Is It Possible to Reform the KSA?

Authored by: Dr. Ahmed Subhy Mansour

 Published in before in: February 27, 2010                                                  

Edited by: Ahmed Fathy

Introduction: the KSA must be reformed but the Saudi royal family members oppose reform to keep their dictatorship:

  The Saudi royal family members have to choose either the religion of Wahabism or reforming it from inside the religion of Islam (the Quran alone); namely, the real Islamic/Quranic values of peace, charity, tolerance, justice, absolute freedom of speech and belief, human rights, and direct democracy. Because of the desire to avoid democracy at any cost, the Saudi regime and rulers have chosen not to reform Wahabism because it maintains their dictatorship they impose via the Wahabi legislations that enable them to monopolize power, authority, and wealth. The Saudi royal family members deceive the international community, and the USA, by some actions and decisions that enable them to enforce their political tyranny and oppression under the false motto of eliminating the radical terrorists without reforming the Wahabi ideology itself. Moreover, they delay and postpone any real reformist measures in the fields of education, culture, and politics. This ghastly state of affairs entails some explanation below.

 Firstly: The Saudi royal family members are against democracy and any degree of reform: 

  The Saudi royal family members have committed and cherished two grave sins, i.e., dictatorship and the bloodthirsty Wahabi ideology. This family represents in our modern times the worst of the Middle-Ages culture in the political, cultural, and religious aspects. The worst sin is to attribute all these vices to the religion of Islam, whereas Islam (i.e., the Quran alone for Quranists) is the religion of peace, tolerance, freedom of belief and speech, justice, and human rights. For more than 30 years, we, Dr. Ahmed Subhy Mansour, have elucidated the above fact but the KSA by its influence inside Mubarak's Egypt has persecuted us in Egypt, driving us to seek political asylum to the USA, and we are an American citizen since 2014. This persecution we have suffered in Egypt via the Saudi influence has proved that the Saudi royal family members insist on keeping Wahabism away from any reform and discussion, even if this reform comes from inside the core of Islam and its only source: the Quran itself. It is very clear that the Wahabi ideology gives the Saudi royal family members the religious justification or pretext to monopolize authority, wealth, and political power, as was the case during the Middle-Ages caliphates/empires; within these eras, tyrannical rulers used to own the people and the land as well. This is the mentality and the erroneous understanding of Wahabism, propagated worldwide as 'Islam', of the Saudi royal family members until now. This mentality explains why they give the kingdom their Saudi family name: the KSA. It reflects the Middle-Ages culture in naming kingdoms or empires after the name of its dynasty like the Abbasids, the Fatimids, the Umayyads, and the Ottomans. Everyone in this modern world has the citizenship of one's country, proving equality among citizens with no differences between ordinary persons and presidents; all of them are citizens on equal footing enjoying the same rights. Within the Saudi constitution, there is another term for the other people who are not among the Saudi royal family members inside the KSA. Instead of the term ''citizens'', it is ''subjects'', meaning that they belong to, or rather owned by, the Saudi royal family members, who are only ''citizens'' in their owned  kingdom named after their family name. To own the country, its wealth, land, resources, and its people as well, the Saudi royal family members are not held accountable before anyone about how they spend the KSA annual income. The Saudi military army could not defend the Saudi border during the crises of Gulf War I and II, a fact that has driven some thinkers to question hundreds billions of dollars allegedly spent by the KSA to build a strong modern army and to buy arsenals of weapons. This was tantamount to treason, because the Saudi King is not held responsible before any human being inside the KSA for his decisions, decrees, or actions, with unlimited authority to do whatever he wants. The reports of the London-based dissident group named the Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights (CDLR) have briefly analyzed the mentality of the Saudi royal family members in one key word: “slavery”, arguing that they believe that all people inside the KSA are owned by the Saudi royal family members as any other ''assets'' or ''possessions'' that have no right whatsoever to protest against anything.

