The Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Asheikh, urged a group of preachers that called on him at the offices of the Ministry of Islamic Affairs to avoid indulgence in politics and maintain their utmost focus on religious preaching.
It is one of those rare instances in which a key religious authority minced no words in openly declaring his approach and told the youths that he was against politicizing religion.
Actually, these days modern Islamists are politically active. However if politics is as clear as those preachers and zealots think, perhaps political sciences should have been a branch of religious sciences. The case is, however, otherwise.
We have noticed that people who expressed too much enthusiasm to change the world around them and are too much willing to get involved in major events unfolding around them tend to view most of those events via their sentiments.
Salman Al-Omari, a researcher in Islamic affairs said that good intentions are no substitute to the science of Shariah law. The same applies to politics, as sentiments cannot act as a guide when it comes to international relations.
The Kingdom’s mufti, who is also the head of the council of senior scholars, is known for being humble, highly educated, and for his tendency to keep away from political controversies. He represents the old generation of Salafist scholars, the purest ones before some tried to politically exploit Salafism and “renew” it with their own ideas and plans. Although most criticism and blame today is directed toward traditional Salafism, the truth is actually otherwise — this branch of Islamic thought has reigned over the modern Islamic school.
Much like the Muslim Brotherhood movement, Salafism was born during the era of secret activities — similar to communism — and it later become mixed with political aspirations, like Qutbism and Suroorism. What we see today is nothing more than a premature newborn of a confused society in which there’s social Salafist extremism and political Brotherhood extremism. Both are being exploited by political regimes in the region.
The high rate of crimes being committed in the name of Islam in different parts of the world — and which have no precedent — has put us through the worst eras of degradation in Muslim history.
With this chaos, the worry of entire societies being hijacked has its justifications and even if its slogans and intentions are innocent, the trend is sweeping. It’s normal to wonder when a women’s forum in the Saudi city of Khobar says it “seeks to attract 200,000 girls.”
The number is, of course, exaggerated, but the idea itself of these circumstances is worrying. Who is to be blamed tomorrow when some of those attendants get out of control? The program of this forum is very normal, with topics such as humanitarian and social affairs on the table, but the idea of changing the concept of school and neighborhoods to operate within the concept of camps and collective intellect is worrisome.
In Pakistan and India, the religious movement Tablighi Jamaat, which says it is dedicated to asceticism, is an active group whom many — including Saudi scholars — criticized and warned of. Although it does not call on youths to fight, but its overall style of functioning makes them an easy target to be recruited by extremist groups.
