ABU DHABI Ñ Saudi clerics have launched a protest campaign against
the royal family in wake of a government decision to curb the power of
the religious police.
The clerics have called for a strike of Saudi schools in wake
of a government decision to dismiss the head of the Saudi girls school
network and remove the network from clergy control. The female education
department was transferred to the Education Ministry.
The religious police were blamed for the death of 15 students and a
teacher in a girls school in Mecca last month. The police did not allow high
school girls to leave the building or fire fighters to enter to put out a
blaze caused by an electrical short-circuit.
The dismissal of female education chief Ali Al Morashed sparked protests
amid the Saudi clergy. Saudi sources said Chief Justice Saleh Al Luhaidan
refused to report for work. Saudi clerics met in Riyad on March 25 and
called on the religious leadership to protest the transfer of womens'
education from their hands to the Education Ministry.
Al Luhaidan and other Saudi clerics, such as Ghanim Assadlan, have
pressed the royal family for a crackdown on Saudi newspapers that have run
articles critical of the religious establishment. This included the arrest
of a Saudi poet who wrote a scathing commentary on Saudi judges last month
in the official Al Riyad daily.
Saudi clerics are said to have been alarmed by calls for the dismantling
of the religious police in the wake of the Mecca fire. The demands are
coming from merchants and technocrats who don't have direct access to the
royal family.