 Secondly: the official high-rank religious scholars of the KSA are extremist fanatics: 

  Here, the media can provide some aspects of the KSA as a fanatic, extremist State. We are not talking about the past here, but about the time before and after 9/11 terrorist attacks.

A- According to many human rights organizations, the KSA has a notorious record of numerous instances of violating the human rights within its corrupted judicial system. These several reports are available online. In January 26^th, 2001, a UN panel has criticized the KSA for discrimination against women, sexual harassment committed against minors, and corporeal punishments that include flogging and stoning. In May 2002, Saudi diplomats clashed with "the UN committee against torture" over whether flogging and the amputation of limbs are violation of the 1987 Convention against acts of torture. It is easy inside KSA to be killed by its judicial system. If one is accused of apostasy, one will be beheaded. If one is accused of adultery, one will be stoned to death. In 1995, a human rights report has mentioned that inside the KSA, 192 people were beheaded. In December 1996, Abdul-Kareem Al-Naqshabandi, a foreign worker, was beheaded as a punishment for refusing to falsely testify against another employer. In September 2003, the number of beheadings in the KSA reached 41.

B- The Wahabi jurisprudence is centered on countless forbidden things, interdictions, and prohibitions. Whatever the Wahabi official high-rank religious scholars hate, doubt, or ignore is quickly banned by issuing fatwas (i.e., religious edicts or decrees). Soon enough, once a fatwas would be issued about a banned item, the Saudi authority readily prevents people from using it. In March 25^th, 2001, the Saudi  Higher Committee for Scientific Research and Islamic Law has claimed that the Pokémon game has “possessed the minds” of the Saudi children, and hence, it has been banned throughout the KSA. In April 25^th, 2002, the Saudi government has cracked down on factories producing women’s cloaks that have violated the Wahabi dress code for women. In January, 2004, the Grant Mufti of the KSA has denounced the presence of women in a conference held in the city of Jeddah and condemned publishing their photos in local newspapers. In February, 2004, the Saudi government has forbidden celebration of Valentine's Day and ordered confiscation of all red roses and flowers as well as gifts and presents prepared for such celebration because it is a day linked to pagan and Christian people. Anyone caught celebrating Valentine's Day will be punished according to the official KSA government declarations. 

In March, 2004, one read these pieces of news: 

* A Saudi judge has issued a fatwa prohibiting Muslims from watching the Arabic TV channels broadcast from the USA.

* The official headquarters of many administrations have been transferred from Mecca to Jeddah, because many Christians used to come to these administrations, and according to the Wahabi culture, it is forbidden for the ''filthy'' non-Muslims to enter Mecca.

* Phones with cameras have been banned and confiscated because it might capture women.

* A famous TV program titled “Academic Star” has been banned from being aired inside the KSA.

C- Takfeer, i.e., excommunication or declaring others as infidels or apostates, is usually practiced by the official high-rank Saudi religious scholars and all religious institutions inside the KSA. One famous victim of Takfeer was Sheikh Muhammad Al-Alawy Al-Maliky, the popular figure in the Hejaz region in the KSA. Because he is a Sufi not a Wahabi, he received death threats as being put to death is the Wahabi penalty for ''apostasy''. He is alive until now, protected by his people in Hejaz, and because he does not discuss or question the holy of holies: Wahabism. The Wahabi penalty of apostasy contradicts the real faith of Islam in the Quran, as we have proven in our book, in Arabic and in English, authored years ago titled "The Penalty of Apostasy", but it is applied by the Wahabi KSA until now. Anyone may be subjected to this death penalty when accused of being infidel if some people testify that one, in public, has pronounced some words that may contradict or ridicule the Wahabi religion. Muhammad Ibn Abdul-Wahab, the founder of Wahabism, has written the following in one of his booklets: "…A man becomes among the infidels by a word uttered by his tongue, he may say it unaware of its meaning, but it is not excuse for him; he may say it to please God as the idol worshippers think…" By this Wahabi rule, many people were convicted and executed unjustly. At one point, a teacher in a Saudi school was accused - by his pupils- to be an apostate. Accordingly, he was arrested in January, 2001. Upon his trial, the teacher has denied the accusations and has engaged in verbal defense proving his being a Wahabi Muslim. In March 10^th, 2001, the charges of apostasy were dropped, but he was sentenced to three-year imprisonment and to be flogged within 300 whip strikes. Until March, 2004, a Saudi journalist was being tried for writing an article urging women to work in cosmetics shops. These are just few examples, but what is hidden is more than we can imagine.

