The 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia will commence on June 14. This means that Ramadan – which falls this year between May 17, 2018 and June 14, 2018 – coincides with the period of intensive practice ahead of the games and with pre-tournament friendly matches. Furthermore, the first...
After 65 years of enmity between North and South Korea and of severe North Korea-U.S. tension, both conflicts appear to be moving towards resolution. At the historic April 27, 2018 summit between North Korean President Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, the two l...
A video showing the first Saudi women to receive their driver's license was posted on YouTube by the Saudi Center for Government Communication on June 5, a few weeks before the ban on women driving in Saudi Arabia was due to be lifted. The video shows several women driving and ho...
The following report is now a complimentary offering from MEMRI's Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM). For JTTM subscription information, click here.
On May 31, 2018, Al-Malahem, the media arm of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), released a new issue of its M...
In an article in the London-based Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat that was published two days after the Arab League summit in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, Saudi writer Mish'al Al-Sudairy argued that these conferences are pointless because over the years they have produced almost nothing....
Lebanon's May 6, 2018 parliamentary election – held nine years after the previous election and under a new electoral law, which, according to many, benefited Hizbullah – resulted in an electoral achievement for this organization and its allies, who gained about 70 out of 128 seat...
Among the Saudi intellectuals, journalists and writers who have recently been expressing open support for Israel,[1] the voice of intellectual 'Abd Al-Hamid Al-Hakim was especially prominent. Al-Hakim, until recently the director of the Middle East Center for Strategic and L...
Introduction:
The mounting tension between Israel and Iran, which came to a head with Iran's firing of missiles at Israel from Syrian territory and Israel's counterattack on Iranian sites in that country, sparked a debate in Saudi Arabia regarding which side Saudis should supp...
The attempts of European countries, specifically France, Germany and Britain, to safeguard the nuclear agreement with Iran were met with criticism in the Saudi press. Articles in Saudi newspapers accused these countries of being even more eager to maintain the agreement than Iran...
In an article laced with invective, and titled "You Have No Shame, Do you? Soon, You Will Raise U.S./Israel Flags In Mecca/Medina… Jerusalem Is A Common Homeland For Us All!", the editor-in-chief of AKP mouthpiece Yeni Safak, Ibrahim Karagul accused UAE Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed ...
On May 15, 2018, the day after the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, Saudi journalist Amal 'Abd Al-'Aziz Al-Hazzani called on Arabs and Palestinians to come to terms with reality and to take advantage of the event to renew negotiations with Israel. In an article in the Lo...
U.S. President Donald Trump's May 8, 2018 announcement of the U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA) and its reinstatement of the harsh sanctions against Iran won broad support from Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries. Saudi Arabia officially stated that it welcomed...
Saudi-Palestinian relations have been extremely strained recently, due, inter alia, to reports of active Saudi involvement in formulating and promoting U.S. President Donald Trump's "Deal of the Century," and apparently also due to increasing media reports that Saudi-Israeli rela...
Deputy Secretary-General of the Iraqi Hizbullah Al-Nujaba Movement, Sheikh Yusouf Al-Nasseri, discussed recent statements attributed to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and said that anyone who denies the doctrine of the Mahdi "is an impure heretic who should be killed." Sp...
In a January 12, 2018 article in the English-language daily Saudi Gazette, columnist Nefeen Abbas rebukes women who oppose their husband taking a second wife. Men, she says, unlike women, get bored with the monotony of married life, and if not allowed to take another wife they ar...
Saudi scholar Sheikh Saad ibn Abdullah Al-Humayd, said that although we have no proof of the authenticity of "The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion," the films produced by Hollywood and "the feverish competition meant to preoccupy people with the arts, with sports, with theater, an...
In his March 18, 2018 column in the London-based Saudi Al-Sharq Al-Awsat daily, journalist Hussein Shubakshi wrote about the situation of the Jews who had lived in the Arab countries. He noted that they suffered discrimination and prejudice, despite the fact that they were "pilla...
On April 14, 2018, about a week after the regime of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad carried out a chemical attack on the town of Douma near Damascus that killed dozens, the U.S., U.K. and France launched a joint military strike on regime bases and facilities associated with its ...
