Earlier this week, the Saudi Minister of Justice was reported to have said that new laws regarding marriage will be issued. It seems he should be taken at his word. Saudi Gazette carries this Reuters story about the director of marriage officials confirming that the organization is looking into minimum age for marriage. As one commenter to the story states, it’s time to simply bite the bullet and pick an appropriate age and outlaw marriages below that age. I sincerely doubt that there are many nine- and ten-year-old girls simply panting to get married. It is fathers who see a solution to economic problems who might suffer if they not allowed to marry off their little girls, and perhaps a few old men who really like little girls too much. There is no overwhelming societal ill that would result from a firm law being laid down.
In reporting that Sheikh Mohsen Al-Obeikan, a senior Saudi cleric, is in favor of a minimum age, the piece highlights the fact that there is disagreement among the clerics about the issue. As no one cleric has the authority to overrule any other, it’s time for government to step in with policy.
Minimum age for marriage under study, says official
RIYADH – Saudi Arabia is looking into introducing a minimum age for marriage, a justice ministry official was quoted as saying on Sunday, after a court upheld the marriage of an 8-year-old girl to a man 50 years her senior.
Al-Madina newspaper quoted Mohamed Al-Babtain, the director of marriage officials at the justice ministry, as saying the ministry had started “looking into the legal age of marriage.”
He did not elaborate.
Saudi Arabia has no legal age limit for marriage.
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The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has had a history of a lot of talk followed by not a lot of action. One of its achievements, though, is reported in the Qatar English-language daily The Peninsula. The GCC is succeeding in linking its member-countries’ power grids, safeguarding the power supply in the various countries by assuring that electricity will be available through other generating sources.
This kind of cooperation is good for the region. It might provide examples of how the countries can work together for their mutual benefit, something that seems obvious, but it hard to achieve given regional rivalries. I suspect that this meshing of power grids will also serve the region well as it moves toward nuclear power generation. Not every country would have to have reactors, but could benefit from the alliances nonetheless.
Qatar, Saudi link up to power grid
SATISH KANADYDOHA: The first phase of GCC Interconnection Grid Project was successfully launched with electricity transmitting between Qatar and Saudi Arabia borders. The Doha South-Salwa 400kV line was energised for the first time on Wednesday marking the completion of the Phase I of the three-phased Interconnection Grid Project.
The operation is considered to be a vital development in the Gulf Cooperation Council Interconnection Authority (GCCIA)-supported Interconnection Grid.
The Phase I, which is also known as the GCC North Grid, is designed to interconnect Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Qatar; Qatar General Electricity and Water Corporation (Kahramaa) officials announced here yesterday.
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This Reuters story, published in the UAE’s Khaleej Times, notes that while the Saudi government is moving forward on education reform, it is also fighting a rear guard action against religious conservatives who object. It is simply a fact that many Saudis are exceptionally—not to say extremely—conservative in their interpretation of Islam. These people will use any argument to avoid change or moderation, with one of the more popular arguments being that change is being forced upon Saudi Arabia by non-Muslim Westerners.
The fact is that much of what these conservatives see as religion is actually culture. They see the way things were done in the beginning days of Islam and believe that not only are those ways good, but that any other way is needfully wrong and sinful.
If these conservatives were a minority of the population, or if the clerics were not so deeply involved in government, it might be possible to ignore them. That, however, is not the case. As a result, change and reform will happen slowly. It is happening, however.
Saudi speeds up education reform, clerics resist
RIYADH (Reuters) – Accused of promoting the religious radicalism that inspired the Sept. 11 attacks, Saudi Arabia has stepped up efforts to reform its school curriculum, but clerical opposition means change will be slow, analysts say.
King Abdullah appointed a new team to lead the education ministry this year in a surprise reshuffle in the conservative Islamic state, where reformers say promises of change when Abdullah took the throne in 2005 have amounted to little.
Prince Faisal bin Abdullah, a former intelligence official, took over as education minister with Faisal bin Muammar, who headed a body set up in 2003 to promote social and economic reforms, as his deputy.
‘We have been calling for such changes for a long time,’ said Mohammed Youssef, a professor of education at King Abdulaziz University who wrote a book in 2004 on restructuring the Saudi education system.
The United States zeroed in on Saudi schools after it emerged that 15 of the 19 attackers who killed some 3,000 people there on Sept. 11, 2001 were Saudi. They acted in the name of an Islamist group, Al Qaeda, headed by a Saudi, Osama bin Laden.
