An international Islamic Entrepreneur: Reassessing Rashid Rida (1865-1935)

Rashid Rida (1865-1935)

The latest book of historian of Islam Leor Halevi sheds new light on an Muslim intellectual, who is simultaneously considered as belonging to the triumvirate of 19th and 20th-century Islamic reformism (alongside Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Muhammad Abduh), and a would-be Wahhabi because of his support for Saudi Arabia in the final years of his life.

Modern  Things on  Trial: Islam's Global and  Material Reformation in the Age of Rida, 1865-1935 offers a critical rereading of that image and presents an alternative interpretation of Rashid Rida (1865-1935). The following excerpts are taken from Muhammad Addakhakhny's review for the Jadaliyya website.

Rida is no longer a sullen fundamentalist who betrayed his sheikh or a Machiavellian who compromised his religion, as we have been told. As a publisher, editor, self-appointed mufti, entrepreneur, Arabic teacher for nonnative speakers, unofficial diplomat, and political dreamer, he led a life of activity and continuous contemplation. For Halevi, the Syrian cleric should not be subsumed into any one stereotype, or viewed as a one-dimensional man, but rather as a multilayered figure. 

Halevi's book is an interesting mix of intellectual and material history-writing.

Modern Things on Trial draws fragments of the daily life of early twentieth-century Muslim subjects who lived a breathtaking and unprecedented entrance of “western” goods to their cities. In this work, we are exposed to a materialist reading of Salafism

Rashid Rida is presented as an 'international Islamic entrepreneur', advocating a kind of 'laissez-faire salafism'. At the same time, Rida's contributions to Islamic reformism are often presented:

as an odd moment in a history of a progressive strain of thinkers or, even, as a failed enlightener. He moved, the story goes, from moderation to extremism. In other words, if one were to exploit Althusserian terms, some kind of epistemological break happened in his project after World War I

His contributions to Islamic reformism have been downplayed on grounds of his associations with Saudi Wahhabism:

Yet there may be another explanation of this underestimation, namely, his relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood and its founder, Hasan al-Banna (1906–49). [...] Various Brotherhood ideologues have expressed their appreciation of Rida’s work and depicted him and Banna as brothers in arms. 

Be that as it may, Islamists gave an exalted status to Rida and it is this exact status that has made him, to some extent, an ill-fated Muslim reformer. 

Click here to read the whole review.

The Corona Fatwas (2): Theological & Juridical Considerations

As discussed in an earlier post on Corona Fatwas, Muslim religious scholars were quick to respond with legal opinions (fatwas), once the global dimensions of the Corona-Virus/Covid-19 pandemic became clear. Central to these pronouncements were the effects of social distancing, lockdown or quarantine measures on the communal aspects of Islamic religious practices. Most acute at the time of the eruption of the pandemic were the consequences for the weekly congregational noon prayers on Friday. But as the crisis continues, the questions also extend to the communal aspects during Ramadan, the annual month of fasting which commenced on 24 April, as well as the pilgrimage to Mecca, which is scheduled this year to take place in late July and early August.

The proclamation of these fatwas evinces the dialectical dynamics between politics and religion in the Muslim world: Governments seek religious sanction for the measures they impose on society in the face of this health crisis, while the (often state-sponsored) religious establishment of Islamic scholars and office holders derive authority and underscore their continuing relevance by making pronouncements on current affairs.

Square of Mecca's Grand Mosque lies deserted amids Corona-Virus pandemic fears

By way of update, here are some excerpts from a survey on the Qantara website, which gives an impression of the ongoing debates about the theological and juridical considerations in regards to the constraints on congregational prayers and other communal activities.

Given the swift and far-reaching reactions from Muslim scholars with regard to Friday prayers, it cannot be assumed that leading Saudi scholars would contradict the potential desire of the royal family to cancel this year’s hajj. In fact, in the almost global suspension of Friday prayers and other communal worship, we might see a kind of modern iǧmāʿ, a broad consensus from the legal scholars. 

