Mixed reaction to Saudi religious campaign

WASHINGTON, Oct. 2 (UPI) -- There is mixed reaction to the continuing campaign by Saudi religious authorities to de-legitimize violence in the name of Islam.

An opinion piece from the editor in chief of the Saudi-owned Asharq al-Awsat welcomed Monday’s religious edict from the kingdom’s grand mufti, forbidding young men from going abroad to fight.

In what some reports described as a fatwa and others as a speech, Sheik Abdul-Aziz Al al-Sheik, the leading Sunni religious authority in the country, said Saudi youth had become “a tool in the hands of foreign forces that manipulate them in the name of jihad” and “a commodity to be bought and sold by (Middle) Eastern and Western agencies.”

Going to fight jihad abroad was “commit(ting) a number of violations of Islamic rules and teachings, including disobedience to our rulers,” the mufti said, according to the official Saudi Press Agency Web site.

Asharq al-Awsat Editor in Chief Tariq al-Homayed wrote that “credit and gratitude are due to the sheik,” especially because he had also highlighted the role of Zakat, or Islamic religious donations, in funding the recruitment of Saudi youth for violence abroad.

But a Jamestown Foundation review of separate efforts by the Saudi government to recruit the leaders of the al-Sahwa, or Islamic Awakening movement, is more measured.

Last month one of the leaders of the movement, Sheik Salman al-Oadah, in an open letter to Osama bin Laden, accused the al-Qaida leader of having the blood of millions of innocents on his hands.

In the foundation's Terrorism Focus, analyst Chris Heffelfinger notes that the move came after a series of severe blows to the structure of al-Qaida in Saudi Arabia and that in the future “the degree to which al-Oadah and other previously dissident leaders can be brought into the fold of the Saudi information campaign will be a milestone of not only the regime's strength, but the diminished vigor of the Saudi mujahedin campaign.”