Riyadh, September 21; Saudi authorities are taking greater liberty in celebrating the modern monarchy’s anniversary, a sign of their growing clout against clerics who have criticized holidays outside of the Islamic calendar.
Present ruler King Abdullah, 86, emphasised his push to reform the deeply conservative country upon taking power in 2005 by decreeing September 23 as an official holiday marking the kingdom’s unification led by founder King Abdul-Aziz and an army of ultra-conservative followers.
Since then, celebrations have been getting more colourful to attract larger masses and the labour ministry took the extra step of granting a paid-day off for all public and private sector employees for the day marking unification.
A prominent political writer, Khalid al-Dakhil said authorities push for a more jubilant celebration of the National Day highlights that the monarchy no longer feels it has to follow the mores of the Wahhabi clerics.
“The Saudi state had in the past felt a need or was forced to listen to the religious establishment … King Abdullah has chosen a different path. Such change could not have happened 40 years ago,” Dakhil said.
“But now you have young Saudis accounting for 70 percent of the population, the internet, the satelite television channels. “The state is getting stronger.”
Many Saudi clerics consider as heresy any celebration outside the Islamic holidays of Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, including the Prophet Mohammad’s (PBUH)birthday. They had previously been successful in reducing the symbolism of the national jubilee to a mere date on the calendar.
Under King Abdullah, the absolute monarchy has been bolder in reining in a conservative clergy that has sometimes stood in the way of political reform.
The world’s biggest oil exporting country, a close U.S. ally, is based ultimately on a historic pact between the al-Saud and the house of Ibn Wahhab, who follow the austere Wahhabi school of Islam. Under this pact, clerics have normally held control over the judiciary and education systems and the regulations of social life.
Since 2005, a growing number of cities in the kingdom gradually laid out more elaborate celebration plans that sometimes include plays an art form abhorred by many conservatives in a country that does not allow cinemas.
The Eastern Province, source of most of the country’s oil resources, plans to mark this year’s event with a parade that will bring together bikers, musicians and sportsmen, an unusually colourful sight in the kingdom.
In an apparent bid to soothe any angry reactions, the Senior Scholars Authority the kingdom’s highest religious authority chose Koranic verses that sought to argue in favour of the anniversary by highlighting the monarchy’s role as a custodian of holy sites in Mecca.
“(Saudi monarchs) have strived to achieve all that can lead to the cohesiveness of this sprawling homeland and God the Almighty has empowered them,” its secretary general Fahad al-Majed said in remarks carried by the official news agency.
-Agencies