The Islamic tradition has a few fitting precedents for taking drastic steps in the interest of infection control, including with regard to practicing the religion, which may go some way towards explaining the broad consensus. According to one story about the Prophet (ḥadīṯ), which is well-evidenced in the sources, Muhammad also called on believers not to travel to a country where the plague was known to have broken out, and not to leave their own country when there was an epidemic of this kind there. This early form of restriction on travel can serve as a present-day starting point for comprehensive preventative health measures.

Islamic Legal Maxims

Aside from the Higher Objectives of Islamic Law  (maqasid al-shari'a) mentioned in the previous post, also featuring prominently in the religious discussions that are taking place now are the so-called Legal Maxims (qawa'id fiqhiyya).

Islamic law also contains a few central legal maxims on which sweeping restrictions on individual and communal religious practices could be based. The starting point for these maxims is the legal proposition that counts as one of the five basic maxims that span all the legal schools: “Harm should be eliminated” (aḍ-ḍarar yuzāl)).

 

These maxims could serve to justify a potential short-notice cancellation of the upcoming hajj. In the first version, the harm would be the further spread of coronavirus and the resultant rapid increase of people falling ill with Covid-19 both during the pilgrimage and afterwards.

In opposition to this is the benefit to the individual pilgrims, who are fulfilling their religious duty through the hajj – and in this, according to many religious scholars, there is also a general benefit, since the annual hajj also serves a collective interest in the preservation of the religion.

In terms of the Higher Objectives (maqasid), this part of the debates points at an evaluation of the relative importance of protecting and preserving life and religion respectively.

Aside from theological-juridical considerations, the survey notes that  historical precedents too can be used to vindicate the possible drastic measure of cancelling this year's Hajj. As was also pointed out in the previous post, a hint in that direction was already given in a statement of the King Abdulaziz Foundation for Research and Archives (KAFRA), identifying no less than forty earlier instances of cancellations of the Hajj throughout history.

For the full article, click here

The Corona Fatwas (1): Islam, pandemics and religious scholarship

As several Muslim countries are severely hit by the Corona virus/Covid19 outbreak, the faithful not only look to health authorities and medical specialists for official guidance and scientific information, they also have questions for Islamic religious scholars regarding the impact on the acts of worship (ibadat), first and foremost that of congregational prayer.

Egypt's Grand Mufti

One of the earliest responses came from Egypt’s Dar al-Ifta’, the Office of the country’s Grand Mufti. On 26 February 2020, Shawqi Ibrahim Allam, issued a fatwa or legal opinion on the relaxation of obligatory prayers, in which the matter was still very much approached as a Chinese affairs with little anticipated influence elsewhere. 


Nevertheless, the fatwa offers a lengthy consideration consisting of a wide variety of citations from Islamic legal sources written by historically important religious scholars on the effects of pandemics on religious practice. 

Allam invokes a hadith narrated by the Prophet’s wife Aisha on Medina as a safe refuge and quotes from writings on the plague by Andalusian jurist Abu al-Walid al-Baji (1013-1081CE).  Next he stresses the agreement of scholars on the conditions for easing the rules concerning prayer in times of cataclysmic events, quoting a range of  scholars from the  Maliki and Shafi’i schools of law, including the hadith scholar Imam al-Nawawi (1233-1277); but also mentioning Hanbali scholars, such as Ibn Qudama (1147-1223CE) and Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328CE). The latter specifically references the positions and actions of ‘Rightly-Guided Caliphs’ (al-khulafa’ al-rashidun) and ‘Pious Ancestors’ (al-salaf al-salih). He also draws on the sixteenth-century Afghan commentator al-Mala Ali al-Qari (d. 1605) and the contemporary Indian scholar Abd al-Salam Mubarakpuri (1909-1994).

Further clarifications followed on 17 March 2020. In two additional fatwas with even lengthier preambles, in which the Grand Mufti also mentions the importance of taking into consideration the advice issued by the WHO and decrees promulgated by the government to safeguard the welfare of the population, Shawqi Allam stresses that prayers remain obligatory even when communal gatherings are prohibited for health reasons.

