RIYADH: A leading Saudi scholar, Sheikh Abdul Mohsin Nasser al-Obeikan, has rejected a fatwa issued by Saleh al-Luhaidan, chief justice of the supreme judicial council, permitting the killing of the owners of television networks broadcasting “depravation and debauchery”.
The edict would “promote terrorism”, al-Obeikan said, adding that extremists would take it as “a justification for their acts”.
“The extremist elements will take advantage of the fatwa and start recruiting our young people to bomb the locations of such TV stations,” al-Obeikhan, who is also an adviser at the Saudi ministry of justice, was quoted as saying to the Saudi Al Jazeera newspaper.
“They will welcome it and use it as a means to induce more young men as they did before to send them to Iraq for launching jihad,” al-Obeikhan said.
The official also told the daily that “the fatwa will have major negative repercussions on the state, the image of Islam, as well as on the Saudi judiciary system”.
He also noted that the enemies of the Saudi Arabia and Islam would take it as a basis for branding Islam as a religion of terrorism.
He called on Saudi Islamic scholars to denounce the fatwa before it was being spread as either their stance or the state’s.
“It is a very dangerous matter which should be urgently tackled by the Islamic scholars in the kingdom especially because the fatwa was issued by the head of the supreme judicial council. I am afraid that this will be considered as the opinion of the Saudi Muslim scholars or even of the state,” he told Al Jazeera daily.
The supreme judicial council is the highest judicial authority in the kingdom.
On Friday, Al Arabiya television had reported that al-Luhaidan had issued a decree, saying the owners of television networks broadcasting “depravation and debauchery” may be killed.
“The owners of these channels propagate depravation and debauchery,” said al-Luhaidan.
He made the remarks on radio in response to a caller who asked him to give an opinion on what he said were “immoral” programmes on Arab television during the holy month of Ramadan, a source at Al Arabiya had said.
“It is lawful to kill ... the apostles of depravation... if their evil cannot be easily removed through simple sanctions,” Luhaidan said, according to excerpts of the remarks broadcast on the Saudi-owned Al Arabiya.
The situation is “serious ... the degradation of morals is a form of perversion on earth”, he added.
During Ramadan, Arab satellite televisions broadcast lavish productions, including soap operas and mini-series, some with historical and religious themes, as well as game shows.
A popular soap that was broadcast by Al Arabiya for several weeks preceding Ramadan already stirred passions in Saudi Arabia, where the grand mufti branded it “subversive” and “anti-Islamic”.– Agencies |
