Top Saudi clerics finally take stand on terrorism (Feature)

By Anne-Beatrice Clasmann Apr 18, 2010, 3:06 GMT

Riyadh/Istanbul - For 12 years the al-Qaeda terrorist network has pocked the globe with car bombs, declarations of hate and suicide attacks in the name of Islam.

Leading religious scholars in Saudi Arabia, home to Islam's holiest sites, were silent. They allowed dubious 'charitable organizations' to collect money in front of their mosques, some of which was used to finance terrorist attacks.

Now they aim to put a stop to this practice.

The 20 members of the Council of Supreme Scholars, the highest religious authority in Saudi Arabia, held a special, secret meeting this month.

They argued for nearly three days behind closed doors about what constitutes 'terrorism' and what does not. In the end they all signed the first official Saudi fatwa, or religious edict, against terrorism.

The document, excerpts of which some Arab media have published, is highly charged because it is the first time the influential clerics have taken a stand on the issue. The London-based Arabic international newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat wrote that the fatwa was both 'significant and singular.'

The council met under the chairmanship of Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul-Aziz Al-Asheikh, the top cleric in the kingdom. It decided that not only a terrorist attacker was 'acting criminally,' but also any Muslim who provides 'financial or moral support' to terrorist groups.

Muslims wishing to do good in the name of Islam should confine themselves to giving alms to the poor or building schools and hospitals, the scholars said.

They did not mention that intolerant sheikhs in madrasas financed by Saudi donations taught some of today's Islamist bombers to hate the West.

The meeting on terrorism by the Council of Supreme Scholars came at the initiative of the Saudi Shura Council, a kind of parliament, with no real power, whose deputies are appointed by the king.

Extremist fatwas by several clerics in recent years have angered King Abdullah. Last autumn he even removed one of them, Sheikh Saad al-Shethri, from the Council of Supreme Scholars.

Unlike Syria, Tunisia, Turkey or Egypt, where the government exercises tight control over the clergy, Islamic scholars in Saudi Arabia are relatively free to express their opinion and have their own power base.

The word of a well-known cleric in Saudi Arabia, where the holy cities of Mecca and Medina lie and more school hours go to Islamic studies than physics and chemistry, often carries more weight than that of a prince or government minister.