Saudis Claim to 'Correct' the Thinking of AQ Sympathizers

(Riyadh, Saudi Arabia) Okay, here's something to chew on.

From ArabTimesOnline.com:

Saudi Arabia has released over 700 suspected militants after clerics "corrected" their thinking in a special programme aimed at stemming a three-year-old campaign of violence by al-Qaeda, officials said.

"They are sympathisers. There are many of this kind of people, who are subject to the process of an advisory committee. Hundreds of them have gone through this and been released," Interior Ministry spokesman Mansour al-Turki said. The men have been released at different stages over the past three years, he explained.

"They were arrested in the first place because they were suspicious, but there was no hard evidence against them linking them to any terrorist act or planning," he told Reuters. Turki said the men had believed in 'takfiri' ideology, which permits branding Muslim governments or ordinary Muslims as infidels because of policies, behaviour or beliefs.

Apparently, the takfiri philosophy allows al Qaeda terrorists to kill anyone, Muslim or not, as directed by Osama bin Laden. Somehow the Saudis believe that they have successfully deprogrammed people away from takfiri.

Sheikh Mohammed al-Fifi, a member of the committee leading the dialogue with suspects, said this week that those released, accounted for over 90 percent of all detainees whose thinking clerics had tried to "correct." He put the number of those freed at around 700.

"First we would deal with them in groups, then individually as they related their thoughts," he told the al-Madina newspaper in an interview published this week.

"They became like this through provocative religious edicts on the Internet or in books, or via preachers who stir up young people's passions in sermons and lectures," he added.

Although Fifi admits that people become al Qaeda sympathizers through books and lectures, he maintains that the Saudi educational curriculum cannot be blamed, only some teachers.

Heh.

Personally, I think the Saudi program to correct the thinking of terrorist sympathizers sounds too much Dr. Phil without any John Wayne. We will have to wait to see if it proves to be effective.