KUWAIT CITY, 4 January 2005 — The success of Islamists in ousting Kuwait’s information minister underscores the strength of fundamentalist groups in the emirate.
Mohammad Abolhassan, the only Shiite minister, resigned on Sunday under pressure from Sunni Islamist MPs who were gearing up to question him over his alleged failure to protect the values of society by allowing musical concerts.
He became the third information minister to be forced out of office by Islamists in the past seven years, all on similar pretexts of “not protecting morality”.
Abolhassan’s resignation was a “major victory for hard-line groups ... and their extremist ideas,” said Sayed Mohammad Baqer Al-Muhri, who heads Kuwait’s Shiite Clerics Congregation.
The entire issue was sectarian in nature, he charged.
For almost two decades, Islamist groups have been the most powerful lobby in Kuwait’s outspoken elected Parliament thanks to their well-organized grassroots. “Islamist groups are from within Kuwaiti society. They represent an ideology that exists in the country ... They want to protect the principles of the nation,” said Hussein Al-Saeedi, spokesman for the Salafi Movement.
Though the Islamists’ strength in the 50-seat all-male Parliament has been cut from more than 20 MPs in 1992 to just 13 now, their alliance with conservative tribal MPs on moral issues allows them to remain a formidable force.
The three mainstream Sunni Islamist groups — the Islamic Constitutional Movement, the Salafi Movement and the Islamic Salaf Alliance — together control dozens of charity organizations and trade unions. Islamists have controlled Kuwait University’s student union for the past 26 years.
But liberals, who have been weakened in the past decade, insist that Islamists draw their strength from an alliance with the government.
“The strength of Islamists stems from government backing. They are strategic allies of the government,” said Khaled Hilal Al-Mutairi, head of the liberal National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
“Islamists have their own agenda and want to impose it on society ... They want to Islamise society based on their unilateral vision which has no place for others,” Mutairi said.