Meanwhile confusion abound in the Muslim country that appears to be hardest hit so far by the pandemic outbreak: Iran. On 17 March 2020, there were media reports claiming that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene’i had issued a fatwa prohibiting unnecessary travel, meant to curb the practice of visiting shrines of the Shiʽi imams and other sanctuaries, which is a widespread practice among Iranians. Others denied that the Ayatollah had done so.

In his address to the nation on occasion of Persian New Year (Nowruz) and the Day of the Prophet’s Mission (Eid al-Mabʽath), a week later, Khamene’i only touched tangentially on the Corona Virus outbreak:

Of course, these days, we are faced with the spread of a rampant disease and pandemic. This virus is inflicting casualties and advancing in almost all countries in the world. Now, some countries announce what is happening in their countries and some do not. One understands from what they say that some of their statements are not very compatible with the reality. The virus is progressing. This disease is the manifestation of this ayah, “Be sure we shall test you with something of fear and hunger, some loss in goods or lives or the fruits of your toil.” It both causes panic – some people are really afraid – and creates economic problems. Besides, it inflicts loss, and it causes casualties and other damages. However, after that God says, “But give glad tidings to those who patiently persevere.” [The Holy Quran, 2: 155]. Patience is necessary here as well. Here, patience means doing the right thing and acting in a reasonable manner.

Because of the dire situation in Iran, the Supreme Leader did not deliver the speech publicly at the shrine of Imam Reza in the eastern Iranian city of Mashhad.

In the most populous Muslim country in the world, the Indonesian Council of Religious Scholars (Majelis Ulama Indonesia or MUI for short) had also issued a fatwa (Fatwa Nomor 14) offering a detailed nine-point opinion calling on Muslims to be cautious, avoiding taking part in congregational prayers in hazardous areas where the chance of transmitting the Corona virus was great. In a press conference, Dr Asrorun Niam Sholeh, secretary of MUI’s Fatwa Committee, explained that this legal opinion calling on Indonesian Muslims to act responsible and not endanger fellow citizens was underpinned by the importance of safeguarding the so-called al-dharuriyat al-khams (‘Five Necessities’; protection of life, religion, intellect, offspring and wealth) defined in the Higher Objectives of Shariʽa’ (maqasid al-shariʽa, the Islamic equivalent of a philosophy of law). 

Underscoring the significance of the proclamation was the presentation of the fatwa to the chairman of the Indonesian Mosque Council, former Vice-President Yusuf Kalla, who earned a reputation of efficient and effective leadership during the 2003 Tsunami disaster.

So far, the European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR) has not come with a formal fatwa, issuing instead a statement (bayan). Released on 2 March, it opines that hazardous situations endangering public health are a valid reason for not taking part in congregational and communal prayers.

Muslims are also eyeing Saudi Arabia, where the Corona Virus crisis impacts not only on domestic religious practice, but where its effects also reverberate globally. Home to Al-Haramayn al-Sharifayn, the Two Holly Mosques of Mecca and Medina, where Muslims from all over the world congregate in large numbers year around, the Council of Senior Religious Scholars had to perform a balancing act. On 17 March 2020, it ruled that communal prayers at all mosques in the country would be halted, except for the Grand Mosque of Mecca and the Mosque of the Prophet in Medina. 

Abdullah al-Muni'

However pictures of a deserted square around the Kaaba for the sake of a massive sanitation exercise did go around the world. Then, on 23 March 2020, Shaykh Abdullah al-Muniʽ, a member of the Council of Senior Ulama, issued a fatwa calling for the death penalty for anyone infected with the Corona Virus who spread the disease in Saudi Arabia.

Aside from the hazards surrounding communal and congregational prayers, Saudi Arabia has another concern in connection to the Corona Virus: The impact it may have on the annual pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj), which is due to take place between 28 July and 2 August. Perhaps in preparation for the possibility of the stringent and monumental decision to cancel this year’s pilgrimage, the King Abdulaziz Foundation for Research and Archives (KAFRA) released a statement, relating that throughout history there are forty recorded instances of a cancellation of the annual pilgrimage due to pandemics, political turmoil, and natural disasters.

