Thanks, but I can’t get the link to open.

Dave

http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5Bswords%5D=8fd5893941d69d0be3f378576261ae3e&tx_ttnews%5Bany_of_the_words%5D=asad%20al-jihad2&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=5191&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=7&cHash=304a323ea8

Will

Can you expand a bit on this bit: “Asad al-Jihad2, who some believe to be AQ senior leader Hukayma…”? What do you base this on?

Thanks,
Dave

Shakyh al-Qarni, who is considered as one of the most prominent Islamic personalities in Saudi Arabia, was arrested and lost his tenure as a professor of the principles of Islamic jurisprudence (أصول الفقه) for his submission, along with a group of Saudi clerics, of an advisory memorandum to the late King Fahd bin Abdul Aziz in the early nineties concerning the finalisation of the country’s reform process.

I’m not sure about the background, but this could explain why you’ve seen his name come up.

There’s also the ‘transliteration’ factor. When I first followed up this news, I hunted round for the fatwa to translate. As I only had English texts of his name to go on I wasn’t sure how to spell it in Arabic. In the course of my goose chase I came across several members of the al-Qarni tribe.

I don’t know much about the inter-rivalries of Saudi ulema, but what I’ve read suggests the fellow responsible for this fatwa (which I still can’t find) is part of the same ‘naHDah’ clique. His full(ish) name is Shaykh Dr AwaaD bin Muhammad al-Qarni. There’s also a bit of comment on him, together with a picture menage of him and 3 others (he’s bottom right) in today’s IslamOnline (http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=ArticleA_C&cid=%201230490503267&pagename=Zone-Arabic-News/NWALayout) but this (http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%B9%D9%88%D8%B6_%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%82%D8%B1%D9%86%D9%8A) Wiki sheds a bit of light but there’s no mention of his losing his tenure.

Could you shed a little light on when and in what circumstances he was derided in the past?
When I first read the news, I confused him with this fellow (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaidh_ibn_Abdullah_al-Qarni), but later discovered this Shaykh al-Qarni was one of the 26 signatories of the Iraq fatwa.

The speed at which the IslamOnline text was disseminated in the Arab press suggested a certain amount of interest. Perhaps he spoke up because of the more high profile incitements to violence by Fadlallah and Khamene’i and felt the Shi’a were hogging the headlines.