Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman rattles Muslim clergy, challenges sources of sharia

This is huge. Those of us who have had hopes that Saudi Arabia can be transformed from a sponsor of hard-line jihad into a modernizing force in the Islamic world have cause for optimism. I have from the start of his reign seen Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as attempting something similar to what the Meiji reformers did in Japan, following its 19th-century opening to the West. I am guessing that he and his advisers have studied their success closely, for he is adopting the same basic approach: labeling modernization as a "restoration."

Read more >