Iran executes 'heretic': innovative thinking about religion still a capital offense

Mohsen Amir-Aslani

In some Muslim countries, entertaining your own ideas or engaging in re-interpretations of religious texts and tenets is still a liability. Unfortunately, quite recently other countries than the 'usual suspects' such as - in this case -- Iran or Saudi Arabia, are also tightening the screws on religious freedom. Not only Egypt, but also supposedly more tolerant majority Muslim states such as Turkey and even Indonesia have made a turn for the worse (click here for an article on that subject).

In the present instance, after a tortuous nine-year ordeal, Iranian Mohsen Amir Aslani was sentenced to death and executed on account of insulting the Prophet Jonah and engaging in unlawful interpretations of the Qur'an.

Amir-Aslani was hanged last week for making “innovations in the religion” and “spreading corruption on earth”, but human rights activists said he was a prisoner of conscience who was put to death because of his religious beliefs. He had interpreted Jonah’s story in the Qur’an as a symbolic tale.

“Mohsen held sessions in his own house dedicated to reciting the Qur’an and interpreting it. He had his own understandings [of the religion] and had published his views in the form of a booklet and made it available to his fans,” an unnamed source told the New York-based group, the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran (ICHRI).

Possibly because of the weakness of their case, authorities also added 'illicit' sexual activities to the list of charges -- notwithstanding the equally flimsy evidence for those accusations. While this shows the shaky legal foundations for heresy or apostasy cases even in countries such as Iran,  'deviant beliefs' and 'unlawful innovations' (the technical terms are takhayyul, bid'a, khurafat) remain capital offenses, and are used to prevent people from exercising universal human rights such as the freedom of belief, turning the concomitant freedom of expression into real liabilities in some Muslim countries.

To read the full article on Mohsen Amir-Aslani click here

Terrorism, Saudis, and the Trivialization of Life

This is a guest contribution by Abdullah Hamidaddin, a commentator on Middle Eastern affairs and presently a PhD candidate at King's College London. His book Harmonious Being is discussed in this earlier post. 

I

Abdullah M. Hamidaddin

n the heart of every terrorist is a trivialization of life; his own or the innocent’s or both. Some terrorists come with a disposition for criminality and trivialize the lives of others for lack of empathy. Such people hold on dearly to their own lives and those they cares for – family – but can become butchers when the matter is about other people’s lives. They may seem religious, but they are nothing but criminals using a religious language. And in many ways it is only language which differentiates a criminal who uses religious or revolutionary language and the butchers in the Mexican drug cartels. On the other hand some terrorists are ideologues. They trivialize life because they are convinced that it does not merit care, or because there are things worth to die for and also to kill thousands of others. Here they learn to trivialize life, they read theory after theory on the matter, and then they teach others. Here all lives are trivialized; one’s own life, those dear and also others. Such terrorists who adopt an ideology that trivializes life (and glorifies death) are the most dangerous type. They are the fuel that sustains terrorism. A criminal terrorist will withdraw once he/she realizes that the costs outweigh the benefits. The ideologue terrorist will continue until he/she is killed or incarcerated.

Those who combat terrorism in Saudi Arabia face a major hurdle. The ideology of trivializing life is very popular. It is true that only a few members of Saudi society turn towards terrorism, but a significant segment of that society believes in many of the founding ideas of terrorism particularly the ideology of trivializing life. This becomes apparent by following or participating in Saudi debates on terrorism, even though the new terrorism laws enacted made many Saudis less willing to speak their minds on terrorism. They want to condone it or justify but they fear that it may constitute promotion of terrorism as defined by the way and lead them to imprisonment. But there had been a recent frank debate on Hamas and Palestinian military resistance and the ideas expressed say much about the popularity of the ideology of trivializing life. Though the debate was about Hamas it spoke our local reality; though it was about an event outside Saudi Arabia it reflected  a local mindset.

