Zero Tolerance towards Dissent: Saudi Author Turki al-Hamad arrested

Saudi author Turki al-Hamad

Another critical Saudi Muslim has fallen victim to the government's determination to stamp out any religious dissent through social media. Less than a year ago, the journalist Hamza Kashgari was extradicted by Malaysia and subsequently arrested for tweets that where considered insulting to the Prophet Muhammad  (see the post of 25 April 2012).  In December 2012, the celebrated author Turki al-Hamad was arrested on accusations of defaming Islam via twitter.

Al-Hamad established himself on Saudi Arabia's in itself not so exciting literary scene with a coming-of-age trilogy of novels called Phantoms of the Deserted Alley (Atyaf al-Aziqah al-Mahjurah in Arabic).  It was not so much the by Saudi standards perhaps raunchy treatment of sex in the first two installments, Al-Adama and Al-Shumaisi, but the religious questions he raised in the third volume Al-Karadib. Musing such as whether God and the Devil are not merely two sides of the same coin, earned him the condemnation of the religious establishment, which issued a total of four fatwas in 1999 and 2000.

His recent tweets were less philosophical and more straightforward in their criticism of Saudi Arabia's state-sanctioned religious doctrine and the way Islam iconizes the Prophet.

 Because I am a Muslim in the tradition of Mohammed, I reject Wahhabism.

 Just as our beloved Prophet once came to rectify the faith of Abraham, the time has now come in which we need someone to rectify the faith of Mohammed.

A political scientist with a PhD from the University of South Carolina, al-Hamad is not just a witer of literary fiction, but he has also authored studies on the challenges Arab culture faces in a globalizing world and about the politics and religion.

Prince Muhammad bin Nayif

An interesting question that remains to be answered is whether this latest condemnation is  unanimously shared by the top echelons? Al-Hamad was detained on the instructions of the Minister of Interior, Prince Muhammad bin Nayif, a rising star of the hardline represented by his late father and former heir-apparent (see my article for Open Democracy). However, in 1999, the then regent and current King, Abdullah, offered al-Hamad the protection of bodyguards after the issuance of the first fatwa. It seems that in the post-Arab Spring Middle East, the incumbent regimes are resolved to stamp out not just political dissent, but also any deviation from the authorized religious discourse.

A more detailed assessment of Turki al-Hamad's recent arrest can be read here.

For more books by Hamad al-Turki and the cultural world he operates in:

Dissonance or Harmony? Critical Muslim Thinking in Saudi Arabia

In his latest book The Fifth Hammer: Pythagoras and the Disharmony of the World, Princeton Professor Daniel Heller-Roazen tells the story of the ancient tradition which holds that 'Pythagoras discovered the secrets of harmony within a forge when he came across five men hammering with five hammers, producing a wondrous sound. Four of the five hammers stood in a marvelous set of proportions, harmonizing; but there was also a fifth hammer. Pythagoras saw and heard it, but he could not measure it; nor could he understand its discordant sound. Pythagoras therefore discarded it. [...] But, time and again, the transcription has run up against one fundamental limit: something in nature resists being written down, transcribed in a stable set of ideal elements. A fifth hammer, obstinately, continues to sound. [...] linked together as are the tones of a single scale, The Fifth Hammer explores the sounds and echoes of that troubling percussion as they make themselves felt'.

Abdullah Hamidaddin

In Saudi Arabia, the country's notoriously conservative -- not to say reactionary -- religious establishment consider Abdullah Hamidaddin such a 'fifth hammer'. A consultant on social networking, author, and aspiring scholar of Islam of Yemeni origin, he has been pioneering critical Islamic thinking in the Kingdom by convening progressive discussion groups ('salons', majalis) in Jeddah. These gatherings bring together generally young intellectually inquisitive Saudis who are interested in exploring questions of faith, belief, and critical thinking beyond the very narrow confines of official discourse dominated by the constrictive views of Islamic officialdom. Abdullah Hamidaddin has written a book about this phenomenon under the title Harmonious Being  (الكينونة المتناغمة ).

Harmonious Being
(Abdullah Hamidaddin)

Recently Hamiddadin found himself in hot waters again, following accusations of heresy and investigations into his connections with Hamza Kashgari, the Saudi columnist who was extradited by Malaysia when facing charges of blasphemy in his own country over a fictitious conversation between the Prophet Muhammad and himself which was disseminated via twitter (leading to widespread protest and support).

Saudi columnist Hamza Kashgari

Since then he has been a regular face on Arabic TV channels explaining his intentions with these initiatives, but more often to defend himself against allegations of creating dissent and deviations from officially sanctioned Islamic learning.

Prior to entering the current fracas, Abdullah Hamidaddin had already made a name as a scholar and editor of texts from the Zaidi tradition, a Shi'ite sect originating in the 8th century which flourished again briefly when Yemen was a kingdom between 1918 and 1962 under the Hamiddadin dynasty. They were finally ousted in 1970 after a protracted civil war following a 1962 military coup, and found refuge in Saudi Arabia.    Also Abdullah Hamidaddin's descent from the last Yemeni Imam has been the subject of debate, as becomes clear from the interview below.

 The whole interview is available on youtube (in Arabic).