Former member of the Board of Senior Ulema and now adviser to the Royal Court, Sheikh Abdul Mohsen Al-Obaikan, has called for leniency in corporal punishments and said that judges should “try it out themselves” before sentencing persons to numerous lashes of the whip. Speaking recently at the weekly “Al-Ithnaniya” gathering which brings together figures from various fields for discussion sessions, Al-Obaikan described some court punishments as “grossly unfair”. “I have written a study on the subject and found there was no hard evidence for the thousands of lashes meted out,” he said. “I would like to see judges themselves spend ten days in jail so they can see what it is like and what flogging really feels like.” Alternatives Sheikh Al-Obaikan continued by describing long-term prison sentences as an “ineffective reform measure” which only “yields disasters”, and called for the formation of a group of specialist psychologists and sociologists to set maximum limits on corporal punishments. “Punishments should be educative and reformative and not a means of harming or torturing people,” he said. Travel without Mahram Al-Obaikan spoke of his disagreement with a Kuwaiti ruling permitting women to travel with their husbands' permission, saying that a “husband's permission is obligatory as she is under his guardianship”, but adding that a woman may travel without a Mahram, as long as she has her husband's permission. “The prohibition came from the threat of attack, but nowadays such concerns can be ruled out as no one can attack her on a plane or lure an honorable woman,” the Sheikh said. Swine flu, magic and the gates of Ijtihad Al-Obaikan repeated his insistence that a Muslim who dies of swine flu is “a martyr like he who dies from plague”. “The word ‘epidemic' (‘waba') does not refer to a specific disease, so the victim shares the martyr's reward but not his burial status since the martyr who is killed on the battlefield fighting for Allah's sake is buried without being washed or having funeral prayers said for him,” he said. Referring to a fatwa prohibiting the use of “magic to counter magic”, Al-Obaikan described persons who conducted Qur'an readings (ruqya) with such intentions as a “bunch of failures who exploit the poor to make their fortunes”. “These fortunetellers and diviners claim they know the unseen and the future, which only Almighty Allah knows,” he said. Al-Obaikan also called for a compilation of the Fiqh rulings to which judges can refer, suggesting that judges were not of the required caliber. “If judges are not in a position to adapt to the reality of the situation and if they find difficulty in understanding terms of jurisprudence, then how can we ask them to turn to Ijtihad?,” Al-Obaikan said regarding the use of independent judgments. The gates of Ijtihad should not be closed for those who fulfill its requirements, Al-Obaikan said, and suggested reviving the role of Fiqh academies and gathering the top 100 scholars from around the world to produce a unified perspective on Ijtihad to avoid multiple sources. Al-Obaikan also spoke of his discontent at those giving Friday sermons who, he said, were “not up to scratch” when it came to fighting terrorism and promoting moderation, and said he had requested that the Ministry of Islamic Affairs provide sample sermons. “Some people make the mistake of showing loyalty to their region rather than the country,” the Sheikh said, “but there is no evidence that one should not love his country.” Long-running debate Al-Obaikan went on to address a variety of other topics, including his long-running discussions with Shiite scholar Sheikh Hassan Al-Saffar from the Eastern Province, which, he said, he had been forced to stop “because some Sunni scholars made insulting remarks against those present at a meeting between Sunni and Shiite scholars”. “I don't want to get involved in exchanging insults, and we have reached some degree of understanding regarding the approval of the Holy Qur'an which is printed at the King Fahd Holy Qur'an Printing Complex in Madina, and its interpretation in Arabic,” Al