Following the debate on resistance can give us a glimpse on some of the highlights of the ideology of trivializing life which sustains terrorism. At the heart of that debate you find a culture of adoration to death. The debates did not focus on the military or political feasibility of resistance rather on the necessity to die and the triviality of life regardless of the gains. Some of the common phrases were: “to die as martyrs is better than to live without pride”; “what is the point of them living if it is under a siege”; “what is bad about a whole nation dying for its dignity”; “what do they have to live for anyhow”; “why is death a problem?” “it is not important how many of us are killed, what matters is that we kill from them and strike fear in their hearts”; “our dead will go to heaven so it is not a problem.”

Had we heard this from someone living in Gaza it would be understood. He/she would be living in exceptionally harsh situations and thus is expected to think about life and death in an exceptional even suicidal mode. Living under an occupation can make one hate their enemies to the point of hating their own lives and those one cares for.

Had those been said by soldier, it would have also been understood. He/she is trained to kill; to violently confront; to die. His training extracts from him respect for human life. A soldier in the end is a killing machine.

What is freighting however is to see such phrases coming out from Saudis of all backgrounds and social classes. I almost feel that some of their grievances about the deaths of Gazans is more about stirring Western conscience and less about actually being sad over them. It is almost as if they are thrilled about human loss or at least uncaring but are compelled to show a sad face. It is indeed horrific to hear such logic from the religious, the intellectual, the layman, the old and the young. All celebrate death in their own ranks – the ranks of the Palestinians actually - as much as they celebrate death in the ranks of their enemies – the Israelis.

I need to take a moment to differentiate between the undesired necessity of death to protect one’s life, dignity, rights, land and nation on one hand and the celebration of death on the other. I do not argue against the necessity of death in extreme conditions (though I still consider it evil), but I argue against celebrating it and welcoming it. We also need to differentiate between holding on to life and loving life. We do hold on to life, no doubt. But sometimes I feel it is an instinctive response; similar to that of a car or an ant. We also fight for our lives, but perhaps in the same way as an amoeba protects its own life. Yet, we – or many of us – do not love life. We do not hold it to be sacred. On the contrary we love death and sacralise it; we consider death the ultimate goodness and we may even ridicule those who love life or call for holding it sacred.  

All nations consider those killed for a grand cause to be martyrs. All nations give the family the news of the death of a dear one. And all nations cry and lament their losses. But we have a peculiar and odd phenomenon which is that we give the news as if it’s good piece of news. Many of us are actually happy to hear the news of martyrdom. Some families reject receiving condolences because they consider it to be a happy occasion. Of course there is sadness. We cannot avoid being sad. But we celebrate death. Some families even envy other families who are strong enough in their faith to the point where they announce their happiness when receiving the news of martyrdom.

We need a better understanding of this mindset. We need to understand its roots. Where did the ideology of trivializing life/death come from? The Quran speaks of Jihad as something people hate: "Fighting has been enjoined upon you while it is hateful to you" (Q 2.216). Yet now we have people speaking about Jihad and about being killed as something they love. Is it the Marxist resistance movements which also trivialized the life of the individual for the sake of the life of the collective? There is a lot of evidence that local radical, Arab nationalists, and Islamic movements were influenced by Marxist resistance literature. So perhaps it was imported and then ‘Islamized’ by mixing it with Qur’anic verses, Hadiths and historical stories of Muslim heroism. Being Islamized is a crisis, as before that, such ideas would have been considered a pragmatic tool to encourage resistance. But when Islamists adopted it, it became an ultimate value, a religious principle, it became above everything. There is also a second crisis which is that this principle was included in our educational programs and built into the DNA of our culture and now a whole society is socialized on it.

To look for ISIS or Al-Qaeda or all forms of terrorism one needs to look into the whole of society. In a way we all belong to ISIS. We are all terrorists. We have all grown up to be soldiers for the ‘cause’ – whatever that is; soldiers who know how to obey not to think; how to hate not to love; how to fight not to make peace; how to confront not to maneuver; how to die not to live. Such knowledge is a foundation of terrorism.

