Salmān al-ʿAudah

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Salman al-Odah (2009)

Salmān ibn Fahd al-ʿAuda ( Arabic سلمان بن فهد العودة, born in December 1956 at Buraida ), known as Salman al-Odah , is a Saudi Islamic scholar and preacher who advocates moderate Salafism and is one of the most influential Muslim personalities of our time. In 2014, he was 16th on the list of the 500 most influential Muslims drawn up by the Jordanian Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center and the Prince-al-Walid-bin-Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding .

In the early 1990s, al-ʿAuda was one of the scholars of the so-called Sahwa group who repeatedly criticized the foreign and domestic policies of the Saudi leadership and was imprisoned for it. Even after his release in 1999, he repeatedly interfered in political debates in his country with open letters and public statements. He has also publicly condemned the activities of al-Qaeda several times over the past few years, spoken out against the use of terrorist violence in the name of Islam and called for no aggression to be used when defending the Prophet Mohammed against insults.

Salmān al-ʿAuda is the author of numerous books on Islamic subjects and a member of the International Union of Muslim Scholars . He is one of the members (Senior Fellows) of the Royal Aal-al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought in the Jordanian capital Amman . In addition, he is very active on the Internet . He is the founder of the Internet website Islam Today , has his own Twitter account with 6.4 million followers and maintains his own YouTube channel called DrSalmanTv .

On September 9, 2017, Salmān al-ʿAuda was arrested again along with other dissident Muslim scholars from Saudi Arabia. Middle East Eye reported on May 21, 2019 that Salmān al-ʿAudah, along with preacher Awad al-Qarni and scholar Ali al-Omari, would be executed after the end of Ramadan 2019. Apparently, however, there is no final judgment so far. The process is scheduled to continue in December 2019.

Life

Youth and education

Salmān al-ʿAuda comes from a moderately wealthy but respected family of the Qasīm and was born in Jumādā al-ūlā 1376 (= December 1956) in the small village of al-Basr west of Buraida. He attended the first two grades of elementary school in his village school and then switched to Huwaiza School in Buraida, where he stayed through to secondary school. He then studied at the Faculty of Arabic Language and the Sharia Faculty of the Islamic Imam Muhammad ibn Saud University of Qasīm. He first worked for four years as a teacher at a scientific institute and then returned to the university as a repeater ( muʿīd ), where he did his master's thesis on hadiths under Muhammad Surūr at the Faculty for the Fundamentals of Religion ( uṣūl ad-dīn ) and wrote rules on foreignness ( ġurba ). He then taught Sharia sciences himself in the college.

Salmān al-ʿAuda only obtained his doctorate in 2004 with a four-volume commentary on the chapter on ritual purity in the book Bulūġ al-marām fī adillat al-aḥkām by Ibn Hajar al-ʿAsqalānī . ʿAbdallāh ibn Baiya acted as supervisor of the work .

Years of political protest and imprisonment

After the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait , he and Safar al-Hawālī gave passionate sermons criticizing the regime for its decision to deploy an army of " infidels " on Saudi soil. Their popularity skyrocketed, and large numbers of their tapes were circulating around the country. In May 1991 he was one of the signatories of the "Letter of Demands" ( ḫiṭāb al-maṭālib ), in which Saudi scholars asked the king to set up a consultative council and undertake economic, political and military reforms. In his sermons distributed on tapes, he called for the country to be reunited by returning to Sharia with the Koran and Sunna . In a 1992 published book entitled "The Christianization in the Gulf and in the Arabian Peninsula" ( At-Tanṣīr fī-ḫalīǧ wa-SIBH al-ǧazīra ) he railed in a sweeping blow against Western powers, Christian missionaries and United Nations , which he alleged a conspiracy against Islam and the Muslims. In the same year he also signed the “Memorandum of Advice” ( muḏakkirat an-naṣīḥa ), which was presented to the King of Saudi Arabia and which was published in the Arab newspaper al-Muharrir in Paris and caused great anger among the royal family.

