Salman al-Ouda
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| Saudi Arabian scholar Modern era |
|
 Sheikh Salman Al Awdah |
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| Full name | Salman al-Ouda |
|---|---|
| School/tradition | Salafi |
Salman al-Ouda (Arabic: سلمان العودة) (or Salman bin Fahd al-Oadah) سلمان بن فهد العودة -alias Abu Mu'ad (أبو معاذ)- is a Saudi cleric Sheikh. He is a director of the Arabic edition of the website Islam Today and he has a number of TV shows and newspapers articles.
Life: Al-Awda was born in 1955 in al-Basr, near the city of Burayda in Qasim Province, in central Saudi Arabia. He had a classical Islamic education in the Wahhabi tradition, beginning at the Burayda Institute, where he studied Arabic grammar, standard Wahhabi treatises, Hanbali jurisprudence and hadith under the personal guidance of local shaykhs. He completed a B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. in Islamic jurisprudence at Imam Muhammad bin Sa’ud University. Incarcerated for five years for inciting opposition to the Saudi government, al-Awda emerged rehabilitated in 1999 to become one of the kingdom’s most respected religious spokespersons. With a television program and a Web site that disseminates opinion in four languages, he has also become a spokesperson for the regime, operating under its protection and in competition with the government-sponsored establishment ulama (clergy).[1]
He is married and has a number of children, the oldest of whom is Mu`âdh.
Education:
He spent his early years in al-Basr and then moved to Buraydah to study. He spent his first two years there completing elementary school, then he transferred to the Academic Institute in Buraydah where he studied for six years. This institute had gathered together an impressive group of the region’s noteworthy scholars, among them Sheikh Sâlih al-Sukaytî, Sheikh `Alî al-Dâli`, and Sheikh Sâlih al-Bulayhî and many others like them. This education afforded him the opportunity to sit with them and benefit from their knowledge and their mode of conduct. His enrollment in the institute also gave him the opportunity to benefit from its library which at that time contained a large number of books. There was also a library from which books could be borrowed and which was constantly acquiring new books that the people needed.
He committed to memory a number of short treatises on various subjects. Among these were:
- Al-`Usûl al-Thalâthah, al-Qawâ`id al-Arba`ah, Kitâb al-Tawhîd, and al-`Aqîdah al-Wâsitiyyah, all of which pertain to Islamic beliefs.
- Matn al-Ajurrûmiyyah in Arabic grammar, which he memorized and then taught to his young pupils in the mosque.
- Matn al-Rahbiyyah in the laws of inheritance.
- Zâd al-Mustaqni` which could possibly be the most famous and most comprehensive treatise in Islamic Law according to the Hanbalî school of thought. He studied a large portion of its commentary in the Academic Institute and studied its commentary with a number of scholars, notably Sheikh Sâlih al-Bulayhî and Sheikh Muhammad al-Mansûr.
- Nukhbah al-Fikr by Ibn Hajar al-`Asqalânî in Hadîth terminology. He memorized it in his student years and then taught it to his own students and assisted them in memorizing it.
- There are a number of treatises that he has partially memorized, among them Alfiyyah Ibn Mâlik in Arabic grammar and a number of treatises in jurisprudence and other subjects.
He received his Masters degree in the Sunnah and its sciences from the faculty of `Usûl al-Dîn (Principles of Religion). His Masters thesis was entitled “The Strangeness of Islam and its Legal Rulings in the Light of the Prophetic Sunnah.”
He also received his Phd degree in 2003. His Phd was in the Sunnah.
INFLUENCES AND CONTRIBUTIONS:
Al-Awda identifies himself with the Saudi Arabian Sahwa intellectual movement that arose in the 1970s. Sahwa (Awakening) is grounded in the Wahhabi doctrine of Sunni Islam that views true Islamic government as based on an equal partnership between ulama (clergy) and state, and Islamic law as derived solely from the Qur’an and Sunna (the customary behavior of the Prophet as illustrated in books of his collected sayings and deeds [Hadith]) According to Madawi al-Rasheed in her book Contesting the Saudi State , in al-Awda’s view Sahwa specifically incorporates the idea of individual responsibility for carrying out the Qur’anic injunction to command what is good and condemn what is wrong, a responsibility that should not be abrogated in favor of state agencies and official ulama. While individuals who identify themselves with Sahwa neither subscribe to a particular political organization nor express a uniform viewpoint, as a way of thought the movement is overtly political, underpinning a discourse of contestation that draws from religion to solve contemporary concerns.