We repeatedly hear that it is futile to confront terrorism if the religious clerics who are assigned the duty of confronting religious terrorism are themselves radical. But the problem in my view is deeper. Society fights terrorism but in its depth is a terrorist. The terrorist is not in discord with his society rather a loyal member of his society’s culture. The terrorist is one who disobeyed his society but not who left his society’s culture. 

This article was originally published, in an edited form and in Arabic, by Al-Hayat Newspaper and can be read here.

Another article on a related theme written by the same author for Al-Arabiya News appeared under the title 'How to Kill ISIS with the Right Discourse'.

Following him on twitter @amiQ1. 

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).

CONTROVERSIAL FILM ON THE FOUNDER OF THE KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA DRAWS CRITICISM: The Syrian Cineast, the Arabian King, and the Saudi Princess

On 18 April 2012, I attended a pre-release presentation of Najdat Anzour’s King of the Sands, a biopic of Abd al-Aziz ibn Abd al-Rahman Al Saud, a.k.a. ‘Ibn Saud’, an emir of the central Arabian Al Saud clan, and founder of the present-day kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The event featured a brief trailer of the film, which is due to have its international release in May, and a panel discussion including the director and two of the international cast members (Fabio Testi and Bill Fellows) moderated by Makram Khoury-Machool, a Palestian-born media studies specialist currently based at the University of Hertfordshire.

Najdat Anzour

Najdat Anzour is the son of the Syrian pioneer of Arab cinema, Ismail Anzour. Although Anzour junior’s reputation rest primarily on the production of epic TV series about important episodes in Islamic and Middle Eastern history, he is also known for not shying away from controversial topics, addressing sensitive political topics. His latest, King of the Sands, falls into that category. At the press conference  the director reported that he has already received threats of lawsuits by unidentified parties trying to prevent its release through their lawyers.

King Abd al-Aziz
(a.k.a. Ibn Saud)

King of the Sands is presented as a 'landmark taboo-breaking film, telling a 'dichotomous' story. On the one hand, the undeniably impressive feat of an impoverished prince in exile to not only reconquer his ancestral lands, but then continue to expand these until he controlled the better part of the Arabian Peninsula, under which soil were lying unknown and hitherto untapped mineral resources of a magnitude that would bring the kingdom eventually unimaginable wealth. On the other hand, this accomplishment also demanded single-minded ruthlessness and violence, resulting in the extermination of the rivalling Emirs of Hail, the Al Rasheed, and eventually also the massacre of his own shock troops, the Ikhwan (an irregular militia recruited from the main nomadic tribes not to be confused with the modernist Islamic Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt), when they became in liability in the late 1920s and early 1930s because they threatened the king’s relations with the British in Jordan and Iraq. This episode also shows how Western imperialism impinged on the monarch's independence, foreshadowing the kingdom's future entanglement in world affairs once the oil started to flow.

Little of this becomes evident from the trailer (to watch it, click on the image above), which was clearly cut in accordance with the well-rehearsed Hollywood formula: the hero sent on his quest, a dapper brooding prince wielding his sword, battling enemies, even a bedroom scene with one of the dozens of women Ibn Saud would marry in his life time (boy gets girls). 

Marco Foschi

So it still remains to be seen if the film will indeed deliver a balanced – warts-and-all – biography of Saudi Arabia’s first king. However, the very fact that a Syrian has taken it upon himself to produce an unauthorized film of the kingdom’s founding father has already ruffled some feathers, and it will certainly not be shown in Saudi Arabia. Not that this matters, observed Najdat Anzour wryly, because the country has no movie theatres or cinemas anyway. Lawsuits aside, another indication of the film's potentially controversial nature is the choice of the cast: Anzour selected Italian actors Marco Foschi and Fabio Testi to play the young and old Ibn Saud.

Abd al-Aziz in old age

Allegedly this decision was motivated by their command of English without sounding like native speakers, but Anzour also admitted that Arab actors would not touch the part of the Saudi monarch, because of the implications depicting a political figure from the Arab world, even  historical one,  might have for their career in the Middle East. In spite of that, alongside Turkish actors, lesser characters are played by Syrians and Lebanese.

