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Saudi arabia's war on witchcraft
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[QUOTE="Jelis, post: 12136396, member: 260067"] (...) The most aggressive pursuit of witches tends to be in the interior of the Arabian peninsula, a parcel of the country that hosts the capital city Riyadh and many of the most dedicated followers of Salafism, the ultra-conservative school of Sunni Islam that the government enforces throughout the country in its religious courts. Wresting the country's criminal proceedings from the grip of one of the strictest strains of Islam would involve more than just the development of a more progressive outlook; it would require cosmic revisions in Saudi history and religious identity. The Saudi government and many of its citizens subscribe to the 18th-century teachings of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, a revivalist Islamic scholar who called for a return to literal interpretations of the Quran, and for the abandonment of folk rituals that had developed around the worship of Islamic shrines and grave sites. According to historian Vladmir Borisovich Lutsky: "He sharply criticised such superstitious survivals as fetishism and totemism, which, to him, were indistinguishable from idolatry. Formally all the Arabs were Moslems. But, in reality, there existed many local tribal religions in Arabia. Each Arab tribe, each village had its fetish, its beliefs and rites. The variety of religious forms that stemmed from the primitive level of social development and the lack of cohesion between the countries of Arabia were serious obstacles to political unity. Abd el-Wahhab set up against this religious polymorphism a single doctrine called tauhid (unity)..." .... The Wahhabis fought against the survivals of local tribal cults. They destroyed the tombs of the saints, and forbade magic fortune-telling. But at the same time their teachings were directed against official Islam. Under Wahhabi doctrine, magic is seen as a serious affront to the pure and exclusive relationship one is supposed to share with Allah. But belief in the supernatural and magic is actually quite common in Muslim culture. According to the Quran, the jinn are demonic supernatural beings that were created out of fire at the same time as man. Some believe that jinn have the power to cause harm, and it is not uncommon for the possessed to visit faith healers or sorcerers tasked with ridding the evil. According to the Pew Research Center's Religion and Public Life Project: "In most of the countries surveyed, roughly half or more Muslims affirm that jinn exist and that the evil eye is real. Belief in sorcery is somewhat less common: half or more Muslims in nine of the countries included in the study say they believe in witchcraft." Accusations of jinn worship and witchcraft once even touched the administration of former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, when his advisers and aides were arrested on charges of black magic. Ahmadinejad denied the charges, but a sorcerer well-known among the ruling class claimed that he met with the President at least twice and gathered intelligence for him on "Jinn who work for Israel's intelligence agency, the Mossad, and for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency," according to the Wall Street Journal. According to the Pew survey, the majority of Muslims agree that Islam restricts making contact with jinn or using magic. But Wahhabism is particularly opposed to this notion, according to Muhammad Husayn Ibrahimi's analysis of the sect: "Based on some verses of the Qur'an, Shaykh Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab, Ibn Taymiyyah and the contemporary Wahhabis regard seeking help from other than God or asking for their intercession {shafa'ah} as an act of polytheism. Their main proof is the phrase, "other than God" in verse 18 of Surah Yunus. The Wahhabis regard the prophets, saints, idols, the jinn and the dead as the most vivid manifestations of this verse." This might explain why Saudis, many of whom are devout Wahhabi practitioners, are so fierce when it comes to the pursuit of witches. The courts are controlled by judges -- commonly religious clerics -- who have unlimited latitude to interpret and define the content of witchcraft crime, the details of which are not articulated in a spare, barely existent penal code. They can also mete out capital punishments as they see fit. Saudi Arabia ranks third behind China and Iran for its number of executions. Evidence in these cases islimited to witness testimony and the presentation of the "magical" items discovered in the possession of the accused. The Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia did not respond to requests for comment on the specifics of its dealings with witchcraft crime. The ability to defend against the charges seems to depend on the caprice of the particular judge assigned to the case. In the 2006 case of Fawza Falih, who was sentenced to death on charges of "'witchcraft, recourse to jinn, and slaughter' of animals," she was provided no opportunity to question the testimonies of her witnesses, was barred from the room when "evidence" was presented, and her legal representation was not permitted to enter court. After appeals by Human Rights Watch, her execution was delayed, but she died in prison as a result of poor health. The police can also use questionable tactics. In 2008, a well-known Lebanese television personality, Ali Hussain Sibat, who made a living by telling callers' fortunes and instructing them on other superstitious matters, was lured into an undercover sting operation while making a religious pilgrimage to Mecca. According to the New York Times, he was arrested shortly after the police recorded conversations he held about providing a magical elixir to a woman that would force her husband to separate from his second wife. His death sentence was later stayed after outcry from international human rights organizations. [/QUOTE]
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Saudi arabia's war on witchcraft
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