After the Islamists' decision in 1993 to found the Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights (CDLR), the regime took more harsh action against the opposition. On September 11, 1994, after a series of rallies in al-ʿAuda's hometown of Buraida , for which the Sahwa was held responsible, Salmān al-ʿAuda was summoned to the office of the governor of al-Qasīm province and asked to submit a document undertake not to preach any more, which he refused. He was arrested a few days later along with several other senior members of the Sahwa Circle and sentenced to five years in prison. During his detention, Osama bin Laden repeatedly requested his release.

After release (1999-2017)

On June 25, 1999, al-ʿAudah was released along with his former companion, Safar al-Hawālī . In the period that followed, the two softened their criticism of the state, and the regime showed greater tolerance towards them. Al-ʿAuda and al-Hawālī now went their separate ways, insofar as udaAuda was more concerned with improving his standing with the royal family and sought to fill the void that Abd al-Aziz ibn Baz (1910-1999 ) and the Saudi scholar Ibn ʿUthaimīn (1929–2001) left behind by their death. He gave numerous television interviews, especially on al-Arabiya, and founded his own website, Islam Today , in 2001 .

His television program Hajar az-Zāwiya ("The Cornerstone"), which ran on MBC from 2004 to 2009 during Ramadan and in which he spoke to the presenter Fahd as-Saʿawī on various issues in life, was also very popular .

As the news channel al-Arabiya reported, the wife and a son of al-ʿAuda had an accident on January 25, 2017 when their vehicle collided with a truck.

Another arrest

As reported by BBC News , Salmān al-ʿAuda was arrested on Saturday evening, September 9, 2017, along with 20 other Muslim preachers. The Reuters news agency was told that the group had been accused of espionage activities and contacts with the Muslim Brotherhood . The activities of the Brotherhood are at the center of the political conflict between Saudi Arabia and Qatar . England-based human rights activist Yahya al-Assiri told the Wall Street Journal that the officers who arrested al-ʿAudah cited his lack of support for Saudi policies towards Qatar as the reason for the arrest.

Saudi Twitterers said that Salmān al-ʿAuda was arrested for tweeting a call for a "reconciliation" ( taʾlīf al-qulūb ) following a telephone conversation between the Emir of Qatar Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and the Saudi heir to the throne Mohammed bin Salman . Various Islamic organizations and groups disapproved of the imprisonment of Salmān al-ʿAuda and demanded his immediate release. The International Union of Muslim Scholars called on the Saudi authorities to follow the "voice of wisdom" and not to involve Muslim scholars in a political conflict. After al-'Auda more than four months in solitary confinement had spent in Dhahbān, his condition worsened in January 2018 so much that he be transferred to a hospital in Jeddah had.

Opinions on political and social issues since 1999

Domestic issues

After his release, al-ʿAudah began to defend the Saudi leadership against their opponents. On May 17, 2003 - five days after the first attack by al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula against residential complexes in Riyadh - he and 50 other Saudi scholars signed a clear condemnation of these attacks. In June 2004, he and four other scholars, including al-Hawālī, published a statement condemning the terrorist attacks. In response to the attack by the Saudi Interior Ministry in late December 2004, he published a statement on January 15, 2005 on his website by 41 Saudi scholars warning of actions and verbal attacks against the regime.

He was also hostile to the liberal Saudi opposition. He is said to have supported a petition for reform to create a constitutional monarchy, submitted in December 2003 and signed by several other Sahwa members, but in December 2004 he and 34 other scholars signed a declaration outlining the efforts of the London-based resident Saudi dissident Saʿd al-Faqīh for organizing demonstrations and civil disobedience against the government were convicted. When Lubna Olayan and other businesswomen appeared unveiled at the Jeddah Economic Forum in 2003 and the incident was strongly condemned by the supreme mufti ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Āl al-Sheikh , al-ʿAuda stood behind the highest religious authority in the country and spoke up at the same time against punishing these offenses.

