Saudi Effort Draws on Radical Clerics to Combat Lure of Al-Qaeda

Maqdisi has written a treatise titled "Clear Evidence on the Infidel Nature of the Saudi State." He declared the Saudi government to be a kafir , or nonbeliever, thus justifying its overthrow on religious grounds. He is currently in a Jordanian prison.

"Maqdisi is a very important figure. They listen to him," said Hahlaq.

To attempt to counter his teachings, the committee sends teams, made up of three clerics and one psychiatrist or psychologist, to see individual prisoners. Visiting almost daily for months, the team engages the prisoner in religious discussions that last for hours at a time. Some detainees attend five-week courses in the fine points of Wahhabism, the fundamentalist sect of Islam that dominates Saudi society and lends crucial support to the ruling Saud royal family.

The prisoners, most of them under 30 years of age and without high school diplomas, must pass an exam before being released. The committee then helps them find jobs, go back to school or even get married. But they are required to report to the police every two weeks.

By bringing into the program well-known Wahhabi radicals who in the past have denounced the Saudi government for its close association with the United States, Saudi officials hope to give it credibility with young people. With its control of the finances of Islam in the kingdom, the government can bring pressure by threatening to close the mosques of individual clerics or withdraw their funding.

Perhaps the two best-known Wahhabi radicals are Salman al-Ouda and Safar al-Hawali. They both spent about five years in prison in the 1990s for criticizing the ruling Saud family for inviting U.S. troops into the kingdom during the 1991 Persian Gulf War against Iraq. They were among 26 Saudi religious figures who delivered a sermon in November 2004 declaring that Iraqis had a "right" and a "duty" to fight U.S. forces in Iraq.

After the sermon, Saudi authorities pressured Ouda and Hawali in particular to moderate their tone and to help the government combat al-Qaeda inside the kingdom. Hawali, the more radical of the two, suffered a stroke last year and is no longer active. Ouda has largely complied, officials said.

Another participant is Obeikan, a former radical Islamic jurist who has publicly challenged Maqdisi and bin Laden to debate their ideology with him.

In an interview at his elegant marble-faced home on the northern outskirts of Riyadh, Obeikan recounted that he twice met bin Laden here just before he was expelled by Saudi authorities to Sudan in 1991. The al-Qaeda leader sought to convince him to become the spiritual leader of a movement to overthrow the Saud royal family, "like Khomeini," he said, referring to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, spiritual leader of Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution.

The gray-bearded sheik, dressed in a flowing white robe and a red-and-white checked scarf, said he had declined. He did make an eight-day trip to Afghanistan in 1989 to lecture in three of bin Laden's camps and join in a "token" detonation of some explosives, he said.

Now, he says he is lecturing on "why there is no need for jihad" in Iraq or elsewhere at this time. "There is a misunderstanding of Islamic jihad," he said. "What is meant by jihad is the spread of the call to Islam through peaceful means."

Whether Saudi youth are listening is far from clear. Awajy, the onetime radical lawyer, estimated the influence of clerics such as Obeikan as "insignificant."

Toby Jones, who has written several reports on Saudi politics for the Brussels-based research and advocacy organization the International Crisis Group, said that Obeikan has solid religious credentials. "When he speaks, even the radicals listen," he said. Jones said he doubted, however, that the cleric was changing many minds among those "leaning toward jihad or at least supporting jihadism." He noted that the Islamic jurist has been pilloried regularly by Islamic militants in satirical Internet postings.