In recent weeks, there have been indications of a possible shift in Saudi Arabia's policy vis-à-vis Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad and recognition of his regime. These indications have prompted various predictions regarding the possibility of normalization of Saudi-Syrian relat...
U.S. President Donald Trump's statement that the Syrian regime will pay a "big price" for its April 7, 2018 chemical attack on Douma, which left dozens dead, as well as the American, British and French preparations for a military strike in Syria, sparked an intense debate in Saud...
Saudi scholar Sheikh Saad ibn Abdullah Al-Humayd said that although we have no proof of the authenticity of "The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion," the films produced by Hollywood and "the feverish competition meant to preoccupy people with the arts, with sports, with theater, and...
On April 3, 2018, Houthi rebels in Yemen fired a missile at, and struck, a Saudi oil tanker in international waters west of the Yemeni port city of Al-Hudaydah. In its report on the incident, the pro-"resistance" Lebanon-based Al-Mayadeen TV called the attack vengeance for Saudi ...
Houthi leader Mohammed Ali Al-Houthi, president of "the Revolutionary Committee of Yemen," warned the British, the Europeans, and the Americans: "Stop your support of Saudi Arabia so that it will stop bombing us. If you continue, we will continue to shell Aramco and other vital f...
In its March 18, 2018 editorial, the Saudi government daily Al-Riyadh wrote that, in light of the atrocities perpetrated by the Syrian regime against its people, as currently exemplified by the massacre in eastern Ghouta, and given the helplessness of the international community ...
Speaking on Russia Today on March 26, Saudi Prince Turki Al-Faisal said that Iran, and not U.S. President Trump, was "causing trouble in the region," and that it was Russia's responsibility to "highlight the atrocious acts that the Iranian government perpetrates against its own p...
On March 25, 2018, when UN Special Envoy for Yemen Martin Griffiths was visiting Yemen and two days before Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres were set to meet in New York, Houthi forces in Yemen fired seven ballistic missiles at Saudi...
U.S. President Donald Trump's removal of U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and his appointment of CIA director Mike Pompeo to replace him have garnered positive reactions in the Saudi press. In its March 14, 2018 editorial, the Saudi daily 'Okaz stressed the great importance ...
On January 22, 2018, close to International Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27, 2018), Dr. Mohammad Al-'Issa, secretary-general of the Saudi-based Muslim World League (MWL), sent a letter to Sara Bloomfield, director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., in...
Qatar's emir, Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani receives senior Hamas officials Isma'il Haniyeh and Khaled Mash'al (Source: Aawsat.com)
Since May 2017, Qatar has been waging a multifront battle with the Arab quartet. The camps are clear-cut: In Qatar's corner, there are Hamas, the Mu...
Recently, there have been signs that Saudi support for the Syrian opposition is eroding. Examples of this include Saudi Arabia's support, in 2017, for the de-escalation agreements signed under the sponsorship of the Syrian regime's main ally, Russia. Also, in November 2017, Saudi...
Saudi cleric Abd Al-Aziz Fawzan Al-Fawzan said that even though a Muslim might possess "some of the despicable and nasty traits of the Jews," one must not taunt or curse them for this. Describing these traits, Al-Fawzan said that the Jews are "the most envious of people and the m...
Saudi journalist Mohamed Al-Suhaimi said that he was in favor of silencing the microphones in the mosques, saying that the "terrifying" sound of the adhan call to prayer "coming from all directions" bothers people in prayer, scares children, and causes anxiety. "The group of peop...
As the Islamic State caliphate disintegrates, and it is not known for sure whether its leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi is alive, dead, or deep underground like Osama bin Laden after 9/11 – or possibly in a Syrian hospital in "critical" condition, as was widely reported this week – th...
Saudi Imam Abdulwahab Al-Omari said, in a Friday sermon, that Allah turned the Jews into apes and pigs, and that on Judgment Day, they would be the soldiers of the Antichrist. According to Al-Omari, Jesus would descend before Judgment Day, accept the shari'a, and pursue the Antic...
Recently, after the popular uprising in Iran died down, and following U.S. President Donald Trump's waiving of the nuclear sanctions against Iran, the Saudi press published a number of articles harshly criticizing the Western policy vis-à-vis Iran.[1] The articles expressed disap...