He was also involved in social integration initiatives in Saudi Arabia. At a “Conference for National Dialogue” in June 2003, organized by Crown Prince Abdullah ibn Abd al-Aziz , al-ʿAuda held talks with Sufis and the Shiite scholar Hasan as-Saffār . When, in 2004, the Second National Dialogue recommended modernizing school curricula to create a spirit of tolerance and moderation, and more than 150 religious scholars protested, al-ʿAudah did not join the protest. In the same year he condemned the killing of Muhammad Bāqir al-Hakīm , the former leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq . In the spring of 2004, however, he expressed sharp criticism of the Iraqi mardschaʿīya because it had not condemned inflammatory speeches by a Kuwaiti Shiite religious scholar about the Sunnis revered caliphs Abū Bakr and ʿUmar ibn al-Chattāb . Al-ʿAuda said that the silence of the Shiite leaders threatened peaceful coexistence between Sunnis and Shiites and made it difficult to end old animosities.

In recent years, Salmān al-ʿAudah has become a little more courageous when making statements on domestic political issues. On March 15, 2013, for example, he published an open letter on Twitter in which he warned the Saudi leadership to release all political prisoners in order to soothe popular anger and avoid unrest in the country.

Islamist terror

Salman al-Odah (2012)

Salmān al-ʿAuda has criticized Islamist terrorism several times. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 , al-ʿAudah condemned the attacks on the United States and distanced himself from Osama bin Laden without openly condemning him.

In March 2003, shortly before the American occupation of Iraq, he published a statement by various scholars entitled "The Internal Front and Current Challenge: A Legal Perspective" in which he argued that jihad could only be proclaimed by established religious authorities .

In an open letter to Osama bin Laden, which he wrote in Ramadan in 2007 to commemorate the 9/11 attacks, he made grave allegations for the crimes he had committed: "Brother Usama, how much blood did you shed? How many innocents, children, old people and women have been killed, made homeless or displaced in the name of “al-Qaida?” Is it easy for you to meet God with this burden on your shoulders where there are hundreds of thousands or millions. "

In September / October 2009, al-ʿAudah again condemned the use of terrorist violence in the name of Islam in an article on his website. In this article, entitled "Together Against the Terrorism of Al-Qaeda" ( Maʿan ḍidd irhāb al-Qāʿida ), he wrote:

“There may be some harsh and harsh words in this article about those who have walked the path of violence, words I do not otherwise use. But I feel the need to use them now because we are facing people who arm themselves with iron and fire to kill people and destroy societies. - When I was writing about al-Qaeda, some of my dear friends scolded me and warned me that I could be the target of attacks on my honor, or worse. But I said that the matter required clarity and openness. And I do not hide the fact that I do not consider it necessary to be guided by the fears they speak of. - I have repeatedly called on our sincere scholars and preachers to call things by their real name and to withhold the sacred, divine name of jihad from the activities of these fighting organizations that kill innocent people and ensure security in the countries of Islam and others Undermine countries with which there is a treaty. "

In some cases Salmān al-ʿAuda also considered the use of force to be legitimate, for example in the conflict with Israel during the Second Intifada . It is known that shortly after his release he organized telethons for the families of Palestinian suicide bombers who died in the uprising . Even after the American occupation of Iraq, he considered the use of force to be legitimate from a certain point in time. On November 5, 2004, shortly before the American siege of the Iraqi city of Fallujah , he published on his website an “Open Letter to the Iraqi People” signed by 26 Saudi scholars, in which, like a fatwa, the Iraqis were called to join to participate in a defensive jihad against the American military occupation.

Understanding with the West and defending the Prophet

Salmān al-ʿAuda also advocates an understanding with the West. When, after the attacks of September 11, 2001, 60 American intellectuals addressed the Muslim world under the auspices of the Institute for American Values with the declaration “What we're fighting for”, he published a response manifest entitled How we can coexist , in which he called for a serious dialogue with the West. This was signed by more than 100 liberal and secular Saudis.