Fabio Testi as the old king

An apparent concession to a Western audience is the inclusion of Bill Fellows as the British explorer-turned-Muslim cum royal adviser, Harry St.John (Abdullah) Philby (1885-1960). During the First World War, the Indian Office and the Arab Bureau in Cairo were vying for influence over British policy in the Middle East. The Arab Bureau, which was part of military intelligence and had links to the War Office and Foreign Office, had sent T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia) to the Hashimite Sharifs of Mecca to coordinate an 'Arab Revolt' against the Ottomans. Meanwhile, the India Office --which was also responsible for security in the Persian Gulf -- instructed Philby to travel to Riyadh and make contact with Abd al-Aziz. Eventually, and to Philby's great frustration, it was decided to buy the Saudi ruler's loyalty on condition that he kept quiet and desist from attacking the Hijaz for the duration of the war. Not until the early 1920s, was Abd al-Aziz free again to pursue his ambitions; first destroying the al-Rasheed before swinging West and oust the Hashimites from the Hijaz. In 1932 the central Najd region and the Hijaz were united into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Bill Fellows as Harry St John (Abdullah) Philby

Azour remained non-committal in his response to a question whether a film in Arabic would have more prominently featured courtiers from surrounding Arab countries such as Bin Saud’s personal physician and confidante, the Syrian Rashad Pharaon, or Hafiz Wahba, the Egyptian-born former governor, minister, long-serving ambassador to London, and ARAMCO executive. By the way, it must be said that Fellows bears an uncanny resemblance to the real Philby.  (As a further aside it should also be noted that – in real life, not in the film -- veteran Italian actor Fabio Testi is a spitting image of Sean Connery)

Interestingly the event was attended by descendants of both the Al Saud and Al al-Rasheed dynasties: Madawi al-Rasheed, a professor of social anthropology at King’s College London who has increasingly shifted her research to both historical and current developments in Saudi Arabia. Not unsurprisingly, she has also built up a reputation as a critic of the Saudi regime that radiates far beyond the academic community. Also present was Basma bint Saud, youngest daughter of King Saud (1902-1969, r. 1953-1964), the oldest surviving son and first successor of  King of the Sands main character. Princess Basma has recently moved to the London suburb of Acton, and is suddenly hailed as a prominent advocate of reform in Saudi Arabia.

Prof Madawi al-Rasheed

In the Q & A session, Madawi al-Rasheed queried the director whether the film focuses solely on the power politics of central Arabia, or whether the film will also show that Saudi Arabia is a composite state, encompassing the Najd plateau of the interior, the mountainous Western region of the Hijaz where Islam’s holy cities of Mecca and Medina are located, and the oil-rich Eastern Province near the Persian Gulf, as well as the desert regions bordering Yemen and the Emirates in the south and the east, and Jordan and Iraq to its north.

In a reaction to a query from one of the journalists present and which director Najdat Anzour deferred to Professor al-Rasheed, she also emphatically stated that the al-Rasheed family had no involvement in the production of the film whatsoever, and she had only recently become aware of the project.

Basma bint Saud asked whether the release of the film at this instance was entirely coincidental. Having been many years in the making, Anzour assured her that this was indeed the case – but he anticipates that the tectonic shifts in the political landscape of the Middle East over the past year obviously will mean more attention for the film than would have been the case under other circumstances. The ‘Acton Princess’  finds herself very much in the spotlight, not just because she is a Saudi royal with a critical view of her own country, but also because on her mother’s side she is of Syrian descent, allegedly with close links to the Assad family.

HRH Basma bint Saud

Admittedly, Princess Basma’s ideas concerning women’s rights, education, social services, the excessive power of judges, abusive practices of those working for the General Presidency for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (the so-called mutawwa’s), and the general dominance of religious scholars in Saudi Arabia’s internal affairs  make a lot of sense. However, on closer inspection her ideas on political reform in Saudi Arabia can only be qualified as very modest indeed. With her insistence that she is not challenging the authority of her uncle, the current King Abdullah, she remains not just a royalist through and through, but also a loyal member of the dynasty itself.