 Thirdly: the Saudi regime has stopped our intellectual endeavors to present the project aiming at reforming the Egyptian educational system:

  After we were fired from Al-Azhar University because of the Saudi influence, we have advocated our vision of reform within secular and human rights centers and institutions in Cairo, Egypt. From 1995 to 2000, we worked at Ibn Khaldoun Center for Developmental Studies in Cairo, heading and running its weekly conference from 01-02-1996 until it was closed down by the Egyptian government in June 2000. In 1997, some leaders of the Egyptian Christian Copts came to this weekly conference to discuss their proposal of establishing a Coptic university. During this debate, we have maintained the view that the most important thing is to reform Al-Azhar and the religious curricula of the Egyptian public education to stop the culture of persecution of and discrimination against Coptic citizens at the time, and we have insisted that their proposal of establishing a Coptic university would incur more persecution, discrimination, and suffering. Soon enough, we have published an article in the Egyptian secular magazine, Rose Al-Youssef, on June 23, 1997, calling for radical reform of the religious curricula in the Egyptian public education and Al-Azhar education as well. It was the very first call for education reform in the entire Muslim world before it has become one aspect of the USA policy towards the Muslim world after 9/11. The sociologist Dr. Saad Eddine Ibrahim, the American-Egyptian founder of the Cairo-based Ibn Khaldoun Center, responded to our education reform proposals discussed at length in seminars and weekly gatherings. We have written a project filled with suggestions about reforming the religious curricula by replacing old ones which are full of bigotry and fanaticism by new ones prepared by ourselves, conforming to Quranism. We have prepared two books in this regard, one of them is a teacher-guide, and the other book contains an alternative subjects and topics advocating the forgotten Islamic/Quranic values of peace, tolerance, justice, charity, direct democracy, freedom, and human rights. After finishing our project and its recommendations and suggestions, we have called the Egyptian officials and intellectuals to discuss and add to them in a conference held for that purpose. Although we have presented merely suggestions to be discussed, we have been severely criticized, defamed, and insulted in the Egyptian media and Parliament and by the Cabinet. It was obvious that the Saudi influence has been behind this fierce campaign of defamation against our person, Dr. Ibrahim, and the Ibn Khaldoun Center. The Egyptian KSA agents have used this fierce campaign to convince the Egyptian regime to arrest us along with some of our family members and our fellow Quranists in Cairo. Hence, the fanatic media figures have verbally abused us as well as the Quranist trend and line of thought, paving the way for to the Mubarak regime at the time to arrest us, accused of ''contempt of religion''. Before the 2001 arrest wave of Quranists, we have escaped to the USA as a political asylee. Within our suggestions for reforming the religious curricula, we have proven that Islam as the religion of peace, tolerance, freedom of speech and belief, justice, charity, and human rights contradicts Sunnite Wahabism. Explained the contradiction between these values in the forgotten Islam (the Quran) and the roots of bigotry, fanaticism, extremism, and terrorism in their Sunnite Wahabi tradition made the Saudi regime bent on persecuting us via its agents in Egypt.

 Fourthly: could the KSA and the other Arab regimes reform education according to the USA demands?

