Saudi Arabia stresses freezing donations, denies financing Hamas; rehabilitates 1000 preachers
Saudi Arabia, Politics, 6/25/2003

Saudi Arabia announced yesterday it had stopped more than 1000 preachers of mosques until they undergo rehabilitation courses to promote moderate attitude and reject extremism represented by al-Qaida organization. A matter which seemed as a campaign of reform ( Islah ) in the very influencial religious institute in the Kingdom.

Despite the fact that the Saudi governmental official who announced this step stressed it was not linked to the American pressures on the Kingdom, nor the explosions which targeted houses complexes in Riyadh, nor clashes in Mecca, however, stopping those preachers and advocates from work can be listed in the context of several stances announced towards controlling extremism and monitoring the flow of assets and talks on amending certain educational curricula.

Amid American calls to cut the Arab support to Palestinian organizations, a remarkable position was taken by an official at the Saudi foreign ministry as he was quoted that the aid given by Saudi Arabia to Palestine goes to the Palestinian authority and not the Hamas movement, noting that the Kingdom has actually frozen last week the work of the donation raising commissions, waiting for restructuring standards of its work in order to make sure that the money does not go to the hands of "terrorists."

The deputy minister at the Islamic affairs ministry in Saudi Arabia, Abdul Rahman al-Matroudi said that the preachers who were stopped will be rehabilitated in order to tell the worshippers that the September 11 attacks are a violation to the teaching of Islam.

He said that stopping preachers from working is part of a periodical revision carried out by Saudi Arabia in the course of the preachers follow up to the developments of events, and is not a reaction to the Riyadh explosions in May or as a result of Saudis being exposed to pressures to control the religious establishments accused in the west of promoting extremism.

Al-Matroudi said that the preachers were informed that what happened on September 11 and the attacks which took place in other areas are all against Islam and that people should be notified that this is the position that Muslims should take. He indicated that "if one is not qualified to perform this mission, he will be asked to quit or he will be retrained and qualified."

However, the move started before Riyadh's explosions during which 35 persons were killed and al-Qaida organization was blamed for that.

Al-Matroudi said that certain Americans, regrettably do not know what is taking place in the kingdom, noting that as a result of that they make their assessment having no information on the culture and tradition of the kingdom. He added that all Mosques' Imams and preachers criticized al-Qaida attitude.

Previous Stories:
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