A post-Wahhabi Saudi Arabia?

the Saudi government has partly subscribed to these critical trends and has taken a number of preliminary steps towards – if not yet political – social and religious reform. The organization in June 2003 of the first national dialogue conference, with thirty ulama belonging to all the confessional groups present on the kingdom’s territory – Wahhabi and non-Wahhabi Sunnis, Sufis, Ismaili and Twelver Shiites –, was an obvious move in that direction. This conference led to the adoption of a charter containing a set of “recommendations,” some of which can be considered a severe blow to the Wahhabi doctrine. First, the charter acknowledges the intellectual and confessional diversity of the Saudi nation, which is contrary to traditional Wahhabi exclusivism. Second, it criticizes one of Wahhabism’s juridical pillars, the principle of sadd aldhara’i’ (the blocking of the means), which requires that actions that could lead to committing sins must themselves be prohibited. It is notably in pursuing this principle that women are denied the right to drive in Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, none of the figures of the official Wahhabi establishment were invited to attend the conference, which obviously denotes a willingness to marginalize them. In addition, the fact that the government-controlled press has recently opened its columns to the islamo-liberals' religious criticism clearly reflects a degree of official support for it. It is also worth noting that there have been some improvements on two crucial socio-religious issues: the status of women, whose economic role has officially been acknowledged and who have been given a voice in the national dialogue, and that of the Shiites, who have recently witnessed a relative loosening of the restrictions on their religious practice.

Let's hope so.