Foreign and Saudi critics said Saudi educational material permitted the killing of non-Muslims and promoted the idea of cleansing Muslim countries from Western cultural influences.
Saudi government concerns deepened after Al Qaeda-linked militants launched a campaign to destabilise the kingdom in May 2003, targeting government buildings, energy installations and foreign residential compounds in suicide bomb attacks.
Youssef said ‘national dialogue’ discussions presided over by new deputy education minister bin Muammar had helped the government mobilise support for a new approach.
‘It became clear that one of the most important causes of terrorism is the monopoly of a certain group of people … over building the curriculums in the kingdom,’ he said.
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King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (KAUST) is gearing up to open its doors in September. The King, whose project this is, met with the board of trustees for the university, reports Saudi Gazette, and charged them with making the university a bridge to the future. The article lists the members of the board, a wide-ranging list of international and Saudi academics and government officials.
My KAUST dream has come true – King
RIYADH – King Abdullah, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques and Honorary President of the Council of Trustees of King Abdullah University for Sciences and Technology (KAUST), chaired here Saturday the first meeting of the Council of Trustees of the University.
Members of the Council began their work as independent commission supervising the administration of this new international research university, which is scheduled to open its campus on September 5 this year.
Addressing the gathering the King said: “For the past 25 years, I have been looking forward to realizing my dream of establishing this university. Today, this dream has come true, reflected in its goals which encompass all different thoughts and cultures with a vision compatible with the spirit of the time and a message emanating from our religion.”?
The King said that the goal behind establishing KAUST was to build a knowledge-based economy to diversify the Kingdom’s economic resources.
The university is also intended to be a bridge for interaction between civilizations, King Abdullah said.
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Arab News also reports on the meeting and the development of its strategic plan for the next 11 years: KAUST’s strategic vision approved
Abu Kaab, the Saudi Navy officer who caused the death of three young men while he was ‘drifting’ his car, has had a lesser—though still harsh—sentence confirmed by the Saudi appeals court. The government is making an example of him in order to dissuade young Saudis from taking part in inherently dangerous driving stunts. Whether that will work in the absence of much else to excite young men legally, is another question…
Abu Kaab verdict approved
Adnan Al-ShabrawiJEDDAH – The Court of Cassation of Makkah Region approved Saturday a jail sentence of 20 years and 3,000 lashes the Summery Court of Jeddah passed against Faisal Al-Otaibi, a stunt driver famously known as Abu Kaab. The Cassation Court rejected three previous verdicts and called for death sentence against the defendant who caused death to three people during driving stunt here four years ago. The sentence also involved banning the defendant from driving for life. – Okaz/SG
Saudi Gazette/Okaz carry this story today.
What the Saudi government is doing in seeking to regulate dream interpretation is simply something the government should not be doing. By acknowledging any role—beyond entertainment—for dream interpretation, the government is giving official support to the idea. Instead, it should simply say that it is superstition, open to many varieties of ways to separate people from their money, and leave it at that. If people want to pay to be deceived in some small manner, let them do so. If others are using the gimmick to rob others, then prosecute them for fraud. Do not argue the merits or qualifications of dream interpreters. Most especially, do not give them any grounding in religious doctrine.
Meeting today on dream interpreters
RIYADH – The Ministry of Islamic Affairs is holding a closed door meeting in Riyadh Saturday for “interpreters of dreams and visions.” The Undersecretary of Mosques, Call and Guidance, Tawfiq Bin Abdul Aziz Al-Sudeiri, said that the meeting would be hosted by Minister of Islamic Affairs Saleh Bin Abdul Aziz Aal Al-Sheikh to gather numerous academics, eminent scholars and experts in the field to discuss the interpretation of visions and tackle undesirable effects and propose legal and organizational strictures for interpreters to be brought under the supervision of the ministry. The meeting is part of efforts by the minister to address issues that concern the Islamic creed and guard Muslims against any circumstance that breaches their creed and leads them to the practice of magic and sorcery or to prey on people’s feelings and emotions. – Okaz/SG
I missed this CNN article from last Wednesday as I was traveling back to Florida. It’s important. If the Saudi Minister of Justice is stating publicly that new laws will be established, then it’s likely to happen. As is usually the case with Saudi government announcements, there are few details, but much speculation. Establishing a minimum age of 15 years is being suggested as the compromise. That might bother some, but that age is not outside the norms of the developed world. Some American states and several European countries have even lower minimum ages, usually with a few conditions attached. It would represent a marked improvement over the current system where the rules seem to be set by individual judges, acting on their own best beliefs.
