Saudi Clerics Out-Tweet Liberals Forcing King to Balance
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The Saudis making the biggest splash on social media aren’t the youthful, secular activists who led protest movements elsewhere in the Arab world last year. They’re religious scholars like Salman al-Oadah.
Saudi Arabia jailed al-Oadah in the 1990s, when he was advocating the kind of Islamic militancy espoused by al-Qaeda. Now, after renouncing extremism, he has more than 1 million followers on Twitter, as does Muslim scholar Ayed al-Qarnee. A third preacher, Mohammed al-Arefe, tops the national rankings with 1.4 million readers, more than the population of Bahrain. By contrast, one of the highest-profile campaigners against the religiously motivated ban on women drivers, Manal al-Sharif, has about 80,000 followers.