Saudi king is anxious about the idea of 'moderation in Islam'

Saudi Arabia plans to hold a conference of senior Muslim clerics from around the world this year to promote "moderation in Islam" and "fight extremism", Arab newspapers report.

Last week King Abdullah called for dialogue of Muslims, Jews and Christians. Commentators link this appeal with the upcoming forum, which is intended to act as an ideological counterweight to the ideology of Jihad.

According to Saudi newspapers the plans to organize a conference of state Islamic scholars would be pursued in April and May with an eye to holding the event later this year.

The plans were made public at a seminar in King Saud University where the Grand Mufti, the government's official spokesman on religious affairs, talked of the need for "the middle way" in Islam and appeared to attack "radical preachers".

"The extremism of fanatics cannot be considered part of religion, even if they are wearing religious robes," Sheikh Abdel-Aziz Al al-Sheikh said.

In his call for an interfaith dialogue, the king said he had won the support of some Saudi clerics for a series of meetings of the world's Muslim scholars to secure support for a conference with Jews and Christians.

Responding to media reports, the Grand Mufti said that he had not issued any invitation to "Israeli" rabbis to attend any conference. But he did not say that he opposed the idea or would not invite rabbis in the future.

According to Saudi Asharq Al-Awsat daily, two weeks ago Saudi Arabia announced a new plan to retrain 40,000 mosque imams in all regions order to "confront extreme and radical moods in Islam".

The plan is part of a wide program launched by the Saudi monarch a few years ago to "promote moderation and tolerance" in the Saudi society. Imams will be retrained by the Ministry of Religious Endowments and Islamic Affairs, together with a new "Centre for National Dialogue", which have been established five years ago to spread the so-called "moderate interpretation" of Islam.

"In recent years the Saudi royal family has come under increasing pressure - mainly from Washington - to change religious textbooks and to rein in militant clerics", Western commentators suggest in this regard.

Let's recall that the representatives of the EU had repeatedly stated the need to "reform" Islam. In Europe, even a special secret plan has been passed to create a so-called "European Islam".

The EU plans for "reeducation" of Muslims was voiced by the Vice-President of European Commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security Franco Frattini, who has long been known for his anti-Islamic remarks.

Franco Frattini suggested to teach imams the "fundamental principles of human rights". However, the truth does not lie there - Frattini believes that Muslim religious leaders "educated" this way will be able to make it so that in future "a European system of values would not contradict the principles of Islam". Thus as a result a "European Islam" will be molded.

"Reeducation" of imams or education of new ones are planned to be done in England. The purpose of the program is "education" - to transform Islam into "tolerant religious doctrine" by cleaning out "extremism and terrorism" from it.

And in the view of the famous Islamophob, the Minister of the Internal Affairs of Germany Wolfgang Schauble "Islam has perspectives only if it go though transformation similar to that which occurred in Christianity in the Middle Ages."

"Christian churches during the Reformation and the Enlightenment are too, had to take a lot of new, and although it was not easy to them. Islam also required to do so, otherwise it would not become a part of Europe", minister threatened in his interview to magazine "Der Spiegel".

Thereupon we have to mention that anti-Muslim (primarily the Zionist) international structures for a long time has been struggling to bring up a change to the very basis of Islamic educational process. According to the anti-Muslim analysts Islamic education is responsible for generating "extremism".

A few years ago, one of the Zionist organizations in the US was bold enough to demand from the White House to put a pressure on the Saudi Arabia authorities in order for them to introduce a change in the educational process in their country.

And in early 2007, American (pro-Zionist) "think tank" RAND Corporation, which has a great influence on politics in Washington, issued a 200-page report entitled "Building Moderate Muslim Networks".

Included in that report was a criteria for distinguishing between the so-called "moderate" and "radical" Muslims developed by the RAND.

The criteria for identifying potential partners of the US in the Islamic world and the political strategy of interaction with them in order to create a "network of organizations loyal to the ideals of freedom and democracy" have also been suggested by the "think tank".

According to the commentators the report is literally permeated with military rhetoric. It begins with the explicit notion that the fierce fighting which is being evolved throughout the Islamic world is the main threat to the west.

