By Rashed Fahd Al-Rashed
June 18, 2015
When one sees the photos of those wanted by the Ministry of Interior, one will note that most of them have the faces of children and have barely turned 18. Most are of an age at which a person’s awareness, convictions, beliefs and experience are still forming, let alone reaching maturity and firmness on intellectual issues and matters pertaining to Shariah, the Holy Qur’an, the Sunnah, Ijtihad (independent reasoning using the Holy Qur’an and Sunnah) and other matters of faith.
How much knowledge they have acquired from the experiences and ideas of known scholars does not matter; their young age and minds and their insufficient educational levels do not provide them with the capacity to comprehend, analyze, accept or reject religious texts. Nor are they completely aware of and cognizant of the several schools of Islamic jurisprudence and the views of religious scholars of note. They are superficial and have become empty-minded imitators of scholars noted for their shallowness and ignorance.
Unfortunately, these young men, as a result of their ignorance, have fallen into the morass of the so-called Sahwa ideology. The Sahwa or Revival emerged in the 1980s at the hands of a number of scholars who included Salman Al-Oudah in Buraidah, Ayed Al-Qarni in Abha, Safar Al-Hawali in Jeddah, and Naser Al-Omar and Saad Al-Buraik in Riyadh. The scholars of this ideology misled our youth and as a result they became extremists and Takfeeris (the practice of considering Muslims out of the fold of Islam) who were emotionally and intellectually against anyone who sought enlightenment and modernity. This ideology even led our youth to reject anyone who lives life according to contemporary culture.
This eventually produced a group of Sahwa advocates filled with hatred and malice. They burned video stores, bullied people and interfered in people’s lives. We have now reached the point at which they are blowing up mosques and killing those who prostrate before Allah.
These teenagers, many of whom have not completed intermediate school, make spelling mistakes, commit errors in Arabic and miscomprehend terminology, have become Takfeeri killers. They reject our political and social systems and seek the destruction of their homeland. They wish to leave the nationals of Saudi Arabia without an identity and without a cultural and intellectual heritage. Who made them into monsters? I think we are all responsible as fathers and families of the above. We, along with the above-mentioned scholars, have a share in the responsibility of the crime. This is on account of our negligence, lack of supervision, failure to monitor our children’s behavior and our lack of efforts. We should exert ourselves in educating our young people about values and morals.
Source: http://www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm?method=home.regcon&contentid=20150619247713
12:28 AM
Moderate Islamist here
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