Free On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines - and Future by Karen Elliott House

itself, the regime will collapse. The young are attacking the government because it is loyal to the United States, not to Islam.”
    One year after the spirited religious debate on gender mixing and shortly after the Arab Spring, Sheikh Al Ghamdi was fired and Sheikh Salman left the kingdom for what he said would be temporary self-imposed exile in South Africa. Only the imam, who never went public with his thoughts, remained unaffected by a new crackdown on religious debate imposed by King Abdullah in the wake of Arab Spring rebellions across the Middle East. Eager to ensure the support of religious conservatives inside the kingdom, the monarch imposed a ban on public criticism of the religious establishment, the very kind of open dialogue that he had encouraged for half a dozen years in his efforts to curb religious extremism in Saudi Arabia. But with Al Saud survival possibly at risk from an unhappy, frustrated populace, the Al Saud compass pointed once again in the direction of the religious.
    Not surprisingly, Saudi youth have a difficult time navigating all these conflicting currents of Islam. Whether motivated by moderates or by fundamentalists, young Saudis are far more likely to question religious authority than were their parents a generation ago. Meanwhile the religious authorities are faced with the problem of trying to issue fatwas that are relevant to modern life yet more often end up merely pointing up the inadequacy of religious rulings to current issues confronting young people.
    So minute and myriad are the issues where religion impacts daily life that the government has established an official Web site for approved fatwas to guide the faithful. The site ( www.alifta.com ) is intended to discourage young Saudis from followingfatwasthey find posted on the Internet from some unapproved sheikh at home or abroad who doesn’t represent Islam as propounded by Saudi Arabia’s religious scholars. For instance, one Saudi sheikh issued a fatwa condemning soccer because the Koran, he insisted, forbids Muslims to imitate Christians or Jews. Therefore, using words like
foul
or
penalty kick
is forbidden. The country’s grand mufti, Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah al Ashaikh, rejected that fatwa and called on the religious police to track down and prosecute its author.Using a few non-Arabic words, said the grand mufti, is not forbidden, as even Allah used some non-Arabic words in the Koran. (Not incidentally perhaps, the grand mufti understood that soccer is a national passion.)
    The official Web site even allows believers to query the
ulama
, much as Americans of earlier decades used to write Ann Landers for advice on life. For example, one young man asked religious authorities whether, having masturbated during the daytime in Ramadan when he was a teenager (and didn’t know it was forbidden) and then having performed ablutions afterward, he had violated proper fasting and prayer.
    The short answer: yes. “First, practicing masturbation is
haram
[prohibited] and it is even more sinful during the day in Ramadan,” wrote the religious officials in fatwa number 10551. Furthermore, they noted, the young man would indeed need to make up with fasting and prayer for every day he masturbated during Ramadan, because masturbation invalidates his fasting and his prayer, making them void because he failed to cleanse himself with a bath prior to praying.
    Not only is masturbation forbidden—so is shaking hands with women. The
ulama
insist the Prophet Muhammad said, “I do not shake hands with women.” Therefore, modern-day Muslims should follow that example. Ironically, those same
ulama
have ruled in another fatwa that touching a woman after washing for prayer doesn’t make one unclean and thus does not require repeating ablutions.Similarly, it is acceptable to wave one’s hand to others while saying the Islamic greeting “Peace be upon you,” but it is forbidden to wave one’s hand as a substitute for the words of the