RAND makes a special emphasis on the fact that the ultimate confrontation field between the Western conception of the world and that of Islam is the war of ideas. Therefore, the war against Islamic ideology must be fought on a diplomatic, economic, psychological as well as on the military levels.

The authors of the report claim that the struggle with Islam must change the now existing international order, as a war is being waged with an enemy scattered across the world, an enemy who does not have a state, a territory or a military and political structures and who does not recognize any international rules and regulations.

Authors of the report reiterated thesis of Pentagon analysts claiming that the United States and its allies are being involved in a struggle which progresses as "a war of ideas and a war of weapons."

The main enemy are "the networks of radical Muslim jihadists and terrorists spread across the world." Authors of the report and the analysts from the Pentagon suggest to use networks of "moderate" Muslims of the similar scale and working on the same principles coupled with the currently ongoing ideological campaign and with the diplomatic, economic and military methods of pressure against "radical Muslims".

The image of a "moderate Muslims" has been pointed out by the RAND. As it is stated in the report, these criteria help to define and to describe the beliefs and political standing of a single Muslim or that of an Islamic community.

In order to be characterized as a "moderate" (and therefore get the right to exist), a Muslim or a group of them must conform to the four key principles of the so-called democratic world, as they have been determined by the RAND:

1. A commitment to democracy. Muslim (or group of Muslims) must be opposing to concepts of the Islamic State;

2. Acceptance of nonsectarian source of law. This criterion is called the "dividing line between moderate Muslims and radical Islamists";

3. Respect for the rights of women and religious minorities. In doing so, moderation of a Muslim is defined by his/her belief that the Quran and the Sunna, allegedly fixing inequities in these rights, should be reinterpreted.

4. Opposition to terrorism and illegitimate violence (that is, violence is legitimate only if it is based on democracy).

This list of four criteria is supplemented by a list of eleven questions after receiving answers to which the extent of moderation of a Muslim or a group of Muslims taking the test could thus be more accurately determined:

1. Does the group (or individual) support or condone violence? If it does not support or condone violence now, has it supported or condoned it in the past?

2. Does it support democracy? And if so, does it define democracy broadly in terms of individual rights?

3. Does it support internationally recognized human rights?

4. Does it make any exceptions (e.g., regarding freedom of religion)?

5. Does it believe that changing religions is an individual right?

6. Does it believe the state should enforce the criminal-law component of Sharia?

7. Does it believe the state should enforce the civil-law component of Sharia? Or does it believe there should be non-Sharia options for those who prefer civil-law matters to be adjudicated under a secular legal system?

8. Does it believe that members of religious minorities should be entitled to the same rights as Muslims?

9. Does it believe that a member of a religious minority could hold high political office in a Muslim majority country?

10. Does it believe that members of religious minorities are entitled to build and run institutions of their faith (churches and synagogues) in Muslim majority countries?

11. Does it accept a legal system based on nonsectarian legal principles?

Among the potential partners, who are being recognized as moderates and with whom the US and the west are encouraged to establish relations and to cooperate to confront the "radical Muslims" are being called:

1. Secularists, whom the authors of the report are divided into three categories - liberal secularists, anti-clericalist secularists, and authoritarian secularists;

2.  Liberal Muslims who advocate the so-called "Islamic democratic political system". The authors compare them with the Christian democrats in Europe;

3. "Traditionalist" Muslims, the sufis, whom the authors of the report proposes to send against "radical Muslims".

Sufis are the followers of tradition of their religious teachers, not the Quran and the Sunna, tend to move away from worldly life, do not engage in a political issues and are being plunged into the mysticism. And that, according to the RAND, is alright.

According to the RAND, one of the main criteria which must help to determine whether the Muslim is "radical" or "moderate" - is his agreement to take Islam without Sharia.

Let's mention in this regard that Almighty Allah, in his holy Quran, the book against which a large scale war is being waged already for many centuries, warned the faithful:

"Never will the Jews or the Christians be satisfied with thee unless thou follow their form of religion. Say: "The Guidance of Allah,-that is the (only) Guidance." Wert thou to follow their desires after the knowledge which hath reached thee, then wouldst thou find neither Protector nor helper against Allah." (2:120)

Musa Stone, Kavkaz Center