As part of the boycott declared on Qatar some six months ago by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt,[1] these countries drew up three lists of organizations and people who they say have ties to terror and are supported by Qatar. One of the organizations included on the third...
In an article titled "Enough Lies, the Arab Body Politic Created the ISIS Cancer," senior Lebanese journalist Dr. Hisham Melhem, who is Al-Arabiya's Washington bureau head and a correspondent for the Lebanese daily Al-Nahar, comes out against the prevalence of conspiracy theories...
In the opinion section of the English-language daily Saudi Gazette, UK-based Pakistani journalist Ali Ashraf Khan wrote that the rise of antisemitic sentiment throughout the world – exemplified by statements such as "all Jews should be gassed,"[1] is an "understandable reaction" ...
Saudi Admiral (Ret.) 'Umro Al-'Amery, who is currently a writer, and who penned a column for the Saudi government daily Al-Sharq from 2012 to 2013, posted on his Facebook page criticism of the Palestinians, particularly Hamas, in the current Gaza conflict with Israel. He stated t...
In an article in the official Saudi daily Al-Jazirah, titled "Only In The [Saudi] Kingdom: A Woman Gives Birth To Her Own Guardian," Saudi writer Lubna Al-Khamis termed as "benighted" the Saudi law that requires every Saudi woman to have a male relative as her mahram, or guardian...
The takeover of large parts of Iraq by the terrorist organization The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) was met with astonishment in Arab world. ISIS's advance was termed "a disaster",[1] a tsunami,[2] or even "the end of the Arabs."[3] The surprising nature of the developme...
In a recent fatwa, senior Saudi cleric Sheikh 'Abd Al-Rahman Al-Barrak proclaimed that football is an abomination that causes people to waste their time, to adopt the depraved customs of the enemies of Islam, and to glorify "infidel" football players. He issued the fatwa in respo...
Against a backdrop of the Gulf states' bitterness regarding U.S. policy in the region, the Saudi and Bahraini presses recently published a number of articles condemning it.[1] In a particularly scathing column published May 17, 2014 in the Bahraini daily Akhbar Al-Khaleej, Bahra...
The Saudi religious police prevents the kingdom's citizens from celebrating Valentine's Day and bans the sale of red roses and other products associated with the holiday. Enforcing this ban, the Buraidah criminal court on May 2014 issued sentences totaling 32 years' imprisonment ...
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif (left) and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani At a May 12, 2014 meeting in Tehran, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani agreed to boost Iran-Pakistan bilateral relations. They also agreed to press ahead wi...
In a May 14, 2014 article in the London-based Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, Al-Arabiya director and the daily's former editor 'Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed responded to reports that the Saudi foreign minister has invited his Iranian counterpart for negotiations in Saudi Arabia. Al-R...
On March 26, 2014, a video was posted on YouTube showing two Saudi youths being executed by Jabhat Al-Nusra (JN) on charges of fighting for the rival jihad group, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).[1] In response, Saudi columnist Dr. Muhammad Al-Harbi published an articl...
In an article titled "A New President from the Bush Clan" in the London-based daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, Saudi columnist Mamdouh Al-Muhaini supported former Florida governor Jeb Bush as the Republican candidate for the 2016 U.S. presidential elections, and detailed his reasons for...
In her column in the London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, Saudi columnist Lamia Al-Swailem attacked the glorification of death in Arab culture, and examined the difference between the value of human life in the Arab world and in the West. Calling on the Arabs not to accuse Westerners ...
The following report is a complimentary offering from MEMRI's Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM). For JTTM subscription information, click here. According to an Urdu-language daily, recruitment has begun for Saudi Arabian security agencies in different areas of Pakistan's...
U.S. President Barack Obama's upcoming visit to Riyadh, slated for March 28, 2014, has received little attention in the Gulf press. The few articles that addressed it expressed criticism of the U.S. Middle East policy, especially vis-à-vis Iran, Egypt, Syria and Iraq, stating tha...
Ahead of U.S. President Barack Obama's visit to Saudi Arabia, planned for March 28, 2014, the director of Al-Arabiya TV and former editor of the London-based Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, 'Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, wrote an article on Saudi-U.S. relations. In it, he argued that t...
