Let me first state that this response is not in any way an attempt at defending Saudi Arabia. (Did I even need to say this in the first place?) It is rather in defence of the truth. Yes, recent events in that beloved country and the Arabian Gulf, and other Arab countries are really unfortunate and saddening. However, KSA is a nation-state populated and governed by humans and is therefore bound to make errors, not only in politics, or economic or social matters, but also in religious matters. There is an authentic report the scholars of Hadeeth and Fiqh always hardly miss to mention in the Book of Tahaarah in their collections whenever they discuss kinds of waters suitable for ablution or ritual bath: “A large volume of water cannot be polluted by an impurity dropped therein.” One of the Tahaarah-unrelated lessons that could be inferred from this Hadeeth is that if someone has done so many good things; he should not be subjected to undue castigation by a few errors he committed. In this regard, the kingdom has done so many good things locally and internationally, even for non-Muslims, that if we have to unbiasedly compare both its good and bad, we would realize that the former far outweighs the latter. Hence, focusing on its errors always contradicts the spirit of many of Islamic texts.
Does this then mean that we should support errors the kingdom commits as we hail the good things it does? No. But when we do criticize it, we have to do so constructively, and by constructive, I mean, an effective criticism that could practically lead to a positive change, though it may eventually not. This is different from going to the social media and rant and rave: an absolutely meaningless endeavor, that may sometimes border on mischief-making – as far as texts of the Qur’aan and the Sunnah and sound logic are concerned. I have already written posts on this.
Back to the topic. I first got this news on November 13 when an old friend and colleague of mine sent me a Whatsapp message in Arabic with two website links, seeking to know its authenticity. As I opened the links, I immediately observed the un-Saudi-like manner of construction of the purported Fatwa. With the background I have – without being immodest – of the Kingdom’s stance on issues like this, I would have instinctively told my friend that the news was fake. However, I preferred to stay on the safe side and made a quick search. It turned out that it was only some unreliable Egyptian websites that published it; I called them unreliable given the high volume of inauthentic news I found on the sites. This is in addition to the fact that none of them mentioned any traceable source from Saudi Arabia.
Between Monday and today, it is depressing that a quite number of our brethren have implicitly or explicitly lampooned Saudi Arabia and its political and religious leaders without verifying the authenticity or otherwise of the news. The least we can say is on: This is an example of intellectual laziness, if those lampooners were actually scholars!
For those who may not know, a Mufti in Saudi Arabia is an official of senior ministerial level. Any fatwa he gives is an official public decision conventionally published through official media such as Council of Senior Scholars’ website, Ministry of Islamic Affairs website, the Mufti’s website and official (secular-inclined) news media (that would of course be more than excited to publish such, given their antecedents!). None of the above-mentioned media published the purported Fatwa! Could a Fatwa of this dramatic shift nature be made, and surreptitiously so, that only some obscure and untrustworthy websites from Egypt would be aware of it?!
Finally, objectivity, as I understand it, is not to make a post about a person or state, based on an unverified news you got, and when you are supplied with the contradicting news, you just share it without editing your earlier post in a way that would reflect the new reality you have just had. This is not objectivity. It is subjectivity.
As for the dangers of believing in rumors and fake news and spreading the same; and insights on some of our brethren’s obsession with Saudi Arabia in terms of love and hatred, these are posts for other days.
Baarakallaahu feenaa wafeekum.
Ustaadh Abdur-Raafi Al-Imaam, a Nigerian author, wrote this piece from Doha, Qatar.
