liberals to Muslim hard-liners, are denouncing a top Saudi cleric’s edict that it was permissible to kill the owners of satellite TV stations that show “immoral” content.

Many expressed worry the recent comments by Sheik Saleh al-Lihedan — chief of the kingdom’s highest tribunal, the Supreme Judiciary Council — would fuel terrorism, encouraging attacks on station employees and owners.

The edict, or fatwa, has also focused the spotlight on Saudi Arabia’s legal system because of al-Lihedan’s senior position in the judiciary. The system is run by Islamic cleric-judges, many of them hard-liners, and has increasingly been criticized by some Saudis because of the wide discretion judges have in punishing criminals and the perception that many judges are out of touch with the realities of the world.

Even conservative clerics who agree that Arab satellite networks show too many “indecent” programs said al-Lihedan had gone too far.

“Our religion prevents Muslims from watching films that provide seduction, obscenity and vulgarity,” said Sheik Hazim Awad, an Iraqi cleric, who, like al-Lihedan, is Sunni Muslim.

But “the real Muslim can just cancel (subscriptions to) these channels,” he said.

As a side note, the Arab community may begin to adopt the notion of freedom as expressed in the last sentence of the excerpt just as Western civilization abandons it.

Posted by Owen at 0757 hrs
Culture + Foreign Affairs

1. This seems like a radical shift for the Arab community.  I can’t remember ever hearing of public comments against a cleric, certainly not from our media.  Good for them, let’s all encourage them to do more.

   Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on September 19, 2008 at 1047 hrs
   
   
   

2. What it is, better PR this time? These Saudi clerics and religious leaders constantly make statements like this or worse on their government run TV stations.
   ____________

   Dear Saudi Marriage Guy: “At what age can I have sex with my toddler wife?”

   Answer: “We follow Mohammed’s lead, so go ahead and rape her at age 9.”

   Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on September 19, 2008 at 1258 hrs
   
   
   

3. Well, it is good to know where these guys draw the line about who should not be beheaded for insulting Islam.

   Too bad the show that got the cleric in a tiz was “The Waltons”

   Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on September 20, 2008 at 0839 hrs
   
   
   

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