Saudi Arabia and Iran

Jan 21, 2016

By Prof Samir Khalil Samir, SJ
The emerging clash between Saudi Arabia and Iran has certain political and economic motives: differing positions on the issues of Syria and Yemen, competition in oil production, the struggle for power on the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf. But this confrontation also has religious roots and is about whose form of Islam is destined to dominate.

Islam has been going through a crisis for decades, its most profound in the last two centuries. This crisis is manifest in diverse forms, depending on the politics in question. However, one point that must be urgently addressed and resolved is the close relationship between politics and religion.

The reality is that this problem was addressed in the period between the mid-1800s and mid 1900s. There was a liberal trend that sought to create states that were religiously neutral; Islamic because the majority of the population was Muslim, but in which non-Muslims enjoyed the same rights, more or less. So there was a certain neutrality and secularism.

However, over the past 50 years or so, we have been witnessing a reverse trend. For example in Egypt, where in Minia in 1973, all of a sudden, girls’ schools demanded that all the girls be veiled, with the chador, hands gloved. The explanation: Saudi Arabia paid a “monthly salary” to the families who agreed to cover their women.

This salary was approximately one third of the salary of an employee. And people accepted the money. This custom has become quite normal. Now, a woman is criticized, and looked at badly if she does not wear a veil. Even Christian women walk around covered for fear of being insulted or offended. This move towards closure comes directly from the Sunni and Wahhabi fundamentalism of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. It can also be explained from a sociological point of view: Egypt had more than one million workers abroad, in Saudi Arabia, who, after a few years, brought Saudi practices home with them. The same goes for other migrants returning to their country of origin. The expression you could hear everywhere: “God bless Saudi Arabia, damn it!” Arabia was a source of economic gain, but also a source of fundamentalism and closure.

Things like that happen in Italy, where the fundamentalist husbands force their wives to follow the Saudi or fundamentalist customs. They see these cultural customs as a religious category.

It must be said that other Gulf countries have more tolerant views, to the point that they allow the construction of churches, and even fund them.

If there was a liberal view in Saudi Arabia similar to, Tunisia for example, today we would have a very different Islamic situation, one that was more open, more tolerant. And that’s what the majority of Muslims want to reach, unfortunately without knowing how to go about it, or not daring to try what is inevitable. This does not mean imitating the West in everything it  does — which would be catastrophic — rather, it means discerning what is positive and constructive in modernity, and applying it. In this, I think that Christians of the East have a mission of discernment, to help their Muslim brothers to integrate the positive aspects of modernity, rejecting what is negative. --AsiaNews