In the "cradle of Islam," a growing number
of people are quietly declaring themselves nonbelievers
Caryle Murphy, GlobalPost
JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia — In this country known as the cradle of Islam,
where religion gives legitimacy to the government and state-appointed
clerics set rules for social behavior, a growing number of Saudis are
privately declaring themselves atheists.
The evidence is anecdotal, but persistent.
“I
know at least six atheists who confirmed that to me,” said Fahad
AlFahad, 31, a marketing consultant and human rights activist. “Six or
seven years ago, I wouldn’t even have heard one person say that. Not
even a best friend would confess that to me.”
A Saudi journalist in Riyadh has observed the same trend.
“The
idea of being irreligious and even atheist is spreading because of the
contradiction between what Islamists say and what they do,” he said.
The
perception that atheism is no longer a taboo subject — at least two
Gulf-produced television talk shows recently discussed it — may explain
why the government has made talk of atheism a terrorist offense.
The March 7 decree from
the Ministry of Interior prohibited, among other things, “calling for
atheist thought in any form, or calling into question the fundamentals
of the Islamic religion on which this country is based.”
The
number of people willing to admit to friends to being atheist or to
declare themselves atheist online, usually under aliases, is certainly
not big enough to be a movement or threaten the government. A 2012 poll
by WIN-Gallup International of about 500 Saudis found that
5 percent described themselves as “convinced atheist.” This was well below the global average of 13 percent.
But
the greater willingness to privately admit to being atheist reflects a
general disillusionment with religion and what one Saudi called “a
growing notion” that religion is being misused by authorities to control
the population. This disillusionment is seen in a number of ways,
ranging from ignoring clerical pronouncements to challenging and even
mocking religious leaders on social media.
“Because
people are becoming more disillusioned with the government, they
started looking at the government and its support groups as being in bed
together and conspiring together against the good of the people,” said
Bassim Alim, a lawyer in Jeddah.
“When they see the ulema
[religious scholars] appeasing the government,” he added, “people become
dismayed because they thought they were pious and straightforward and
just. “
“I believe people started being fed up with how religion
is really controlling their life and how only one interpretation of
religion should be followed,” said activist Fahad AlFahad.
Together,
the appearance of atheists, a growing wariness of religious controls on
society, as well as the continuing lure of jihad and ultraconservatism
signal a breakdown in the conformity and consensus that has marked the
Saudi religious field in the recent past. It is becoming a more
heterogenous and polarized faith scene.
“The mosques are full but
society is losing its values. It’s more like a mechanical practice, like
going church, you have to go on Sunday,” said a former employee of
state media. “We no longer understand our religion, not because we don’t
want to. But because our vision of it, our understanding of it, has
been polluted by the monarchy…[and]…by the official religious
establishment that only measures religion by what the monarchy wants and
what pleases the monarchy.”
The growing skepticism about religion
and clerics is more visible nowadays because of social media outlets,
including tweets, blogs and Facebook pages.
Here are three illustrative tweets from Saudis:
—
Prince Abdul Aziz bin Fahad has been tweeting nonstop abt God. I pity
his disconnectedness from today’s public. It’s not the 1980′s. Pathetic
— Because our illusion that our version of Islam is the only correct one needs to be washed away
— Could the ulema issue a fatwa against domestic violence? I mean the fatwa committee has prohibited playing Resident Evil
At
the same time, however, there is a countervailing trend in that some
young Saudis are joining radical Islamist and jihadi movements, a trend
reinforced by the war in Syria.
“When the Arab Spring started,
young religious people were asking about Islam and democracy,” said Saud
Al Sarhan, director of research at the King Faisal Center for Research
and Islamic Studies in Riyadh. “But now they are just asking about Islam
and jihad, after what is going on in Syria.”
This attraction
towards militant ultraconservatism is also apparent in the activities of
unregulated religious vigilantes. Even as the government’s own
religious police have come under stricter controls, these bands of young
religious “volunteers” attack social gatherings to stop what they deem
as prohibited activities, including music, dancing and gender mixing. In
one famous incident in 2012, these “volunteers” raided the annual
government-sponsored cultural festival known as Janadriya, where they
clashed with security forces.
It is still dangerous to publicly
admit one is an atheist because of the dire punishment one can face from
a court system based on sharia, which regards disbelief in God as a
capital offense.
In addition, conservative clerics who have
considerable sway among Saudis, use the label ‘atheist’ to discredit
those who question their strict interpretations of Islamic scriptures or
express doubts about the dominant version of Islam known as Wahhabism.
That
is what happened with 25-year-old Hamza Kashgari who in 2012 tweeted
some unconventional thoughts about Prophet Muhammad, none of which
indicated he did not believe in God. Still, he was called ‘atheist’ and
to appease the religious establishment, the government jailed him for 20
months.
Also, Raef Badawi, in his early 30s, was accused of being
atheist because he called for freedom to discuss other versions of
Islam besides Wahhabism on the website “Free Saudi Liberals.” Badawi was
sentenced to seven years in prison and 600 lashes in July 2013. His
lawyer, Waleed Abu Alkhair, a human rights activist who also has been
jailed, said Badawi told the court that he was a Muslim but added that
“everyone has a choice to believe or not believe,”
the BBC reported.
A
Riyadh resident who has extensive contacts with young Saudis because of
his job in higher education said that he “tries to warn young people
that they are living according to an Islam constructed by the
government, and not according to the Islam given us by God.”
Increasingly,
he said, some youths “are going to ignore religion and become atheist,
while others are going to understand the game.”
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