In 2007 Salmān al-ʿAuda founded the "International Support Organization" (ISO, Arabic munaẓẓamat an-nuṣra al-ʿālamīya ) based in the USA, which advocates a general improvement in the image of the Prophet Mohammed , widespread misconceptions about fight it, work out a well-thought-out plan to support it and promote the principle of positive dialogue among all people in an atmosphere of justice and mutual respect. As part of this organization, al-ʿAudah has publicly called for no violence in defending the Prophet. When American embassies and consulates were attacked in several Islamic countries in September 2012 following the broadcast of the film Innocence of Muslims, which vilified Mohammed , he condemned these actions and emphasized that the ethical teachings of Islam prohibit such aggression. Although Muslims are entitled to feel anger when their prophet is insulted, this anger should not turn into violence. Rather, it is necessary to use all available media in order to achieve the vision of the organization, namely that the Prophet "is recognized worldwide as the most exemplary and admirable of all people."

gender equality

In his television program Hajar az-Zāwiya , Salmān al-ʿAuda also made frequent comments on the position of women in Islam. In October 2005, for example, he said that the religious legal texts of Islam with regard to gender equality can be divided into three groups. The first group of texts refers to equality, which applies in principle, unless otherwise stated. To this group of texts belongs, for example, the passage “And women are entitled to what they are themselves obliged to do according to fairness” in Sura 2 : 228.

In another group of texts there is a preference for women, for example in sura 42:49, where it says: “God's rule over the heavens and the earth. He creates what he wants. He gives female beings to whom he wills and gives male beings to whom he wills. ”Here the female beings are placed before the male beings in order to reject the ideas of the Jāhilīya people who disdain the female being. Also Sura 46 : 15, the instructions when prompted to piety towards parents specifically to the mother as a woman in labor, the father but unmentioned leave, belong to this group. From it it emerges that piety towards the mother is considerably more important than that towards the father.

Finally, there is a third group of passages in which the man is preferred, such as the passage “Men stand above women” ( ar-riǧāl qauwāmūn ʿalā n-nisāʾ ) in Sura 4:34 and the passage “Men stand a step above them ”in sura 2: 228. The Muslims should not be ashamed of these positions, but rather acknowledge that Islam has given men a special responsibility and placed them on a higher level. Although the male gender is generally preferred over the female gender, this does not mean that every man is better than every woman, since there are women who are much better than men. Rather, the two verses said that the first responsibility rests with the man. The man's special qiwama position, however, does not mean that the man may harass the woman, disregard her, impose things on her or withdraw her rights.

Works

  • Al-Ġurabāʾ al-auwalūn: asbāb ġurbatihim wa-maẓāhiruhā wa-kaifīyat muwāǧahatihā ("The first strangers: the reasons and manifestations of their strangeness and the way to encounter them"), Ad-Dammām 1989. First part of the revised version of al -ʿAuda's master's thesis on how the first Muslims around them were like strangers.
  • Ṣifat al-ġurabāʾ: al-firqa an-nāǧiya, aṭ-ṭāʾifa al-manṣūra, ṣifāt uḫar ("The attribute of strangers: 'escaping crowd', 'victorious party' and other attributes"), Ad-Dammām 1990. Second part from al-ʿAuda's master's thesis.
  • Al-ʿUzla wa-l-ḫulṭa: aḥkām wa-aḥwāl ("Isolation and Participation: Rules and Conditions"), Ad-Dammām 1993. Fourth part of al-ʿAuda's master's thesis.
  • Ḥiwār hādi 'maʿa Muḥammad al-Ġazālī (" Quiet dialogue with Muhammad al-Ghazālī "), Beirut 1993.
  • Maʿa l-ʿilm ("With the knowledge"), ar-Riyad 2011. Essai on the type of necessary Islamic education.
  • Šukran aiyuhā l-aʿdāʾ ("Thank you, enemies"), ar-Riyad 2010. Essai in which al- ʿAudah discusses the usefulness of constructive criticism from enemies.
  • Ṭufūlat qalb (“Childhood of the Heart”), ar-Riyad 2011, autobiography .
  • Išrāqāt qurʾānīya. Ǧuzʾ ʿamma ("Koranic enlightenments. The part ʿAmma"), ar-Riyad 2011, Koran commentary on the 30th and last part of the Koran, which almost exclusively contains suras from the early Meccan period . Al-'Auda has specially selected this part of the Koran for comment because in it the i'jaz can identify particularly well.

