THE SA'UDS VS WAHHABISM:

Saudi writers risk flogging to challenge Islamists (Dominic Evans, 3/28/05, REUTERS)

For a man just sentenced to 200 lashes and four months in jail by an Islamic court, Saudi academic Hamza al-Mozainy is strikingly cheerful.

The diminutive, twinkle-eyed professor of linguistics was summoned by a Riyadh judge in March after an Islamist colleague said Mozainy made fun of his long beard in a newspaper article.

Dismissing arguments that his court had no jurisdiction in media cases, the judge ordered that he be flogged and jailed for two months – then doubled the punishment on the spot when Mozainy challenged his authority.

"He said: OK. Instead of 75 lashes and two months, 200 lashes and four months. And you are forbidden from writing for newspapers," Mozainy said.

But the 57-year-old professor is confident he will not serve his punishment. Just hours after the verdict, de facto ruler Crown Prince Abdullah intervened in this latest clash between liberals and religious scholars in the strict Muslim state.

"I left the court and Prince Abdullah issued a strong letter saying this judgment is null, void and baseless and the court does not have jurisdiction over this case," Mozainy said in his small office in King Saud University.

Abdullah's ruling has not been made public but liberals have interpreted it to mean that Islamic sharia courts would not have jurisdiction to try media cases. [...]

Open challenges to religious figures in Saudi Arabia, where the royal family rule in unofficial alliance with powerful Wahhabi scholars, remain rare. But in January some journalists mocked a scholar who said the Asian tsunami was God's punishment for Christmas "fornication and sexual perversion."

"The last four years have been a springtime. There has been an openness and high degree of freedom of speech," Mozainy said. "We have this openness and we don't want to lose it."

Under pressure from the United States and at home after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, Saudi Arabia has launched cautious reforms including an easing of some restrictions on its press.

Now that Wahabbism has backfired they've little choice but to help reform it.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 28, 2005 8:31 AM