I am still an obedient citizen and I will always be behind the royal family. But I will never be quiet about what is happening on the ground. […] I owe my uncles everything and what I owe them most is to tell them the truth. My mistake, my ruin is going to be insisting on telling the truth even if they don't like it. Because I think they need to hear it, especially from one of their loyal,royal own.

This comes as no surpirse -- the main lesson the Al Saud have learned from history is that internal dissent will spell the end of their iron grip over the kingdom. This happened in the late nineteenth-century when competing princes squabbling over supremacy within the then already quite expanded clan were outmanoeuvred by the Al Rasheed of the northern Jabal Shammar region. With Ottoman backing they ousted the Al Saud from their power seat, eventually sending them packing to exile in Kuwait.

Laudable as her criticism of the archaic religious establishment may be, I wonder what weight her words carry back home and how she can back up the claim she made in an interview with The Independent that:

She has studied Islam in depth, becoming a scholar of the faith's great texts to give her the authority to challenge the teachings of Saudi imams. Armed with the evidence of scripture, she has rebuked the authorities in writing on issues from driving to the doctrinal basis for the requirement that women cover up in public.

In the interview, Princess Basma insists that reform in Saudi Arabia must respect local tradition and culture – read: should safeguard the political status que, i.e. Al Saud hegemony. Even on that key issue: Saudi women’s right to drive, she plays it safe:

This is why I am against women driving until we are educated enough and until we have the necessary laws to protect us from such madness. Otherwise we might as well hand out a licence to the extremists to abuse us further. If as drivers we get harassed, they will say to the Islamic world "see what happens when women drive, they get harassed they get beaten" and they will call for even more stringent laws to control women. This is something we can't afford. Fundamental changes in the law and its attitude to women are needed before we take this step.

Easy to say for a princess or any upper-class Saudi woman whose family can employ private drivers.

Interview with Princess Basma bint Saud ibn Abd al-Aziz Al Saud

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Indeed, as The Independent noted, the princess 'goes out of her way to emphasise that her criticisms do not relate to her octogenarian uncle, King Abdullah, or the other senior members of the monarchy. Instead, the focus of her anger is the tier of governors, administrators and plutocrats who run the country day to day'.

Aside from challenging the governors – nearly all of whom are also members of the royal family, her criticism of this ‘second echelon’ of the Saudi state structure sounds disingenuous. Technocrat ministers are tied hand and foot to the senior princes who really call the shots in Saudi politics. Commoners in the cabinet who thought they could chart their own course or who dared to challenge royal authority lost their jobs overnight, these include oil ministers Abdullah al-Tariki and Ahmad Zaki al-Yamani,  and Ghazi al-Gosaibi, a former minister of health and industry, and poet, who was fired for writing a controversial poem, After being 'exiled' as ambassador to Bahrayn, he was eventually rehabilitated -- serving as ambassador to London and then rewarded with another cabinet post as minister of labour.

  

Even what Basma bint Saud calls the non-royal plutocracy has only been allowed to reach or retain that position with royal approval. Business families such as the Aba al-Khayl, Rashid, Gosaibi, Alireza, and othersd were only allowed to prosper to a certain extent. Acting as mega import agents certainly brought them great wealth, but they were never permitted to make ‘deep’ strategic investments in the domestic economy: oil and other mineral resources, the petrochemical industry, and airlines remained firmly under control for the royal family.

Saud ibn Abd al-Aziz

It is ironic that accusations of corruption and incompetence come from the daughter of the king who, in the 1950s and 1960s, brought the country to the brink of bankruptcy, and whose failure was of such magnitude that it first led to a virtual palace revolution by ambitious young princes under Talal ibn Abd al-Aziz in 1962, and eventually – two years – later to the decision of key members of the royal family that the king had to go, replacing him with his brother, Crown Prince Faysal. Also King Saud ended his days in exile:  expiring of a heart attack in Athens in 1969.