THE kingdom presented its shift from the Islamic to the Gregorian calendar as a leap into modernity. In April the dynamic deputy crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Muhammad bin Salman, chose to call his transformation plan Vision 2030, not Vision 1451 after the corresponding Islamic year as traditionalists might have preferred. Recently his cabinet declared that the administration is adopting a solar calendar in place of the old lunar one. Henceforth they will run the state according to a reckoning based on Jesus Christ’s birth, not on the Prophet Muhammad’s religious mission.
But puritans in Islam’s birthplace are wincing at their eviction from control first over public space, and now of time. Guardians of the Wahhabi rite, who seek to be guided by Muhammad’s every act, ask whether they are now being required to follow Jesus. A slippery slope, the clergy warn, to forgetting the fasting month of Ramadan altogether; the authorities are rewinding the clock to the jahiliyyah, or pre-Islamic age of ignorance. The judiciary, a clerical bastion, still defiantly insists on sentencing miscreants according to the old calendar.
The clerical unease has...Continue reading
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