MEMRI at the following address
http://www.memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD188808
has published an
article
from the reformist Arabic website Aafaq written by Dr Abd Al-Hamid
Al-Ansari, former dean of Islamic law at Qatar University about a fatwa
issued in Saudi Arabia denouncing and calling for the killing of two Saudi
writers for articles they had published in the Saudi newspaper Al-Riyadh.
"The fatwa, issued earlier this month by prominent Saudi cleric Abdul
Rahman
Al-Barrak, declared the two writers takfir - that is, that their views
constituted apostasy from Islam, making them infidels (kuffar) and subject
to the death penalty if they did not repent and retract their views. A few
days after it was issued, a group of 20 Saudi clerics published a signed
letter sup****ting it."
Here is an excerpt from Dr Al-ansari's article:
"It is part of the misery of Arab life that the 'sheikhs of
excommunication'
have the right to excommunicate and declare apostasy against
intellectuals,
while no one has the right to sue these 'sheikhs' in court. This
contradiction is a travesty of Arab law, for you have the right in Arab
law
to sue someone who insults you and slanders you, but you do not have the
right to sue a person who declares you an infidel, which is the most
serious
and the most dangerous accusation! And why?
"The reason is that the religious sheikhs are placed above the people and
have immunity, which prevents their being prosecuted. Several years ago
'Imam University' in Riyadh granted a Ph.D. 'with distinction' to a Saudi
researcher who, in his doctoral thesis, declared 200 Arab intellectuals -
prominent proponents of modernity, rationality and enlightenment - to be
infidels. He said 'they are infidels and it is legal to kill them,' and
not
one of these accused intellectuals is able to demand justice for himself!
"Imagine the misery, absurdity, and contradictions in the Arab world when
one person is able to excommunicate all of the Arab reformists in a Ph.D.
thesis without any of them having the right to go to court against him!
"And if an ignorant person believed what that researcher wrote and
assassinated one of the scholars who was labeled and infidel, because the
researcher made the shedding of his blood licit, there is no legal blame
on
the researcher who instigated the crime and misled the killer."
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