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RIYADH: A senior member of Saudi Arabia’s Islamic religious police who riled conservatives by backing gender mixing and prayers outside the mosque appeared to still have his job Monday, a day after the organization announced he had been removed.
Confusion over the status of Sheikh Ahmed Al-Ghamdi, the general manager of the religious police’s Mecca branch, seemed to expose high-level tensions between conservative clerics and rising progressives pressing for the lifting of many of the Islamic rules which dominate Saudi life.
A spokesman for the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice told Al-Hayat newspaper that there were errors in the announcement Sunday naming a replacement for Ghamdi and three other regional general managers and signed by the organization’s president, Sheikh Abdulaziz Al-Humain.
Abdul Mohsen Al-Ghaffari told the newspaper the replacement report included "inaccuracy".
Ghamdi played down the report, telling Al-Hayat that he remains on the job and that was still awaiting a directive from Humain on any new assignment.
A Saudi-run news website, Elaph, meanwhile reported Monday that Ghamdi would keep his job while the other three replacements would be made.
The confusion came after the commission, known as the muttawa or religious police, posted an statement prominently on its website announcing replacements for Ghamdi and three others.
Hours later the announcement was removed, and the official state news agency, which had also published the statement, declared it "cancelled".
For weeks rumors have spread of Ghamdi’s possible removal from his position in Islam’s holiest city, after he gave interviews arguing that Islamic scripture does not support the rigid segregation enforced by Saudi Arabia’s ultra-strict Wahhabi school of Sunni Islam.
"There is nothing in Islamic law about mixing," he said in interviews with Saudi newspapers.
But last week he sparked greater controversy with comments that Muslims were not absolutely bound to take their daily prayers with groups inside mosques.
Ghamdi was then reportedly dressed down on Thursday by the country’s highest cleric over that statement.
Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Sheikh told Ghamdi he was getting involved in matters of Islamic sharia law that were outside his authority, the Al-Madinah newspaper reported on Friday.
Underscoring the point, Sheikh said in his sermon during Friday prayers that anyone suggesting that congregation prayer is not necessary is "leading people to hell," according to reports.
Behind Ghamdi’s case is an increasingly public battle over loosening the ultra-conservative rules governing the Islamic kingdom, including tight restrictions on women in public life and the world’s only ban on women driving.
Saudi progressives, including much of the mainstream media, have been increasingly vocal and direct in criticizing the religious police, and have made Ghamdi a public figure in reporting his bold statements.