Al-Awda’s views on government and society were influenced by the circumstances of his birth. He was raised in an agricultural village near Burayda, which, like Qasim Province as a whole, is poor and underdeveloped in comparison to the capital region and the cities of the Hijaz, the northwest quadrant of the Arabian Peninsula. Burayda is known historically as a stronghold of Wahhabi conservatism and for its active opposition to some government-sponsored development projects that impact local cultural values, such as girls’ education when that was first introduced in the early 1960s. Al-Awda’s sermons from the start expressed an ideology of resistance to cultural challenges arising from globalization and development, as well as opposition to the monopoly of power held by Saudi Arabia’s ruling family and its failure to invest in the economic development of Qasim.[2]
BIOGRAPHICAL HIGHLIGHTS: Name: Salman ibn Fahd ibn Abdullah al-Awda (Oadah)
Birth: 1955, al-Basr, Saudi Arabia
Family: Married; children
Nationality: Saudi Arabian
Education: Imam Muhammad bin Sa’ud University, B.A., M.A., Ph.D., Islamic jurisprudence
PERSONAL CHRONOLOGY: 1990: Teaches, Burayda mosque 1994: Imprisoned for anti-government activities 2001: Director, Islam Today website The 1990–1991 Gulf Crisis and War, in which an American-led coalition of forces aligned against the Iraqi regime of SADDAM HUSSEIN in response to its seizure of Kuwait, proved an opportunity for al-Awda and others to tap into an already-existing current of discontent within the kingdom. When the then-Grand Mufti Abd al-Aziz bin Baz issued a fatwa lending Islamic justification for the regime to invite American forces to defend Saudi Arabia from Hussein, al-Awda raised questions about the incapacity of the Saudi military to defend the kingdom when so much of its resources had been invested in American-made weapons. During the war period al-Awda was a moving force behind two reform petitions addressed to the king. The first, in 1991, was known as the Letter of Demands and was signed by leading Saudi religious, mercantile, and socially prominent figures seeking changes in the form of government, notably the establishment of a Shura (consultative) Council. A year later, the second petition, known as the Memorandum of Advice, which was signed by more than one hundred religious scholars, including establishment ulama, called for individual freedoms and a Shura Council, but also media censorship under religious guidance and review of all the kingdom’s laws to insure their conformity with shari’a. Both petitions expressed loyalty to the house of Sa’ud while opposing the lack of representation in the existing government. Meanwhile, audiotapes of al-Awda’s sermons gained wide circulation and gave encouragement to other opposition voices during the years following the war, as the United States military settled in for a long stay at an airbase outside the capital.[3]
Activities:
Among the roughly fifty books that he has published are:
- The First Strangers,
- Characteristics of the Strangers,
- Withdrawing from Society and Participating in It',
- A Discussion with Sheikh Muhammad al-Ghazâlî,
- Who has the Right to Engage in Independent Juristic Reasoning?, and
- Guidelines for Studying Islamic Law.
These publications are all currently available on the Arabic pages of the Islam Today website.
He used to give weekly lessons for the general public in the main mosque of Buraydah as well as other lessons where he taught the commentary of the book Bulûgh al-Marâm. He also gave daily lessons after the Morning Prayer, where he gave a commentary on the authoritative collections of hadith - Sahîh al-Bukhârî, Sahîh Muslim, and some commentary on the Qur’ân. In addition, he taught such books as Kitâb al-Tawhîd, al-Usûl al-Thalâthah, and Nukhbah al-Fikr. These lessons were lost, along with other beneficial works of the Sheikh, during the crisis that had to endure along with a number of other Islamic workers.
Dr. al-Ouda was imprisoned for five years, from 1994 until the end of 1999 on account of some of his books and some of the lessons that he had given. He was quoted by Osama bin Laden in his 1994 Open Letter to Shaykh Bin Baz on the Invalidity of his Fatwa on Peace with the Jews. He was released along with his colleagues and resumed his activities from his home, giving lessons after the Sunset Prayer from Wednesday to Friday weekly on topics such as Qur’anic commentary, ethics, education, and personal reform.
He is currently supporting peace and coexisting with other religions. He announced that this was a result of deeper understanding of Islamic teachings.
Dr. al-Ouda is supervising the popular website Islam Today, which is the first website in the Kingdom to offer such a high level of diversity in its subject matter and material. He gives classes and lectures over the Internet and by phone to a wide range of listeners [4].
He works daily in answering the questions that people send to him in addition to compiling and preparing a number of his writings for publication. Also, he has a show in MBC TV [5].
His fame had become sufficiently widespread by 2006 to draw a crown of around 20,000 young British Muslims in London's East End whom he addressed in a speech. "Dr. al-Ouda is well known by all the youth. It's almost a celebrity culture out there," according to one British Imam.
Dr. al-Ouda is known for not only criticizing the September 11 attack, but delivering a personal rebuke to Osama bin Laden. In 2007, around the sixth anniversary of September 11, he addressed Al Qaeda's leader on MBC, a widely watched Middle East TV network, asking him:
My brother Osama, how much blood has been spilt? How many innocent people, children, elderly, and women have been killed ... in the name of Al Qaeda? Will you be happy to meet God Almighty carrying the burden of these hundreds of thousands or millions [of victims] on your back?[6]
The full letter can be viewed from Islam Today website.
[edit] References
- ^ http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/articles/pages/5548/Awda-Salman-al--1955.html
- ^ http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/articles/pages/5548/Awda-Salman-al--1955.html
- ^ http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/articles/pages/5548/Awda-Salman-al--1955.html
- ^ Sheikh Salman al-Ouda Articles
- ^ Sheikh Salman al-Ouda TV Show on MBC Channel
- ^ The Unraveling by Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank. The jihadist revolt against bin Laden
[edit] External links
- Islam Today His Official website
- 2006 photograph of al-Ouda, from Islam Online
