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Riyadh Winners Refuse to Be Labeled Islamists
Victorious candidates in Saudi Arabia's first round landmark municipal polls in the capital dismissed accusations that they were Islamists, insisting yesterday that they represented mainstream Muslim society.
"Islamists? Certainly not! We're, um....something else."
Dr. Ibrahim ibn Hamad Al-Quayid, a prominent academic who is among seven winners in Thursday's elections in Riyadh, dismissed charges that certain candidates used religion and formed coalitions violating electoral laws to win. "Even, Grand Mufti Abdul Aziz Al-Asheikh was dismayed to hear such accusations and told me that no religious authority backed any candidate or approved any list of candidates", Al-Quayid said.
They didn't have to. In Soddiland, these things are understood.
Refuting charges that candidates backed by religious sheikhs had emerged victorious, he said "the whole election process was democratic and transparent. All candidates, who won are top professionals and moderates with Islamic orientation."
From the right families, go to the right mosques, only beat their wives twice a year...
He pointed out that out of seven winners five have doctorates and four of them are Western-educated. "They are, of course, Muslims and they represent the mainstream Muslim society not any extremist ideology," he added. Abdul Aziz Al-Omari, another winner, also refused to be so labeled, saying the "whole Saudi society is Muslim." "Many of the candidates who lost are more Islamists than myself, or any of the winners," said the lecturer of history and real estate developer. "The (political) system in Saudi Arabia is based on Islam. Anyone who claims not to want to implement the Shariah would be breaching order," he added, stressing the Islamic character of Saudi society. The comment brought a protest from another elected candidate, Suleiman Al-Rashudi, who said there is "nothing called Islamist and non-Islamist in Saudi Arabia."

"The whole society is Islamist ... We are all Muslims," he said. "We are all against extremism and terrorism," he added. Forty-four-year-old Rashudi, who chairs a local company, refused to be termed a Wahabist.

"It is an insult for me to be called Wahabist. We are Muslims.. We are forbidden to adopt other names (except Muslims)," he said.

Winner Tareq Al-Kassabi said he too refused to be linked to any Islamist trend. "There are no Islamist trends in Saudi Arabia," he said, insisting that as an engineer he had an election platform related only to "the jurisdiction of city councils."

Asked about the complaints that a list of seven Islamists was circulated via cell phones and the Internet a day before the poll, Al-Quayid told Arab News: "I personally received some six different lists on my mobile and luckily my name figured in all these lists. But who composed these messages, what is the motive behind it, nobody knows."

"It does not mean that some religious scholars have approved the names. Anybody can write the names and circulate through SMS," he said.

"In fact, the game plan was to garner support with religious blessing," said Al-Quayid, but the plan failed miserably. "Interestingly, if one makes a perusal of the whole campaign carefully, it is evident that those candidates who, in fact, invited clergymen to address the voters, lost the elections," said the academic who preferred not to name those candidates. Al-Quayid is probably the only candidate who won substantial votes at 70 polling stations out of 73 in the capital city. He also won the highest number of votes in the sixth electoral precinct, where he lives with his family.

Asked whether he even unknowingly used religion in his campaign, Al-Quayid, a former assistant secretary-general of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) said: "I did not use any religious slogan in my campaign and no Islamic scholars were invited by me to address the audience during the campaign period".

"Losing candidates are crying foul. Such misleading arguments cannot be justified. These allegations are part of the Western propaganda to belittle the Saudi government's maiden effort of reform, which succeeded in the form of municipal elections", said Al-Quayid, who is also a member of the executive committee of the National Society for Human Rights.


Posted by: tipper 2005-02-13
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=56364