Saudi official moves to regulate child marriages
Mohammed Jamjoom and Saad AbedineCNN) — Days after a Saudi judge upheld the marriage of an 8-year-old girl to a man 39 years her senior and blocked a divorce, the kingdom’s justice minister said he plans to enact a law that will protect young girls from such marriages, according to local media reports.
The law will place restrictions on the practice to preserve the rights of children and prevent abuses, Justice Minister Mohammed Al-Issa told Al-Watan, a daily newspaper in Saudi Arabia, where all newspapers require government permission to publish.
Al-Issa said there would be a study of a system that will include regulations for the marriage of minors and everything related to such unions, the newspaper reported. No details on the restrictions or regulations were mentioned.
The minister did not say whether child marriage would be abolished.
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Arab News reports on an upcoming conference, to be held in Sharjah later this month, that holds the potential for reform within Islam. The meeting of the International Islamic Fiqh Academy. The Academy is to take up the issue of religious tolerance within Islam, a very important topic. Religious intolerance within Islam operates on local, national, and international levels and results in injustices and often violence toward religious minorities. It’s something that calls for marked change.
The problem is one shared by most international meetings of groups like these: they talk but do little. Whether it’s the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) or the Fiqh Academy, the members of different states tend to talk past each other. One faction might be pushing for moderation while another is pushing for strict construction with no flexibility. A lot depends, of course, on who is attending from which states and what power they hold. Ultimately, though, change is the result of educating societies about what is just. That takes time and resources as well as the willingness of the intolerant to listen and be open to change. Those requirements are not givens.
Tolerance, freedom of expression to dominate Fiqh council debate
Badea Abu Al-Naja | Arab NewsMAKKAH: Religious tolerance under Shariah and the freedom of expression are expected to dominate deliberations at the 19th International Islamic Fiqh Academy (IIFA) in Sharjah later this month.
Ruler of Sharjah Sheikh Sultan bin Mohammed Al-Qassimi will host the conference from April 26 to 30, said Abdul Salam Al-Ebady, secretary-general of IIFA, an offshoot of the Jeddah-based Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).
“Wide-ranging topics, such as Islamic finance, banking, domestic abuse, health and medicine and environmental protection, will feature in the discussions of the 19th conference of IIFA,” Al-Ebady said in a statement yesterday.
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The Saudis, including Saudi media, are always talking about abuses by the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, with an occasional favorable piece tossed in every now and then to deflect accusations that they are ‘anti-Commission’. That appears to be the case with this piece from Saudi Gazette, reporting on how a branch of the Commission, after finding a couple in the state of khulwa (an unrelated man and woman being together in a secluded space), worked as match-makers instead of filing criminal charges.
That’s all well and good, of course. It’s a demonstration of a surprising light hand by the moral enforcers. But it also points out a very real problem with the Commission, one that challenges its very reason for being: Its actions are arbitrary and thus unpredictable. If one cannot know whether one is committing a crime or not, then life becomes very frangible, open to being punished (or not) at someone else’s whim.
As we’ve seen in many other cases, being in a state of khulwa can lead to prison and lashes—as well as very little sympathy from the judges if khulwa leads to other things, like gang rape. So what’s the factor that changes the attitude? Is it the ages of the participants in this case? The report does not mention age, but I suppose if both were no longer youths, the Commission might look upon their sin sympathetically—though with the proper remorse for the sinner, of course. Was one or the other participant related to someone of high rank or prestige? Did the just have winning smiles?
This is another area in which codification of Saudi law would serve to improve the lives of all. No one enjoys going through life on tenterhooks.
Man married by Hai’a speaks of fear, gratitude
Ahmad Al-KinaniAL-IRDIYA AL-SHAMALIYA – Mohammed, the man who two days ago revealed how the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice made his dreams of marriage come true after he was discovered in a situation that would normally provoke their wrath, has spoken of his initial fear at being caught with the woman who is now his wife.
“When the Hai’a turned up and we were in a state of ‘khulwa’,” Mohammed said, referring to being alone with an unrelated member of the opposite sex, “I honestly thought that that was the end of everything.” “I thought that that would be the end of all contact between us, and that great disgrace would be brought on both our families.”
“I was terrified when the Hai’a chief then called her father and told him about my wish to marry his daughter,” Mohammed continued. “I was scared and, to say the least, surprised. And I couldn’t believe it when her father then starting praying to Allah to bless the Ha’ia after he found out my true intentions.”
