Saudi Arabia has tightened its screws to devout dissent since the new coronavirus hit in mid-March. That month, the government banned prayer meetings on the net and Sheikh Abdullah al-Saad, a Saudi Islamic scholar, posted an online video denouncing the cancellation as a violation of Islamic law. The scientist arrested and imprisoned. Also in March, a high-level cleric at the Kaaba Mosque in Medina tweeted his fear of inmates at risk of coronavirus infection: losing his job.
Saudi Arabia, under the leadership of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), is the only country to take the pandemic as a license to suppress devout dissent: Egypt, with its history of tension between the state and the mosque, and under repression The government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, has behaved in the same way.
Modern Arab societies such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia have long struggled to reconcile the demands of the state and faith. For some Autocrats in the Middle East, faith gives them a source of legitimacy. But the devout authority is also at the party with the authority of the state and can give value and willingness to opposition movements in the states. COVID-19 highlighted this shock by temporarily focusing state force on devout facilities in the call for public health. Now mosques and shrines have begun to reopen and, in doing so, persistent tensions between the mosque and the state have erupted in public view. Egypt and Saudi Arabia’s brutal pandemic solver-dev-out technique raises valid considerations about their willingness to loosen their control when the pandemic subsides.
When coronavirus first spread in the Middle East in March, governments closed mosques, banned organization prayers, and closed shrines and seminaries in an attempt to involve contagion. Even in the month of Ramadan, from April to the end of May, these restrictions remained in full force. Some devout scholars, adding Abdullah al-Saad, have objected that in times of crisis, the gates of mosques deserve to remain open, so that the faithful may submit to God for mercy. Others supported state restrictions. For example, Ali Mohammad al-Azhari, a member of Al-Azhar University in Cairo, under pressure that preventing a user inflamed by coronavirus from acting in Friday prayers at the mosque is a legal and devout duty: “Islam does not require the destruction of others demands protection,” he argued.
The authoritarian leaders of Saudi Arabia and Egypt were less interested in a devout debate than in public conformity. They called on official Islamic establishments and even independent Islamists to mobilize the legitimacy of public aptitude restrictions. At the same time, these governments have silenced dissent. In Egypt, several imams felt that their right to freedom of expression allowed them to hold devout personal gatherings in their homes despite state orders. Egypt’s Ministry of Endowments, the guilty government establishment of mosques, punished at least one of these imams, and supposedly others, definitively revoking their permission to preach.
In Saudi Arabia, pandemic control measures first gave the impression of wide-ed and few administrative criticism. Clerics issued fatwas legitimizing Mohammed bin Salman’s decrees and even adding clinical measures to combat coronavirus. Grand Mufti Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh said those who did not respect the curfew from dusk to dawn were “sinners.”
But the Saudi government has taken the pandemic as a license to silence dissenting opinions, even among clerics who sanction government directives. In addition, it used the crisis as a pavilion to suppress the country’s reluctant Shia minority in Qatif province. Many of the first cases of COVID-19 in the province were related to pilgrims in Iran, the world’s main Shiite force and the first hot spot of the epidemic, as well as a regional antagonist from Riyadh. Arriving in Iran is illegal under Saudi law, however, Shia pilgrims occasionally do so across a third country. On 8 March, the Saudi government imposed a closure of Qatif province, finally inside and outside government offices and personal institutions. The closure prevented the citizens of the province from wearing out their devoted duties.
From March to May 2020, the MBS government imposed restrictions on places of worship, and Saudi clerics seemed to settle for them. But Saudi ecclesiastical resources report discussing the measures on stage. The Council of Major Clerics drafted a fatwa that considered the closure of mosques to be a violation of Islamic principles. The organization then canceled the fatwa under government pressure.
In Egypt, public opposition to state fitness measures was more visual than in Saudi Arabia, in part because the official message was ambiguous. By the end of March, the country had suspended Friday prayers and all other communal gatherings in mosques, and some fitness officials were even fasting during Ramadan because of the pandemic. But to avoid further controversy and maintain tradition, Al-Azhar, the Grand Mufti, the Minister of Endowments and the Fatwa House said that fasting deserves to continue, which will in fact strengthen immunity and assistance to combat coronavirus.
However, fear of culture can only go a long way. A spokesman for the Endowment Ministry, Ahmed al-Qadi, said he was open to the option of magnets simply performing night prayers in mosques during Ramadan. Qadi’s superior, Endowment Minister Mohamed Mokhtar Gomaa, temporarily fired the spokesman and has become the subject of a popular crusade opposed to the closure of mosques and the cancellation of network prayers. Activists argued that Gomaa had no devout references and had erred in making his decisions in consultation with the Ministry of Health and not for devout reasons.
As the pandemic progressed, the devout establishments of the Egyptian state issued divergent directives and official government policies. For example, Al-Azhar, a mosque and university complex regarded as one of the leading authorities of Sunni Islam, issued a fatwa on 1 April noting that the rapids were not yet destructive and that a Muslim can simply refuse to do so for fear of the virus. However, Dar al-Ifta, some other authoritative Islamic institution, was adamant: “The case is unwelcome and a Muslim is not allowed to break the rapid during Ramadaan unless doctors make a decision and are scientifically proven to do so in poor health or dead.” Dar al-Ifta had occasionally challenged the state over devout issues. In July, the Egyptian legislature drafted a law to strengthen government control of the institution.
Egyptian presidents have fought for decades to carry devoted messages under stateArray under former President Hosni Mubarak, the Muslim Brothers and other Islamist teams have greater influence and Egyptian society has become more devoted. Mubarak tried to subdue mosques and sheikhs by forcing them to unload state-issued licenses. These measures were not really effective: thousands of imams practiced without a permit and were never punished, and mosques were rarely closed unless they have become meeting places for extremists.
The pandemic gave Sissi the opportunity to exercise a tougher hand. Since its inception, the Egyptian president has amended the country’s emergency law to grant himself the force to prohibit or restrict public gatherings even outdoors in the context of the public aptitude crisis. The Armed Conflict Location – Event Data Project, which tracks political violence and protests in emerging countries, noted that this resolution coincided not only with the pandemic, but also with a build-up of political protests that stopped when the amended law came into force. April.
The pandemic will one day diminish, but faith and the state will continue to fight for the force in the Arab world. Religious expression and practice is a human right that has been identified through many foreign tools and agencies, adding the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Authoritarian governments violated this right in the COVID-19 crisis, adding figures and establishments responsible for ordering factor decrees. In doing so, these states not only limited freedom of devoted expression in their countries, but also imposed control over imams and establishments required to sanction government actions. Such state manipulation of the devoted sphere is a common place in trendy Egypt and is also a common place in Saudi Arabia.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom warned that pandemic restrictions on devout meetings deserve not to be used to desent dissent. In its latest report, the commission highlighted individual governments, such as Saudi Arabia, to advance the pandemic on political agendas. Drawing attention to these violations is helping non-governmental organizations and political activists fight repressive governments. As the pandemic continues, discussions on devoted practice and public welfare in the Middle East will also continue.
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