In a series of recent articles, Pakistani writers questioned the government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for toeing the Saudi line as regards Syria, as media reports emerged that Saudi Arabia has asked for Pakistani military weaponry such as Chinese-built JF-17 Thunder figh...
In a Friday sermon, Saudi Imam Ibrahim Al-Harethi extolled martyrdom and Jihad, and criticized the “traitors in the Arab media” – mentioning Al-Arabiya TV and the Saudi London-based “Al-Sharq Al-Awsat” daily – praying to Allah to have “their hands chopped off and their tongues cu...
The following report is a complimentary offering from MEMRI's Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM). For JTTM subscription information, click here. In a recent TV interview, former Saudi Internet celebrity Suleiman Al-Subaie, known as "Sambateek," recounts how he became invol...
Saudi columnist Dr. Jibrin 'Ali Al-Jibrin, who is a sociology professor at King Saud University in Riyadh, wrote in an article in the official Saudi daily Al-Watan that Muslims fight each other and thereby do themselves more harm than their enemies do; despite this, he said they ...
Lately, several historic and unusual meetings have taken place between Saudi Prince Turki Al-Faisal, former Saudi intelligence chief and ambassador to Washington and London, and Israeli officials.[1] In response to criticism evoked by these meetings, which were seen as a kind of ...
According to the Urdu-language daily Roznama Naya Akhbar, Saudi Arabia has asked Pakistan to dispatch two divisions of its army (some 30,000 troops) to the kingdom as part of a bilateral defense agreement currently being formulated between the two countries. The report has it th...
On January 13, 2014, liberal Saudi columnist Khalaf Al-Harbi published an article in the Saudi government daily 'Okaz, in which he claimed that, despite the "horrific acts of massacre" that former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon carried out, the number of Arabs he killed is n...
In a December 24, 2013 column in the English-language paper Gulf News titled "Has Iran Really Changed?", former Saudi ambassador to Washington Prince Turki Bin Faisal responds to his own question with considerable skepticism. While noting that Saudi king 'Abdallah wishes the ne...
Every year, with the approach of the Christian holidays, and particularly Christmas, religious rulings are published in the Arab and Muslim world prohibiting Muslims from participating in the Christian celebrations and from extending holiday greetings to Christians.[1] In an arti...
Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, manager of Al-Arab TV and former editor of the official Saudi daily Al-Watan, dedicated his November 23, 2013 column in the London daily Al-Hayat to the topic of youths who are tempted to travel to jihad in Syria. The title of the column calls to...
The following MEMRI TV clip is a complimentary offering from MEMRI's Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM). For JTTM subscription information, click here. Following are excerpts from an interview with imprisoned Saudi Jihadi cleric Walid Al-Sinai, which aired on MBC TV via t...
On September 23, 2013, two young Saudi men drove off a bridge while being chased by the officers from the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, i.e., the Saudi religious police, known locally as "the Haia." One of them was killed instantly and the other l...
In a video address, jihadi leader Sheikh Saqr Al-Jihad called to commit martyrdom and to be placed in Paradise "along with the Prophet Muhammad... Sheikh Osama [bin Laden], and Sheikh Abdullah Azzam." "Oh, how we miss them," wailed the sheikh, who, wielding a dagger, said: "We a...
Dr. Hamza Al-Salem, a columnist for the Saudi daily Al-Jazirah, argued in a September 12, 2013 article titled "Salafism Is On Its Deathbed" that Salafism, i.e. Wahhabism, [1] which was once a source of strength and power for Saudi Arabia, is now the source of the mental, social, ...
In recent months, the Twitter account @Wahabism has tweeted a series of satirical comments about the meaning of Wahabism, or Wahhabism, explaining how the Wahhabi ideology has become a source of bloodshed across the Islamic world, especially when followed by Sunni jihadi organi...
In an interview with the Saudi Rotana Khalijiyya TV channel, Prince Turki Al-Faisal, former Saudi ambassador to the U.S. and former chief of general intelligence, said that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia were experiencing a crisis of confidence. To U.S. President Obama, who, accordin...
Underage marriage, particularly marriage between underage girls and older men, is common in some parts of the Arab and Muslim world, and occasionally comes up for debate in the Arab media. This happened recently following the case of a Yemeni 11-year-old, Nada Al-Ahdal, whose fat...