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Saudi media continue to cover the phenomenon of ‘red mercury‘. Arab News runs two pieces, one a brief discussion of the phenomenon itself; another about how one man got taken to the cleaners, but still managed to stick most of his financial loss on one even more dim than he.
Source of Singer hoax remains a mystery
JEDDAH: The feverish search for Singer sewing machines driven by a superstitious notion that they possessed mysterious powers to fulfill every human wish has lost its tempo as the common man is slowly realizing that it is another ploy to dupe the naive public, particularly in Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
Nobody has yet been arrested on the charge of launching the hoax claiming that red mercury inside the machines can capture a wish-granting genii and convert its owner to an Aladdin with the Magic Lamp, a fantasy almost every child in the Middle East knows.
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Man cuts losses in Singer scam
AQIQ: The local press has been in a tizzy of late over an odd scam going on in some Saudi markets involving antique Singer sewing machines and a drummed up story about the existence of a mythical substance called “red mercury” that — depending on which con man you ask, either helps you find gold, wards off evil jinni, or is a key and highly prized ingredient in making nuclear bombs. Al-Madinah daily reported yesterday that a man in Aqiq, near the western city of Baha, lost SR3,000 in his pitch to make a fortune by buying on old sewing machine. According to the report, the man had hoped to re-sell the old stitcher for SR100,000 after buying it for SR5,000. But it as too late — the local media had begun to cover the phenomenon and the number of buyers was dropping off fast. He did manage to find another sucker willing to pay SR2,000 for the machine, so the man managed to cut his losses.
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The story of red mercury link to jinns is unfortunately echoed in a Saudi Gazette story that involves young parents beating their two-year-old to death: Parents kill daughter while exorcising jinn
The fact that the belief in jinns is rooted in the Quran makes it a difficult one to argue against. Clearly, though, many are making diagnoses of jinns and jinn influence when there are far more rational explanations at hand. The Saudi government needs to step up to rid society of its superstitious beliefs in jinns and magic.
Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that Ronald Levy, an American cancer researcher—and a Jew—was awarded the King Faisal Prize in Medicine. He is the first Jew to receive a King Faisal prize. The article notes that his former affiliation with an Israeli university was deleted from the official announcement of the award, but that Levy and his Israel-born wife were given visas to visit the Kingdom and that they were surprised by their warm welcome.
Perhaps this story—or more like it—will convince some writers that Jews indeed can visit Saudi Arabia.
U.S. professor becomes first Jew to win ‘Arab Nobel Prize’
Natasha MozgovayaAn American professor has become the first Jew to win the King Faisal International Prize in Medicine, popularly known as the “Arab Nobel Prize.”
Stanford professor Ronald Levy, who heads the university’s Oncology department, told Haaretz that as an American Jew married to an Israeli it never crossed his mind that he might win the Saudi-financed competition.
After he was informed of his victory, Levy rushed to check the contest Web site, where he found his picture and biography already on the homepage. The prize committee had posted Levy’s biography exactly as he submitted it, with one glaring exception: the line showing his post-doctoral work at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot had been deleted.
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An interesting, if brief commentary at Asharq Alawsat about the recent US confrontation with pirates. Saudi writer Muhhamad Diyab thinks that the US is on the right track in taking action against pirates rather than just talking about taking action.
Why are Americans the Exception?
Muhammad DiyabIs it the Americans right to consider themselves out of the ordinary and privileged from the rest of God’s creatures? Before answering, let us remember that the pirates kidnap sailors of different nationalities every week, and the world condemns and curses the pirates, before countries finally give in, and pay the ransom to secure the release of their sailors and ships. But the capture of a single American, Richard Phillips, Captain of the Maersk Alabama freighter, awakened the Americans, who could not allow this, and so aircrafts and warships began hunting down the pirates in their own waters, until the Captain was finally liberated in an operation that resulted in the death of three pirates and the arrest of a fourth. This could not have happened without the belief in the value of an American life, and the recognition of his rights, that is seen in the US. And so the kidnapping of one US sailor became a public opinion issue that all Americans were concerned with, from President Obama and his White House administration, to the ordinary American citizen.
America is not the only power that has naval warships and military aircraft that can secure the release of their citizens from the clutches of piracy; there are a number of Western and Eastern countries that are able to this who are no less powerful than the Americans. What is different is the value placed on [the life] of the citizen in different societies and cultures. America – whether its enemies like it or not- proves every day that its citizens, at least in its own eyes, are the most important thing, and that the world should guarantee their freedom, safety and security. At the same time citizens of other countries are not given this same treatment when they are kidnapped, and instead their countries express anger and condemnation [but not action].
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