Global Islam: Saudi King’s efforts at inter-faith Dialogue - A new breeze may be blowing very softly from the Saudi sands

Global Islam: Saudi King’s efforts at inter-faith Dialogue - A new breeze may be blowing very softly from the Saudi sands

Unusual guests, a most unusual host

Jul 24th 2008 | MADRID

From The Economist print edition

In fact, the MWL’s old-time credentials might just make it a plausible spreader of a gentler message. In the words of Vali Nasr, a scholar at America’s Tufts University, an initiative in the Muslim world “must be respected not in London and Washington but in Jakarta and Karachi, and the MWL has credibility in those places.” It can also be argued that King Abdullah has more credibility as an inter-faith conciliator than did his predecessor, King Fahd. Because he is devout and free of the playboy image that besets some other Saudi royals, he should be better-placed to stand up to reactionary clerics. As Mr Toraifi puts it, the king “is widely known as a pious person, so he doesn’t feel the need to appease the conservatives.”

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