WASHINGTON, 9 December 2003 — US authorities have revoked the diplomatic visa of an influential Islamic cleric, and the Saudi government has decided it will no longer sponsor an Islamic institute in Virginia where he sometimes lectured, moves that reflect both nations’ increasing efforts to curb the spread of extremist Islamic rhetoric, according to US and Saudi officials.
Jaafar Idris, who was affiliated with the Fairfax-based Institute for Islamic and Arabic Sciences in America, left the United States two weeks ago after his visa was revoked, US officials said. Idris is a native of Sudan, but was sponsored as a diplomat here by the Saudi Embassy and had an office in that embassy’s Islamic affairs section, according to a lawyer associated with him.
Idris’s departure follows a decision by the Saudi government to stop providing diplomatic status to Islamic clerics and educators teaching overseas, according to a senior Saudi official who declined to be identified. The official said that in the future, only staff with legitimate diplomatic business at Saudi embassies around the world will be given diplomatic visas, part of a larger effort to get Saudi embassies out of the business of promoting religion.
“We are going to shut down the Islamic affairs section in every embassy,” the officials said. “That’s the objective.”
Referring to the Institute in Fairfax, which is a satellite campus of a prominent university in Riyadh, the Saudi official also said: “We’re going to sever its ties with the embassy . . . They will no longer be sponsored by the embassy.”
Such a move could complicate the institute’s future because its staff, lacking diplomatic status, will be required to obtain visas and work permits to teach in the United States, something that US authorities may be unwilling to provide in some cases.
Officials at the institute could not be reached for comment.
The Saudi action is part of that government’s increased vigilance toward expressions of religious extremism after the deadly May terrorist attack in Riyadh that shocked the nation.