   We still have the same bitter feelings as the USA leaves the Arab Muslim regimes handle its demand of reforming education by their own religious scholars, the same people who have destroyed our education-reform project before. All what they do is to delay and deceive and make some overt reforms in the façade, in some marginal details which will not touch the rotten core of the sickness: Wahabism. Let us quote this brief account from aljazera.net and from the KSA-based Al-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper. After 9/11, it became imperative for the USA to call for reforming education in the Muslim, but the fanatics of the Saudi regime refused to heed such call in an official statement in April 28^th, 2002. The Saudi officials confirmed this statement in July 2^nd, 2003, saying that their curricula have nothing to do with terrorism; they have asked the USA itself to reform its education which produced Timothy MacAfee who destroyed the Oklahoma Federal Building. In October 27^th, 2002, the Crown Prince at the time, Sultan Ibn Abdul-Aziz, had confirmed that the Saudi education need no reform at all, saying that the religious curricula are untouchable in the same manner just like the Saudi sovereignty. He changed his mind after serial terrorist attack inside the KSA in 2003,; he said in December 5^th, 2003 that reforming education is to be done in a way to advocate moderation and to encourage students to understand the Quran and Sunna better. The representatives of the Gulf monarchies have asserted in their conference held in December 18^th, 2003, that reforming education is a must to intellectual confront terrorism. Accordingly, as a reaction, the KSA held a confidential closed conference in Mecca in December 29^th, 2003, to discuss problems of extremism and how to reform education. In January 4^th, 2004, the Saudi authorities have made a statement concerning the introduction of some political, social, economic, and religious reforms based on the Quran and Sunna. Crown Prince Abdullah Ibn Abdul-Aziz, the sponsor of such conferences, had received the high-rank religious scholars of the conference and welcomed them on the same day, while other opposition scholars - led by sheikhs like Safar Al-Hawaly and Salman Al-Oudah - refused the statement and warned the KSA against  changing its education curricula, describing in December 3^rd, 2004, that this statement as a response to the 'infidels' and forces of corruption. In January 5^th, 2005, in an authentic tape, Osama Bin Laden virulently attacked the same statement declaring the intention of the KSA to reform education. The terrorist MB group members in Jordanian and Kuwaiti parliaments have attacked this reform project in  December 31^st, 2003, and in January 3^rd, 2004. There is no real difference between those who call for reform based on the Quran and Sunna and those who refuse this reform; as they are together adhere to the so-called Sunna and hadiths which contain the basic man-made tenets of the religious terrorism, fanaticism, and bigotry, the untouchable holy of holies within their culture, in addition to the teachings of Ibn Abdul-Wahab himself which call for more bloodshed than teachings of other Sunnite sects and doctrines. They could not touch, question, refute, or debunk the Wahabi teachings, let alone other teachings and traditions which are falsely attributed to Prophet Muhammad centuries after his death, before the emergence of Ibn Abdul-Wahab himself. All of these teachings are attributed forcibly to Islam. Hence, we can now understand the meaning behind what the Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah at the time said in this regard: “the Saudi government calls for dialogue, but without touching the basic tenets of the Islamic faith.” The so-called 'moderate' high-rank officials in Kuwait have caused one intellectual thinker to be  imprisoned, accused of apostasy, because he has criticized stances and actions some of the so-called companions of Prophet Muhammad according to what is mentioned about these historical figures in the authoritative historical accounts. The Kuwaiti Parliament forced the Kuwaiti media not to publish anything about this case in December 9^th, 2003. In the KSA, a teacher was imprison when accused of apostasy because his young pupils reported him for telling them that singing and smoking are not prohibited in Islam, and pupils claimed that he had advocated Western ideas in class. This case was mentioned in Al-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper in December 9^th, 2003. Yet, the case was ignored and overlooked during the so-called ''moderation'' conference held in the KSA. Those 'moderate' religious scholars are hypocrites and more dangerous than the frankly and overtly extremist fanatics. As it is imperative to the USA to defend itself and to cleanse the Muslims' education systems from the culture of terrorism to win this intellectual war against the terrorists, it is also imperative to the USA to handle this reform directly by the real moderate reformist Muslims who have struggled for that cause for decades: namely, the Quranists. It is easy to bring all those free and liberal-minded Muslims together to preach the real Islamic/Quranic values among Muslims worldwide to guide them from inside their own only true source of religion: the Quran itself.

