Retraining for Saudi Arabian Clerics

This is really interesting, but I doubt it’ll be all that effective.  You cannot reprogram these clerics.   Their militancy is several years in the making and much of it is directed at the very government that now seeks to reverse this.  A few lectures isn’t going to accomplish much to convince these guys that the government of Saudi Arabia isn’t run by apostates. 

TELEGRAPH.CO.UK

By Damien McElroy, Foreign Affairs Correspondent 

Saudi Arabia is to launch a retraining programme for 40,000 Islamic clerics as it struggles to remove militant sympathies in Osama bin Laden’s homeland.

Officials in the kingdom have sought to manage hardline beliefs within the state-sponsored Wahhabist tradition in the aftermath of the 2001 attacks on America. For years senior ministers alternated between outright denial of endemic militancy and the adoption of reforms demanded by the West.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat, a newspaper close to the reformist wing of the royal family, yesterday reported that Saleh al-Sheikh, the minister of Islamic affairs, planned to run seminars for every prayer leader.

Clerics will be required to attend lectures at the Centre for National Dialogue, which also operates a rehabilitation programme for former extremists, including those Saudis released from Guantanamo Bay.

Links between al-Qa’eda and Saudi Arabia’s religious hierarchy moved from diplomatic liability to national crisis after the group carried out terrorist attacks in the kingdom in 2004 and 2005. Until these attacks, Mr Sheikh ruled out wholesale reforms as unnecessary.

If Saudi Arabia was as bad as its critics alleged, he said, it would harbour “tens of thousands of terrorists”.

But in the past two years the leadership has had to sack up to 1,000 clerics, which has forced the adoption of a wider retraining programme.

Although few details of the retraining have been released, its impact could stretch across the Islamic world. Its outcome could be pivotal to the Saud dynasty, which owes its dominant position to an 18th century alliance with Wahhabism’s founder, Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab. Wahhabism maintains the orthodoxies of early Islamic preachers.

The surge of oil revenues in the 20th century saw Saudi preachers spread across Islamic communities, displacing the often more benign local religious practitioners. 

Iranian Parliamentary Election Results!

Hi folks, a credible source in Tehran tells me that the estimated results of yesterday’s parliamentary elections are as follows: Conservatives/Fundamentalists 60%; Independents 25%; Reformists (Khatami and friends) 15%.   No big surprises, of course.  You heard it here first! 

 

Blogging in Cuba

My new pal Curt Hopkins, creator of the group Committee to Protect Bloggers and master of the domain blog.morphemetales.com, wrote to me this week with regard to something he’s looking at – Blogging in Cuba.  According to Curt, blogging did not exist in Cuba as recently as one year ago.  However, some have begun to spring up, some of them written by pro-Revolution types, in fact.  These guys have been critical in assessing the future of their country, particularly these days when their president of 49 years, Fidel Castro, announced that he would not return to political life (some have even speculated that the 81-year old ruler died, and the newspaper announcement was merely a cover-up so to prevent hysteria in the country.  Here’s the entry Curt posted this week.

Several times over the last couple of years we tried to find any evidence of blogging in Cuba, the last time was about a year ago. Then, there were none I could find (though they may have been out there somewhere). Now, there are a number of them, the best known of which is probably Yoani Sanchez of Generacion Y. Yoani created Consenso Desde Cuba, a blog site for Cubans and has been featured in media outside Cuba.We are trying to create an exhaustive list of Cuban bloggers (specifically, Cubans blogging from within Cuba). Here is what we have so far. If you know of any other bloggers, Cuban citizens blogging inside Cuba, regardless of political affiliation, please let us know in the comments. If we list a blog not written by a Cuban inside Cuba, please let us know that as well. We anticipate this list will grow over time. 

 

Desde aquí

El Blog de Dimas

El Blog del Forista ‘El Compañero’

Generación Y

mi isla al mediodia

NotiCuba

RegaladoRetazos

sin EV Asión   

So here’s what I ask from you.  If you have any information that might help Curt out – let either of us know!  I think this will make for a fascinating study.  I wish him luck!

Risque in Riyadh

Did you know that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have emerged as the leading importers of European lingerie?  ’Tis true!  I’ve been a bit obsessed with the subject since my days in Egypt where I often observed women, showing no more than their eyes, walk into lingerie shops to pick up the most scantily clad panties and negligee.  According to the European Fashion and Textile Export Council,  lingerie exports to the Gulf from the EU’s 15 core member states totaled EUR72.6 million (US$ 92.79 million) in 2006.  Further, UAE and KSA accounted for 77% of Europe’s total lingerie brand exports to the Gulf, followed by Kuwait at 16%.  Moreover, Lingerie sales in KSA, the region’s biggest market, were estimated at over US$41 million last year.  Chinese made lingerie accounts for approximately 12% of KSA imports, with America controlling the lion’s share of all mid-to-high end brands.In 2006, the government of Saudi Arabia announced that men would be barred from selling lingerie in the Kingdom’s many boutiques (women were banned from working in the retail sector).  Here’s an excerpt from an article that appeared in the Guardian in 2006:

The Saudi labour ministry has warned shops selling lingerie that from June it will begin inspections to ensure men are not serving customers. Shops that fail to comply will face fines.Once the shops have female staff in place men will also be barred from entering.The government is struggling to implement a decree issued more than a year ago aimed at providing more jobs for women. A recent survey in the Red Sea city of Jeddah found that of 247 shops selling lingerie and beauty products only three employed women.Most of the men working in the shops are thought to be Lebanese.  

 The whole industry is really fascinating — and something I hope to explore further in my time here.