Saudi Regulator Closes Websites Breaking Royal Decree on Permitted Fatwas
Saudi Arabia, the Arab world’s largest economy, closed websites for violating a royal decree that restricts the right to issue religious edicts to approved scholars.
“If we receive a request from authorities, then we shut the websites,” Sultan al-Malik, a spokesman for the Communications and Information Technology Commission in Riyadh, said by telephone today. “There are some websites that have been closed.”
King Abdullah last month issued a royal decree saying only the Council of Senior Islamic Scholars was allowed to make religious edicts, known as fatwas, as the king tightens control over clerics in the kingdom. In the past, Saudi clerics were able to issue fatwas via their personal websites or other means without government approval or consultation.
After the decree, a preacher was ordered to stop giving unauthorized fatwas when he called for the boycott of Azizia Panda United Co. because it employed women as cashiers, Arab News said on Aug. 27. The supermarket unit of Savola Azizia United Co. was the first company in Saudi Arabia to employ women on check-outs at its stores.
In February, Sheikh Abdul Rahman al-Barrak, a senior Saudi cleric, issued an edict calling for supporters of the mixing of genders in the workplace and schools to be put to death for being un-Islamic.
Saudi Arabia, home to the birthplace of Islam, is a conservative Sunni Muslim-majority country, where women can’t drive, must wear an abaya, or black cloak covering the body, and can’t travel without the company of a male relative. Religious police patrol shopping centers enforcing a rigid interpretation of Islamic law.
To contact the reporter on this story: Glen Carey in Dubai at gcarey8@bloomberg.net.
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