| Submit your comments on this article |
| Arabia |
| The Role Of Friday Sermons |
| 2003-04-17 |
| Dawood Al Shirian, Al-Hayat In a campaign dubbed "the evolution of the mosques' role and its enhancement," the Ministry of Islamic Affairs in Saudi Arabia eliminated a considerable number of lecturers and orators who used Friday's sermons as a means to express their "individual visions and opinions," as the Minister of Islamic Affairs Sheikh Saleh Aal al-Sheikh announced. I'd say that "death to all infidels" is pretty much an expression of one's "individual visions and opinions." The attention that Saudi Arabia gives to the mosques is not new. The kingdom bears the responsibility of their construction and provides them with all their needs. Over the past two decades, the Saudi government spent more than 17 billion dollars on the construction of the Two Holy Mosques, and this attention spread to mosques around the world. It is no secret that 90% of the European and American mosques are financed by Saudi Arabia. Yeah. That's become really noticeable in the past year and a half... However, this attention was limited to the construction of mosques and services, and no particular attention was paid to the quality of the orators, and to the content of the Friday's sermons and its relation with religious conditions. After 9/11, Saudi officials discovered that a considerable number of mosques were turned into pure political platforms, as they ignored the texts for the sake of individual and personal opinions, and forgot the role set by the Islamic Shari'a. Thus, the government started paying particular attention to this aspect, but the war in Iraq returned its efforts to stage one, and some mosques returned to political speeches, sometimes in a provocative way. Somehow, I expect the next campaign in the War on Terror will do the same thing... There is no doubt that the decision taken on Tuesday isn't enough; the elimination of a few orators and trying to settle the issue by controlling the crisis is not the right solution. It is important to draw a plan aimed at stopping the interference of the political and educational speech with the religious one, to clarify the role of the religious speech in the social issues and to create a balance in the informative speech in general. Such plan should also deal with this issue from a perspective allowing plurality but refusing exaggeration, and allowing the society to express its opinion without fearing punishment. Take away exaggeration, and the preachers would starve... |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |
| #1 90%! Is that true? That's an incredible figure. Usually it takes a critical mass of people and some financial momentum to build a church in the west. The building of which becomes some kind of 'rite of passage' for the life of the congregation. Many groups who have facility thrust upon them, don't survive(chick and egg analogy here). Not enough personally invested. If the 90% figure is even ballpark true, I'm going to call into serious question the sizes and health of those muslim congregations. The 'muslim explosion' could be largely gas. |
| Posted by: Scott 2003-04-17 22:07:45 |