Saudi Arabia's crown prince promises country will return to 'moderate, open Islam' | The Independent
Saudi Arabia?s crown prince, speaking at a major investment conference, has promised his kingdom will return to ?what we were before ? a country of moderate Islam that is open to all religions and to the world?.
Mohammad bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud made the announcement at the beginning of the landmark Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh on Tuesday.
The country would also do more to tackle extremism, the prince said. ?We will not waste 30 years of our lives dealing with extremist ideas; we will destroy them today,? he said when asked by Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business Network.
?It was not like this in the past... We will end extremism very soon,? the prince added, in his most direct criticism of Saudi Arabia?s conservative religious establishment to date.
Expanding on his earlier comments in an interview with the Guardian, the crown prince said that the country's conservatism was in part fallout from Iran's Islamic Revolution.
?What happened in the last 30 years is not Saudi Arabia. What happened in the region in the last 30 years is not the Middle East. After the Iranian revolution in 1979, people wanted to copy this model in different countries, one of them is Saudi Arabia. We didn?t know how to deal with it. And the problem spread all over the world. Now is the time to get rid of it.
"We are a G20 country. One of the biggest world economies. We?re in the middle of three continents. Changing Saudi Arabia for the better means helping the region and changing the world. So this is what we are trying to do here. And we hope we get support from everyone."
Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy, is governed under an puritanical form of Sunni Islam known as Wahabism; it is extremist versions of Wahabism that are espoused by jihadist movements such as al-Qaeda and Isis.
In the wake of 9/11, the Saudi authorities have worked alongside the US and other Western countries to tackle radicalisation and terrorism funding ? but have often been criticised for not doing enough.