The King Who Would Be Reformer

...And what should the United States do...

...For years, Saudi dissidents had speculated that Abdullah alone among the sons of Ibn Saud (18801953), founder of the kingdom, understood the dangers to Arabian society represented by Wahhabism, the extreme Islamic sect that Ibn Saud made the state religion...

...But their direct governance of the country according to Wahhabi prejudices must end...

...the intellectual and spiritual void within them...

...He must then, step by step, bring the kingdom into the contemporary world, borrowing positive experiences from other Muslim nations, including, in the first instance, Turkey and Malaysia...

...Late last year when he was still only crown prince, Abdullah lent credence to speculation about his sympathies when he appeared at the funeral of Seyed Mohammad Alawi Al-Mali-ki, a non-Wahhabi cleric and leading Sufi teacher...

...Third, proclaim our right to assist and even help finance the blooming of civil society in Saudi Arabia, a country with a large middle class, access to the Internet and satellite media, . . . and a ban on women's driving...

...First, consolidate popular government in Iraq, and indicate that there will be no retreat from that commitment...

...Popular opinion had it that one of Abdullah's four wives (out of some 30 he has married over the years) was Syrian, cosmopolitan, and had influenced him to tolerate Islamic and other intellectual unorthodoxy...

...Abdullah, their half-brother, was outside the Sudairi circle...

...It was further said that Abdullah encouraged the private practice of Sufism, or Islamic spirituality, and various traditional Islamic customs rigorously suppressed since the Wahhabi takeover in the 1920s...

...that suicide terrorism is a crime against civilians...

...In July, an international Islamic conference in Jordan produced a statement opposing the Sunni use of takfir against Shias, a practice enunciated time and again in the bloodthirsty manifestos of Abu Musab al Zarqawi, as well as condemning takfir against Sufis...

...Abdullah lent encouragement to those seeking reform only a week into his reign, when he ordered pardons for three liberal dissidents who had been framed for allegedly seeking to overthrow the monarchy...

...The significance of this is potentially immense...

...Their real offense was to have circulated a petition calling for a written constitution, in a state whose only basis for governance has always been the Wahhabi interpretation of the Koran...

...As Saudi defense minister, Sultan personally enriched himself on military contracts with the united States, and Nayef, the interior minister and an extreme Wahhabi, was the first leading figure in the kingdom to blame the atrocities of September 11, 2001, on Zionism...

...Some note that pardoning political prisoners is an old royal custom on taking control, and dismiss the release of the three dissidents as perfunctory...

...Under Abdullah, a Saudi transition could be as easy as those seen in the last 15 years in countries as diverse as Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia (the largest Muslim country on earth), Mexico, Chile, and Ukraine...

...yet Abdullah praised him for his religious and patriotic fervor...

...Western observers have joined Arab and other Muslim Saudi-watchers in seeking to read the signs coming out of the kingdom...

...The trio, Drs...

...Many if not most Muslim terrorist recruits are weak in their religious belief and knowledge, and the power they assume by expelling a billion people from the religion fills The Wahhabis and other radicals have, for centuries, declared that those who do not share their fanatical doctrines are apostates from Islam...

...And it is important for another reason...

...BY STEPHEN SCHWARTZ ON AUGUST 2, Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, a man in his early 80s, ascended the throne of Saudi Arabia—and all hopes for reform in the saudi kingdom began to be put to the test...

...One forbidden observance—common among Muslims from West Africa to Indonesia— is the commemoration of the birthday of Muhammad, which the Wahhabis and Saudis reject on the ground that it resembles the Christian celebration of Jesus' birth...

...A religious conservative, Al-Abikan has recently delivered himself of commentaries that are not unknown in the broader Islamic world, but which have previously lacked real support from the Saudi/Wahhabi ruling class...

...that Sunni terrorists in Iraq are using resistance to occupation as a pretext for corruption and the abuse of women...

...What next...

...This has been their excuse for murder and pillage against Shias and non-Wahhabi Sunnis...

...Such a process does not require violence, much less the overthrow of the monarchy...

...A movement against takfir has taken hold elsewhere in Sunni Islam, in which many clerics now appear deeply repelled by the horrific events in Iraq...

...This is, after all, a man of religion, not a government official or antiterrorist investigator, speaking...

...Abdullah Al-Hamed and Matrook Al-Faleh and the poet Ali Al-Domaini, were sentenced to six to nine years' imprisonment in mid-May...

...No tyranny lasts forever, and it was inevitable that economic and social development in the peninsula would undermine the alliance, based on intermarriage, of the governing House of Saud and the House of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, responsible for ideology and religion...

...and that the al Qaeda terror offensive has been a catastrophe for the world's Muslims...

...The Wahhabis and other radicals have, for centuries, declared that those who do not share their fanatical doctrines are apostates from Islam...

...Dealing with another central issue little understood by non-Muslims, Al-Abikan called for banning the practice of takfir, the excommunication of nonextremists from Islam...

...In his most arresting comment, he says that Arabs began the war with Israel and that Israel established peace in the areas it occupied...

...He also repeatedly declared his willingness to confront bin Laden or any of his supporters, and called on the terrorist chief to surrender and repent...

...Fahd, Sultan, and Nayef were all members of the "Sudairi Seven," born of old Ibn Saud's favorite wife, Hussah bint Sudair...

...If the new Saudi king is to carry out a rational transition to popular sovereignty—to a written constitution, parliamentary government, a free press, an independent and modernized judiciary, and broad religious freedom—he must find a way to assert authority over, or otherwise neutralize, Sultan and Nayef...

...One fascinating example is a series of citations from writings and interviews given by Sheikh Abd Al-Muhsin Al-Abikan, a leading state cleric, translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) and accessible on its website...

...But aside from his reputed interest in Sufi mysticism, Abdullah had other incentives to follow a different road than that of his predecessor, King Fahd, and of Fahd's powerful brothers, Princes Sultan and Nayef...

...By labeling all nonradicals apostates from the religion, and blessing as the only faithful Muslims the adherents of their own violent ideology, the practitioners of takfir bind their followers together as an elite, but also as a pliable human mass, convinced their brutal urges are sacred and worthy...

...Stephen Schwartz is the author of The Two Faces of Islam: Saudi Fundamentalism and Its Role in Terrorism...

...All these men, admittedly, are old...

...The Amman declaration called for the restoration of pluralistic debate in Islam, banned in Mecca and Medina by the Wahhabis, and for the affirmation of liberty as a principle...

...And recent religious pronouncements have also been subjected to analysis...

...Nevertheless, Abdullah may have just the necessary window to begin a transition to normality for his country, from its present standing as the richest but most backward ideological state in the world, a kind of Middle Eastern North Korea or Cuba...

...He asserts, for example, that there is no basis for jihad in Iraq...

...If, as some Saudi subjects think, Abdullah is inclined to end the practice, the formal authority of the religious radicals will be instantly abolished...

...Takfir has always been a principle of Saudi rule and Wahhabi preaching...

...Will Abdullah seize the initiative and do away with the ideological state over which he has been handed rule...

...The time has come for the Wahhabi dictatorship to be dismantled and for the people of the Arabian peninsula to join the rest of the world...

...Second, continue demanding from Abdullah a full accounting of Saudi involvement in terrorism, and the arrest of the al Qaeda founders who continue prancing around the kingdom with impunity...

...There is no reason that, at least for now, the House of Saud cannot, like the House of Windsor in Britain, retain its wealth and even its status as heads of state...

...Al-Maliki, before his death, had been a prominent victim of Saudi repression...