Saudi Cleric Trumps The V-Chip

Yet again, Saudi Arabia proves that its call for social and judicial change is nothing more than rhetoric. In a statement that plunges the country into an even more archaic level of cencorship, Saleh al-Luhaidan, chief justice of Saudi Arabia’s supreme judicial council has issued a religious edict indicating that owners and operators of television networks that broadcast “depravation and debauchery” may be killed:

“The owners of these channels propagate depravation and debauchery,” said Saleh al-Luhaidan, chief justice of the supreme judicial council, the highest judicial authority in the ultra-conservative Saudi kingdom.

He made the remarks on radio in response to a caller who asked him to give an opinion on what he said were “immoral” programmes on Arab television during the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, a source at Al-Arabiya said.

“It is lawful to kill … the apostles of depravation… if their evil cannot be easily removed through simple sanctions,” Luhaidan said, according to excerpt of the remarks broadcast on the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya.

The situation is “serious … the degradation of morals is a form of perversion on earth,” he added.