`Following the November 24, 2013 signing of the Joint Plan of Action in Geneva between Iran and the 5+1 group, most Arab countries – including Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Qatar, Egypt, Kuwait, Bahrain, and the UAE – officially welcomed the deal, each for its own reasons, and expressed ...
In an article titled "Saudi Arabia's Nuclear Bomb," published November 16, 2013 in the London-based Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, 'Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, the daily's former editor and the current director of Al-Arabiya, addressed the topic of Saudi Arabia's possible nuclear ar...
Speaking in English at the Annual Arab-U.S. Policymakers Conference in Washington D.C., held October 22-23, 2013 by the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations, former Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. and former intelligence chief Prince Turki Al-Faisal spoke out on a range of topics...
Historical Background Two months ago, the Saudi government began to build a fence along its border with Yemen in an attempt to separate the residents along both sides of the border. The border between the two countries was set out in the 2000 Jeddah border treaty, which included ...
In recent years, a debate has surfaced in the Saudi media over the use of flogging as a punishment administered by the Saudi Authority for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. Hundreds of Saudis are flogged every week for alleged "vice" crimes, such as harassing women,...
Saudi Arabia is the largest oil producing country among the members of the Organization of Oil Producing Countries (OPEC) and, as such, it is the dominant force in that organization. Changes in the supply equation that could diminish its role and influence in the international oi...
The leadership of the Egyptian Christian Coptic community has recently begun to express in public positions and complaints in a way uncommon in the past. The leader of Egypt's Coptic community, Patriarch Shinoda III, who in his articles, interviews, and public statements used to...
IntroductionOligarchy is a government in which a small group exercises control, especially for corrupt and selfish purposes. In Saudi Arabia, the few are the royal princes who are descendents of the founder of the modern Saudi Kingdom, King Abd Al-Aziz bin Sa'ud who, upon his de...
The Arab League summit meeting held in Beirut at the end of March was characterized by two major events - one substantive and the other symbolic. The substantive event was the unanimous vote in favor of Crown Prince Abdallah's proposals for peace between Israel and the Arab coun...
Abdallah's Peace PlanCrown Prince Abdallah bin Abd Al-Aziz,[1] Deputy Prime Minister and Commander of the Saudi National Guard, carried his peace initiative to Crawford, Texas, on April 25 after declining to meet with President Bush last year.[2] Most Arabic papers underscored t...
Full Withdrawal According to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, Prince Abdallah demanded a full Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders. But, according to Henry Siegman, a senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations, unnamed Saudi officials said Saudi Arabia would s...
IntroductionOn February 17, 2002, The New York Times published an article by columnist Thomas Friedman in which he reported about a conversation he had with Saudi Crown Prince Abdallah bin Abd Aziz Al-Saud. Prince Abdallah told Mr. Friedman that he had drafted a peace proposal wh...
On June 21, 2001 the US announced its decision to indict fourteen suspects of the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, in Daharan,Saudi-Arabia, in which 19 American soldiers were killed and approximately 400 people injured. The announcement was followed byanger against the US in Iran and ...
Saudi TV host Nadine Al-Budair talked about the contradictions in Arab society regarding attitudes toward women, saying that men prevent women from stepping out of their homes out of fear for their wellbeing, but "violently rape, burn, and kill their women at home." Al-Budair, sp...
Saudi cleric Adel Al-Kalbani, former Imam of the Great Mosque of Mecca, reiterated his claim that the Shi'ite scholars are heretics, saying: "What would you call someone who accuses Abu Bakr, Omar, or Uthman of heresy? You cannot call him anything [else]. Any person who accused '...
Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan warned Saudi Arabia that if the kingdom does anything "stupid," "I doubt that any place in Saudi Arabia will remain intact, with the exception of Mecca and Medina." Speaking on Al-Manar TV on May 7, he was responding to recent statements b...
In an in-depth interview, Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud rejected the possibility of any dialogue with Iran, asking how they could possibly reach an understanding with a country that is based on an "extremist ideology" and believes that it must "take contro...
In a video-clip posted on the Internet in October 23 2015, Saudi blogger Anas Iskander parodied a stereotypical Orthodox Jew, and exchanged accusations with him, calling him a "filthy Zionist" and disputing the question of historic rights to the land. In the skit, titled "Palesti...
