{"id":5,"date":"2010-01-19T16:42:53","date_gmt":"2010-01-19T16:42:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tfrasheed.org\/e\/?p=5"},"modified":"2018-04-07T01:55:25","modified_gmt":"2018-04-06T22:55:25","slug":"saudis-welcome-kings-leadership-reforms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tfrasheed.org\/e\/saudis-welcome-kings-leadership-reforms\/","title":{"rendered":"Saudis welcome king’s leadership reforms"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saudis welcome king’s leadership reforms<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Caryle Murphy, Foreign Correspondent<\/p>\n

February 16. 2009 9:30AM UAE<\/p>\n

Changes in the top ranks of Saudi Arabia\u2019s influential religious and judicial leadership announced on Saturday by King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz have been welcomed by most Saudis as steps that will advance needed reforms.<\/p>\n

Women in particular are happy about the king\u2019s endorsement of opening up more career opportunities for them by appointing Norah al Faiz as the deputy education minister for girls, the highest government rank ever attained by a woman in the kingdom.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all positive on every level. I can\u2019t believe I\u2019ve lived to see all these changes for women, and for breaking the grip of the religious establishment,\u201d said Ibrahim Al Mugaiteeb, a human rights activist in Dammam.<\/p>\n

But the general optimism generated by the king\u2019s personnel changes, which also included four new cabinet ministers, two senior military officers and a new chief of the religious police, was tempered by warnings that real change also requires assent from rank-and-file bureaucrats.<\/p>\n

For example, one official who asked not to be named said he believed employees in the education department and the religious police, two top targets of King Abdullah\u2019s reformist agenda, \u201cwill not fulfil King Abdullah\u2019s orders because our society is still very conservative\u201d.<\/p>\n

As a result, he added, \u201cwe shouldn\u2019t be too excited about the changes\u201d made in the leadership of those departments.<\/p>\n

The king\u2019s shake-up did not alter the firm grip on power of the royal family, which retains control of most sensitive posts, including the defence and interior ministries.<\/p>\n

But it was taken by many observers as an important indication that King Abdullah wants to decisively move his country onto the path of reform.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the first major shake-up undertaken by King Abdullah, sending out a clear signal \u2026 that the king means business,\u201d read an editorial in yesterday\u2019s Saudi Gazette.<\/p>\n

But even while cheering the royal initiative, some say more will be needed if Saudi Arabia is to successfully navigate the global challenges of today\u2019s world.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s only a step forward, and a lot more steps must be taken, and fast,\u201d said a Riyadh businessman, Turki F al Rasheed, who has called for elected local governments and an elected parliament. <\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps the most important royal moves were the replacement of the country\u2019s most senior judicial official and the diversification of the Grand Ulema Council to include religious scholars outside the dominant Hanbali school of Islamic jurisprudence.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo include all Sunni legal schools \u2026 is unprecedented,\u201d said Khalid al Dakhil of the sociology department at King Saud University. \u201cIt\u2019s a positive step.\u201d<\/p>\n

The king has been disappointed by the lack of support from the clerical establishment for his international initiative to encourage interfaith dialogue, as well as his moves to reform the domestic educational and judicial structures.<\/p>\n

Although the overhaul of the ulema council is no doubt aimed at creating more enthusiasm for the king\u2019s policies, it is still unclear whether that will materialise. As several observers noted, even if the newly appointed members of the ulema come from legal traditions other than Hanbali, they are likely to be just as conservative as their Hanbali colleagues.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey all belong to the salafi school,\u201d said Tawfiq Alsaif, a spokesman for the minority Shiite population. \u201cAll of them have the same view to non-Wahhabis; they are against democracy, against women\u2019s rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you want to have a truly \u201cnational religious establishment\u201d, he added, \u201cyou have to bring people from the Ismaili, the Shia, the Sufi\u201d.<\/p>\n

The king named six Shiites to the 150-member Shura Council, an advisory body. But that small number did not make up for the Shia community\u2019s disappointment in being excluded from representation in the cabinet and foreign diplomatic corps, Mr Alsaif added.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just came out with nothing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The removal of Sheikh Saleh al Lihedan, the chief justice of the Supreme Judicial Council, was seen as another important move, this time to break a logjam in implementing judicial reforms.<\/p>\n

Sheikh Lihedan had refused to co-operate with the proposed reforms. He also embarrassed King Abdullah last Ramadan by declaring that media officials responsible for broadcasting immoral television programmes could be executed, comments that brought ridicule to Saudi Arabia from around the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a smart thing,\u201d said Abdulaziz M AlGasim, a lawyer, because the king has brought in \u201ctrustworthy and modern guys\u201d now to head the judicial system.<\/p>\n

Sheikh Lihedan\u2019s replacement is Saleh bin Humaid, who up to now has been speaker of the Shura Council.<\/p>\n

Turki al Thunnayan, a columnist writing yesterday in Al Watan, said the judicial system, which operates on the basis of Islamic law, needs \u201ca little prescription called transparency, transparency, transparency. Switching the lights on and putting the spotlight on the bodies concerned with justice will undoubtedly reveal the ills to everyone, including those involved in the ministry itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although the education ministry is a bastion of ultra-conservatism, its new chief, Prince Faisal bin Abdullah bin Muhammad Al Saud, 59, appears up to the task of pushing through reforms. The prince, who is the king\u2019s son-in-law, was educated in the United States. He was a top official in the National Guard in the 1990s and for the past five years has been the country\u2019s deputy chief of intelligence.<\/p>\n

\u201cEducation is the government\u2019s priority,\u201d said an editorial in yesterday\u2019s Arab News. \u201cIt is hardly surprising then that \u2026 fresh hands are needed to \u2026 implement the potentially far-reaching changes that have been agreed [on].\u201d<\/p>\n

The new head of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, or religious police, is Abdul Aziz bin Humain. Speaking yesterday in a television interview, Mr Humain intimated that his first loyalty will be to the king\u2019s agenda. \u201cWe will seek, to achieve the aspirations of the rulers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

A sampling of reactions from the right to the king\u2019s changes is available at Al Sahat, an ultraconservative forum and website.<\/p>\n

One comment was addressed to the ousted Sheikh Lihedan: \u201cYour brave fatwa will not be forgotten. You just sent ripples of fear throughout their spines and they had you dismissed. I send my regards to you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another visitor cautioned that conservatives should not be too happy about the removal of the information minister, Iyad Madani, because \u201cthe new guy\u2019s said to be of the same calibre\u201d.<\/p>\n

And a third commentator, who refers to King Abdullah in a derogative way as \u201csultan\u201d, wrote: \u201cIs it the \u2018Sultan\u2019s\u2019 place to decide who our scholars are? Furthermore, what after their dismissal? Do they just stop becoming our scholars?\u201d<\/p>\n

cmurphy@thenational.ae<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.thenational.ae\/article\/20090216\/FOREIGN\/525685606\/1002<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt\u2019s only a step forward, and a lot more steps must be taken, and fast,\u201d said a Riyadh businessman, Turki F al Rasheed, who has called for elected local governments and an elected parliament. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":1575,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tfrasheed.org\/e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tfrasheed.org\/e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tfrasheed.org\/e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tfrasheed.org\/e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tfrasheed.org\/e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.tfrasheed.org\/e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4872,"href":"https:\/\/www.tfrasheed.org\/e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5\/revisions\/4872"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tfrasheed.org\/e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tfrasheed.org\/e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tfrasheed.org\/e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tfrasheed.org\/e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}