Last August, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia issued a royal decreethat restricted the issuing of fatwas to government-approved religious scholars. An announcement at the time said this was intended to put a stop to fatwas on "strange" or "obsolete" topics.

Since then, a satellite channel and various websites where scholars gave rulings on religious questions have either been closed or have stopped issuing fatwas. One conservative scholar, Yousef al Ahmed, who subsequently spoke out against employing female cashiers in supermarkets, was reprimanded by the king.

But conservative scholars are not the only ones affected. The ban also applies to those who challenge the official line from a more liberal perspective, such as Adel al-Kalbani, who has argued thatsinging and music are not necessarily forbidden in Islam.

However, another scholar – Abd al-Rahman al-Barrak, who is said to be close to the royal family – continues to flout the ban with apparent impunity. Barrak endorses jihad and in February he said those who oppose the kingdom's strict rules on gender segregation should be put to death. He has also been cited favourably by Osama bin Laden.

The Associated Press has been looking in some detail at the likely effects of the royal decree. While some Saudis view it as pointing the way to a modernisation of religious teaching, others see it merely as an attempt to assert state control.

The AP report points out that the officially-approved clerics – Council of Senior Religious Scholars – are far from progressive and many of them can be considered hardliners. "Beyond strict edicts on morality, they reinforce a worldview whereby non-Muslims and even liberal or Shiite Muslims are considered infidels, and their stances on jihad, or holy war, at times differ only in nuances from al-Qaeda's," it says.

AP quotes several fatwas on the council's website. One of them describes boys and girls sharing a swimming pool as forbidden. One says "It is not permissible for a Muslim to build a cinema, or run it for himself or for another person". Another says the practice of taking flowers to the sick "entails wasting money on non-useful purposes and imitating Allah's adversaries", while yet another warns against showing "mutual affection, love and brotherhood" towards non-Muslims.

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 10 October 2010.