Saudi cleric Sheikh Ayman Al-Anqari cited various hadiths in support of his claims that "coexistence in the sense of freedom of religion... is null and void" and that there are two kinds of Jihad: offensive Jihad and defensive Jihad. The punishment for apostasy, he said, "is one ...
Saudi Shura Council Member Ibrahim Al-Buleihi said that Arab society has become "even more backward than it used to be." Speaking on Rotana Khalijiyya TV on November 3, 2016, he said: "In the past, we did not create organizations like Al-Qaeda and Taliban. At least we had aspirat...
Former Palestinian Foreign Minister and chief negotiator Nabil Shaath said that in 2000, Saudi King Abdullah, then the Crown Prince, had given the Palestinians half a billion dollars and had collected another half a billion from the Arab League in order to keep the Intifada going...
Saudi academic and preacher Dr. Saad Al-Durihim recently said that it is in the interest of society to permit women to drive. "If the ruler believes that there is no problem with women driving, he should make this decision," said Al-Durihim, adding that "there is nothing in Islam...
Saudi cleric Sheikh Awadh Al-Qarni said that 9/11 had been "premeditated, fabricated, and calculated," and that the towers had been toppled by a controlled explosion. Speaking on the Saudi Al-Majd TV channel on January 10, Sheikh Al-Qarni said that "it is in the West's interest f...
Saudi author Turki Al-Hamad expressed optimism about the possibility of change in Saudi society, saying that even though "our society has been hijacked" and "unimaginable things have been done to it," he believed that "a viable ideology will prevail, even if it takes time." Speak...
Saudi Prince Khalid Al-Faisal said, in an Al-Arabiya TV interview, that "there are no longer conspiracies that are concocted in secret," because "global policies are out in the open." Prince Al-Faisal, who chairs the Beirut-based Arab Thought Foundation, an NGO dedicated to promo...
Saudi cleric Sheikh Abd Al-Aziz Moussa spoke out against the radicalization of Saudis and said that suicide operations "are haram in Riyadh as well as Tel Aviv, because they constitute murder." In a December 15 interview, which aired on Rotana Khalijiyya TV, he said that that "If...
Saudi cleric Khaled Al-Felaij said that the holidays celebrated by "the infidel Jews and Christians" were "based upon Falsehood, heresy, and polytheism" and that it was haram for Muslims to celebrate them, to greet those who celebrate them, or to give or accept presents from them...
Saudi writer Abdullah Alalweet said that the focus on issues of sex and women's apparel was not the essence of liberalism and that "anyone who judges the West by what women there wear or by their sexual conduct is... an idiot." Speaking on Rotana Khalijiyya TV in a December 4 int...
Saudi cleric Abd Al-Rahman Abd Al-Karim said that Islamic law requires that the woman stay at home. When a woman goes out to work, "it detracts from the beauty of the home," he said. Abd Al-Karim, speaking on Rotana Khalijiyya TV on November 6, suggested that Saudi Arabia should ...
Saudi writer Khaled Mushawah said that a reformulation of Islamic concepts is a positive things, as it is in the nature of Mankind to reexamine concepts and to develop. Notions should develop in keeping with changing political, economic, and social circumstances, he said. Mushawa...
In a Friday sermon, Sheikh Ibrahim Duwaish, Professor of Sunna at Qassim University, Saudi Arabia, compared the Jews to venomous snakes and sly foxes, saying: "The Jews will never abandon their disloyalty, their treachery, their slyness, or their wickedness." Sheikh Duwaish calle...
Saudi journalist Meshari Al-Zaidi hailed the victory of "the popular Republican bulldozer, the businessman Donald Trump" and said that "the sun of the American Obamite term is about to set." Speaking on Al-Arabiya TV on November 22, Al-Zaidi said: We Arabs, and especial...
Liberal Moroccan writer Said Nachid talked, during a conference of the Adhoc organization of liberal modern thought, held in Rome, about his friend Raif Badawi, who was arrested in 2012 and later sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes for "insulting Islam through electr...
When asked why a man who loves his wife should turn to polygamy, Dr. Zahra Al-Muabbi, a Saudi family and marital consultant, responded: "One wife is not enough." She said that while the man was created with capabilities "which he can dispense among four wives," a woman "cannot ev...
