Saudi cleric who denounced new mixed-gender university and who said evolution is an “alien ideology,” resigns.
A top Saudi cleric resigned from the board of the Council of Senior Clerics Sunday in the wake of controversy over his statements opposing gender mixing at the first co-ed university in the Kingdom.
Sheikh Saad bin Nasser al-Shethri’s resignation from the senior ulema came just days after he appeared on the Qatar-based al-Majd satellite channel and lashed out at the newly-opened King Abdullah Science and Technology University for offering co-education.
Shithri was one of several clerics who objected to the mixed gender university, which is outside the purview of the conservative cleric-dominated education ministry.
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The senior cleric said religious scholars should vet the curriculum to prevent alien ideologies such as “evolution” and set up a committee to ensure it does not violate sharia, or Islamic law.
“We are looking at some of the sciences that have included some irregular and alien ideologies, like evolution and such other ideologies,” the daily al-Watan newspaper quoted Shithri as saying last week in response to a viewer’s question.
Two comments from TI contributors apply:
Shams: “Heresy against orthodoxy in science is how advances are made.”
Razib: “i think there’s a reason that the IQs of fundamentalists in the USA is so much lower than moderate, and especially liberal, religionists. the system is rigged so that any deviation from “orthodoxy” means the whole system collapses and one sees nihilism as the only valid alternative.”
