Know what members of our esteemed Shoura Council were up to recently? They were engaged in a lively debate on an issue forwarded to them by the Civil Service Ministry.
The ministry had recommended changing the country’s weekend to Fridays and Saturdays as reported by this paper a few days ago.
The underlying logic is no secret. As things stand now, there are four days of rest in a week when it comes to dealing with countries around the world, leaving only three days common to business. The countries in the Gulf, realizing the adverse effects of such a gap, took steps last year to lessen them by changing their weekly holidays to Fridays and Saturdays.
So when the proposal hit the Shoura floor, one would have expected it to pass without much fuss and be quickly forwarded to the Council of Ministers for approval. At least, a rational person would not have been faulted for thinking along those lines.
But I suppose among the members of this esteemed council were those who thought otherwise. One such member, the deputy president of the Shoura, Mahmoud Taiba, strongly criticized the proposal citing Islamic reasons.
“The proposal for changing the weekend is unacceptable in a country that rules by the Qur’an and Sunnah and takes them as its constitution,” he said, adding that economic reasons cited for the change “are baseless”.
“Many people now are using the Gregorian date instead of the Hijri date, which reflects the impact the change could have on religious aspects,” he added.
Jumping on the bandwagon, another member, Salem Al-Marri, advocated that the proposal be barred from discussion in the Shoura Council, stating that the Kingdom’s Islamic and social status was the justification for the decision to make its weekend on Thursday and Friday.
Dr. Abdulrahman Al-Mushaigih, another member, agreed with such assessments adding that proponents of the change had no scientific studies to base their claims that four fiscal days were being lost because of different weekends in this country and the rest of the world.
To top it off, the president of the Riyadh Chamber of Commerce and Industry voiced concerns about the proposed change. “I do not agree with the proposal. ... I don’t think it would be a wise decision bearing in mind that we are the center of Islam and that 1.5 billion Muslims turn to us as an example,” he said.
He continued by claiming that if the weekend was changed to Friday and Saturday, future generations would ask for it to be changed to Saturday and Sunday. “If that happens then we will be copying the Jews and Christians,” he said.
Now if this debate was over the merits of changing weekends because of working days lost between us and the rest of the world and the kind of financial impact it was having, I would have not given it much thought and not bothered to write this column.
But what raised my ire was bringing Islam into the discussion. What has our religion got anything to do with changing our weekend days to Fridays and Saturdays as has been reportedly claimed by some members of the Shoura Council? And on what basis are these members perceiving a threat to Islam through this change?
Is it that those who disagree with any change use the religious card time and again to defeat proposals that would bring us in line with the rest of the world? Are they trying to frustrate efforts toward a more progressive and productive society? It seems to have worked in the past on other issues such as the liberalization of laws relating to women.
Have they now targeted weekend as their next cause de jure? Let us not allow our great religion to be smeared by such silly inferences.