In a video uploaded to his YouTube channel on October 27, 2016, Saudi imam Zayd bin Musfir Al-Bahri discussed how executions should be carried out, saying that while "some jurisprudents" say that for any premeditated killing, execution should be "by the sword alone," "some schola...
Saudi women's rights activist Nasema Al-Sada called for the state to make decisions "that will bring about a qualitative change in the lives of women" and recognize that "the woman is a equal citizen with mental maturity." The issue of the guardianship of women was discussed In a...
Saudi-born singer Shams Bandar, also known as "Shams the Kuwaiti," rejected the notion that the words "hur al-ayn" refers to the black-eyed virgins of Paradise, saying: "It is inconceivable that [God] would create man, pamper him, and make a paradise for him with Bollywood-style ...
In a video posted on the Internet on October 28, Saudi Jihadi cleric Abdallah Al-Muhaysini congratulated Saudi suicide bomber Yunis Al-Qir'awi, saying: "This hero is going to Paradise tonight, in order to marry the beautiful black-eyed virgins." Al-Muhaisiny saluted Al-Qir'awi's ...
Saudi scholar Dr. Muhammad Al-Sallomi recently said that while minorities have "human rights," they must not have "sovereign rights," which, he said, refer to the national, ideological, and cultural security of a country. Is it conceivable that in Saudi Arabia, "the minorities wo...
Saudi writer and poet Shtiwi Al-Ghithi discussed the ideological roots of ISIS in an October 14 interview with the Abu Dhabi-based Sky News Arabia TV. "Some of the things that ISIS is doing can be found in our heritage and in much of the religious discourse in Saudi Arabia and el...
Interviewed on MBC TV on October 19, Saudi Deputy Minister of Economy and Planning Dr. Mohammad Al-Tuwaijri said that given Saudi Arabia's dwindling reserves and the instability in the oil market, "bankruptcy would have been inevitable" if it had not implemented "bold reforms."
...
Saudi author Said Al-Suraihi, interviewed by the Al-Arabiya network, said that the crisis in the Arab world stemmed from the perseverance of tribal perceptions of the ruler as the sheikh or the surrogate of God, who cannot be taken to task. He accused the Arab regimes of keeping ...
Speaking on the Yemeni Al-Masirah TV channel on October 9, a day after a Saudi-led airstrike attacked a funeral ceremony in the capital of Sanaa, Abd Al-Malik Al-Houthi, Leader of "Ansar Allah" Movement, accused the U.S. of being "the mastermind behind it, the planner, the decisi...
Speaking on BBC Arabic, Saudi writer and women's rights activist Hala Al-Dosari said that women in Saudi Arabia face more legal restrictions than in any other country and that: "The problem of the [Saudi] legal system is that it deals with the lives of people living in the 21st c...
Islamic researcher Muhammad Al-Tawbah said, in a recent TV interview, that the Jews, whose "interests are threatened" by the presence of the Muslim immigrants in Europe, "have a great interest in causing aversion of Muslims and in banning a Muslim from owning a newspaper, for exa...
In a video posted on his YouTube channel, Saudi Cleric Sheikh Mamdouh Al-Harbi said that "the concept of terrorism is a blessed one" and that it is "required by the Shari'a." He further said that the only meaning of Jihad is fighting the infidels, stressing that the term "Jihad,"...
In a recent YouTube video, Saudi scholar Dr. Abdallah Al-Yahya warned that the Jews "are like a cancer in the economy of countries: If they spread, along comes someone to eradicate them, but then they grow once again." Al-Yahya further said: "Before they were burned in the Holoca...
On his political satire show "DNA," broadcast by the Al-Arabiya network on September 14, Lebanese journalist and satirist Nadim Koteich lampooned Bashar Al-Assad after reports that Syria had downed two Israeli aircraft with missiles."Bashar Hafez Al-Assad - that's a trademark," h...
Saudi cleric Sheikh Muhammad Al-Shemali, speaking on the Saudi Al-Ahwaz TV channel, said that women in the West live "a bitter reality" of humiliation and degradation. Unlike Muslim society, in which "the woman is protected," Western women are "corrupted" by having more than one ...
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