 Fifthly: Wahabism spreads the culture of dictatorship inside the Arab and Muslim worlds:

   Wahabism gives the tyrannical rulers unlimited political authorities, according to the Middle-Ages political culture that dominates the Middle East; that is why the Saudi royal family members undermine any democratic waves, trends, and notions. However, the current Wahabi opposition movements while believing in absolute authority of the 'Muslim' ruler, or the caliph, they consider the current Saudi regime as the real enemy of Islam. The other Wahabi oppositions in the Muslim world, or the so-called Islamist political trends, have the same negative sentiments against the military tyrannical regimes and condemn them as the followers of the 'infidel West' aiming to take over instead of them. Thus, while the political opposition movements or trends around the world advocate more democracy, human rights, and freedom of speech and belief in their respective regimes worldwide, the Wahabi political opposition movements inside Muslim world are against the 'infidel West' and its democratic culture and values. The military tyrannical regimes in Muslim world support that Wahabi opposition movements to some degree to scare and silence the intellectual opposition movements, free thinkers, and the masses as well, as if they are saying who is better: us or them? Mubarak was an example of this case. That is why such regimes to some degree let the Wahabi culture control the Arab masses. Simultaneously, these regimes have used the military power against the Wahabi terrorists who accept that Wahabi ideology as 'real' Islam. As a result of dictatorships of these regimes and the corruption of their religious opposition movements, the wave of democracy abandons the Muslim world while it spreads within other nations worldwide.

 Sixthly: because of Wahabism and dictatorship, Muslims are hostile toward the USA and the West in general:

   The dictatorial regimes, Wahabism, and the Wahabi opposition movements are the three causes of maintaining corruption and chaos in the Muslim world. To distract the masses, the regimes and the Wahabi oppositions convince them that the 'infidel West' is the arch-enemy of 'Islam' and is plotting against Muslims to keep them behind all nations in a state of backwardness. This “conspiracy-theory complex” is an obsession adhered to and propagated by the Wahabi mentality, before and after 9/11. Within this complex of the alleged Western conspiracy, the fanatic Wahabi trend throughout the Muslim world is working to rally the masses behind him against the West and its allied regimes. The Sunnite Wahabi religion has the notion that the world is divided into two camps: the believers camp and the infidels camp. The so-called political Islamists, real enemies of the Quran, are working to take over the rule in Egypt, the KSA, and the entire Arab world unified under one empire or caliphate which, in their pathetic dreams, would defeat the Christians and the Jews all over the planet. Unfortunately, the Saudi and the Egyptian regimes and all the Muslim dictators are aiding this terrorist plan unawares by refusing to introduce the urgently needed political, religious, social, and economic reforms. It is inexcusable after 9/11. 

Lastly: 9/11 terrorist attacks marks the potential beginning of a third world war:

   In such WWIII, if it ever break out, military actions alone will not achieve victory; rather, it will strengthen the fanatic Wahabi ideology and increase the numbers of innocent victims. To avoid the possibility of WWIII, the terrorist, evil, and wicked religion of Wahabism must be refuted and undermined within an Islamic peaceful intellectual war against the terrorism. This is the role played for decades, without support from anyone, by Quranists in the West and worldwide. Hence, to save the West countries, the Arab/Muslim world, and the KSA itself, and to spare lives of millions of innocent people, the KSA must reform Wahabism from inside Islam (Islam is the Quran alone for Quranists) under the auspices and support of the USA and the free, liberal-minded Muslim thinkers and scholars who have devoted their lives for this Islamic cause. This is the real Islamic intellectual jihad that will save the people on our planet from the scourges of religious terrorism. Quranism must be supported, propagated, and advocated all over the world, and especially inside the USA, as the only true form of Islam, if the USA wants to win the intellectual war of ideas against Wahabi terrorism. The USA must stop its support for Wahabis within American soil and in the KSA. 

Signature:

Dr. Ahmed Subhy Mansour

Springfield, VA, USA