A Saudi cleric’s fatwa last week calling for those who promote co-educational environments to be put to death has shocked international and Saudi communities, according to a report on Friday.
According to the Arab News daily, Sheikh Abdul Rahman Al Barrak said on Tuesday that the mixing of men and women in the workplace or educational institutions was religiously prohibited.
“Whoever allows this mixing allows forbidden things, and whoever allows them is an infidel and this means defection from Islam. Either he retracts or he must be killed because he disavows and does not observe the Shariah,” he said.
Al Barrak’s claims his fatwa is based on grounds that ikhtilat, or the mixing of men and women, allows for the possibility of seeing what must not be seen and engaging in forbidden conversations, Arab News added.
Al Barrak, who is thought to be around 77, is viewed by Islamists as the leading independent authority of “Wahhabism”.
In 2008, he had said in a rare religious ruling that two newspaper columnists should be put to death if they did not renounce their “heretical articles” in public. [
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However, this announcement has been heavily criticised by both religious and political figures in Kuwait, according to the country’s Al Watan Daily.
The country’s MP Yousef Al Zalzala, called the announcement as “ridiculous” and told the daily that the fatwa carries no weight religiously.
“Nothing in the Islamic faith stipulates death for those who are in pro-mixed gender environments. The Islamic religion is a religion of forgiveness. Needless to say, most of the Islamic scholars in Kuwait already rejected this proposition.”
According to the Arab News daily, Kuwaiti scholars claimed that such an edict could come only from a senile person or someone who wants to sow sedition in the nation by allowing the killing of innocent people.
“Officials need to step in promptly and make the authors of such edicts face legal measures to ensure no innocent people are killed or harmed by those who want to implement the fatwas,” Arab News quoted Dr. Ajeel Al-Nashmi, head of the GCC Religious Scholars League as saying.
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