literature

  • Madawi Al-Rasheed: Contesting the Saudi State: Islamic voices from a new generation. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007. pp. 182-184.
  • David Commins: The Wahhabi Mission and Saudi Arabia . Tauris, London, 2006. pp. 181-183.
  • Turkī ad-Duḫaiyil: Salmān al-ʿAudah ... min as-siǧn ... ilā t-tanwīr . 3rd ed. Madārik Ibdāʿ, Našr, Tarǧama wa-Taʿrīb, Beirut, 2011.
  • Mamoun Fandy: Saudi Arabia and the Politics of Dissent . New York: Palgrave 1999. pp. 89-113.
  • International Crisis Group : “Saudi Arabia Backgrounder. Who are the Islamists? ”ICG Middle East Report No. 31, September 21, 2004. PDF
  • Toby Craig Jones: "The Clerics, the Sahwa and the Saudi State" in Strategic Insights IV / 3 (March 2005), pp. 1-10. (on-line)
  • Gilles Kepel: The War for Muslim Minds: Islam and the West . Translated by P. Ghazaleh. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2004. pp. 188-190.
  • Stéphane Lacroix: Awakening Islam. The politics of religious dissent in contemporary Saudi Arabia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press 2011.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See http://themuslim500.com/the-top-50 .
  2. ↑ cf. aalalbayt.org
  3. ^ Arabic version and English version ( Memento from July 13, 2017 in the Internet Archive ).
  4. ↑ See https://twitter.com/salman_alodah
  5. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/user/DrSalmanTv
  6. ↑ David Hearst: “Saudi Arabia to execute three prominent moderate scholars after Ramadan” , in: Middle East Eye , May 21, 2019. Access date: August 24, 2019.
  7. ^ "Trial of Saudi scholar Salman al-Awdah postponed, says son" , Al Jazeera , July 28, 2019.
  8. ↑ See ad-Duḫaiyil: Salmān al-ʿAuda . 2011, p. 46.
  9. ↑ See the autobiography on his website http://www.islamtoday.net/salman/aboutus.htm .
  10. ↑ See Commins: The Wahhabi Mission and Saudi Arabia . 2006. p. 181.
  11. ↑ See International Crisis Group: Saudi Arabia Backgrounder . 2004, p. 5.
  12. ↑ Fandy: Saudi Arabia and the Politics of Dissent . 1999, p. 92.
  13. ↑ Fandy: Saudi Arabia and the Politics of Dissent . 1999, p. 95.
  14. ↑ Fandy: Saudi Arabia and the Politics of Dissent . 1999, p. 95.
  15. ↑ See Lacroix: Awakening Islam. 2011, pp. 185-7.
  16. ↑ See International Crisis Group: "Saudi Arabia Backgrounder . 2004, p. 5.
  17. ↑ Fandy: Saudi Arabia and the Politics of Dissent . 1999, p. 92.
  18. ↑ See Thomas Hegghammer: Jihad in Saudi Arabia. Violence and Pan-Islamism since 1979. Cambridge [u. a.]: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2010. p. 70.
  19. ↑ See International Crisis Group: "Saudi Arabia Backgrounder . 2004, p. 5.
  20. ↑ See Lacroix: Awakening Islam. 2011, p. 240.
  21. ↑ See International Crisis Group: Saudi Arabia Backgrounder . 2004, p. 7.
  22. ↑ See Kepel: The War for Muslim Minds . 2004, p. 189.
  23. ↑ See the content and stylistic evaluation of the program in ad-Duḫaiyil: Salmān al-ʿAuda . 2011, pp. 95-334.
  24. ↑ AlArabiya.net: Wafāt zauǧat wa-ibn ad-dāʿiya as-suʿūdī Salmān al-ʿAuda bi-ḥādiṯ murūrī . January 26, 2017
  25. ↑ BBC News: Saudi Arabia 'arrests clerics in crackdown on dissent'
  26. ↑ AlJazeera.net: Maḫāwif ʿalā ḥayāt Salmān al-ʿAuda baʿda tadahwur ṣiḥḥati-hī . 20th January 2018 .
  27. ↑ See Jones: "The Clerics, the Sahwa and the Saudi State". 2005, p. 4.
  28. ↑ See International Crisis Group: Saudi Arabia Backgrounder . 2004, p. 19.
  29. ↑ See Jones: "The Clerics, the Sahwa and the Saudi State". 2005, p. 4.
  30. ↑ See Jones: "The Clerics, the Sahwa and the Saudi State". 2005, p. 7.
  31. ↑ See Jones: "The Clerics, the Sahwa and the Saudi State". 2005, p. 4.
  32. ↑ See International Crisis Group: Saudi Arabia Backgrounder . 2004, p. 10f.
  33. ↑ See Lacroix: Awakening Islam. 2011, p. 244.
  34. ↑ See International Crisis Group: Saudi Arabia Backgrounder . 2004, p. 10f.
  35. ↑ See Jones: "The Clerics, the Sahwa and the Saudi State". 2005, p. 10.
  36. ↑ See the document "An Open Letter from Salman al-Odah" in Jadaliyya Reports March 18, 2013 Online
  37. ↑ See Kepel: The War for Muslim Minds . 2004, p. 189.
  38. ↑ See Al-Rasheed: Contesting the Saudi State . 2007, p. 184.
  39. ↑ See International Crisis Group: Saudi Arabia Backgrounder . 2004, p. 10.
  40. ↑ See the Arabic version of the letter and the English translation ( Memento from September 20, 2015 in the Internet Archive ).
  41. ↑ See Paul Kamolnick: Delegitimizing al-Qaeda: A Jihad-realist approach . The Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College. P. 46.
  42. ↑ See the original Arabic text and the English translation ( Memento of March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ).
  43. ↑ See Kepel: The War for Muslim Minds . 2004, p. 189.
  44. ↑ See Jones: "The Clerics, the Sahwa and the Saudi State". 2005, p. 5.
  45. ↑ http://americanvalues.org/catalog/pdfs/what-are-we-fighting-for.pdf
  46. ↑ See the document on Salmān al-ʿAuda's website Islamtoday: Archived copy ( Memento from September 20, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  47. ↑ See the list of signatories on Salmān al-ʿAuda's website Islamtoday: Archived copy ( Memento from September 20, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  48. ↑ See the presentation on al-ʿAuda's website ( memento from September 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  49. ↑ Quoted from the English explanation ( memento of April 5, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) on al-ʿAuda's website. Arabic version here .
  50. ↑ See ad-Duḫaiyil: Salmān al-ʿAuda . 2011, p. 230f.
  51. ↑ See ad-Duḫaiyil: Salmān al-ʿAuda . 2011, p. 231f.
  52. ↑ See ad-Duḫaiyil: Salmān al-ʿAuda . 2011, p. 232f.
  53. ↑ See the description of the work on ʿAuda's website: https://www.islamtoday.net/salman/book-22-8-5.htm
  54. ↑ See the description of the work on ʿAuda's website: https://www.islamtoday.net/salman/artshow-78-173894.htm
personal data
SURNAME Salmān al-ʿAudah
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Salmān ibn Fahd al-ʿAudah; Odah, Salman al-
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Saudi Islamic scholar and preacher
DATE OF BIRTH December 1956
PLACE OF BIRTH at Buraida