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Comment by amriksohata | Hacker News Reader

On a side note Saudis high cleric banned chess for civilians how hypocritical they get to host a competition. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudi-ar...

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Did you read the posted article, or the one you just mentioned? The statement by the cleric does not have the force of law. There are plenty of Christian sects whose leaders also reject games such as chess for similar reasons. And the actual leader of Saudi Arabia is doing this precisely as a rejection of the cleric's statement. I think FIDE made the wrong decision by agreeing to host the tournament in Saudi Arabia, even with the reforms which have not gone nearly far enough yet, but at the same time, the symbolism of hosting the tournament is not hypocrisy. In this case, it's actually progress, and an explicit rejection of hyperconservative Islam.

Islam is a distributed religion, sort of like Protestant Christianity. There’s no “normal” form as there is with Catholic or orthodox Christianity, French or Spanish languages, or SQL.

Not exactly. I am not too familiar with christianity, perhaps they also have "schools of jurisprudences"? In Sunni Islam, there are 4 major ones (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi and Hanbali). There are a few important ones in Shia too (I am not too familiar with them). Here is a map showing the dominance of the schools:

http://lostislamichistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Fea...

Saudi is also influenced by the Salafi movement, but it is nestled in the Hanbali framework, which tends to put importance on imams (but not like Shias). The ulema (made up of "important" dudes dressed in robes) in Saudi Arabia has enjoyed a lot of importance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Senior_Scholars_(Sa...

I am a /little/ surprised that Saudi would go so openly against the ulema. Things might be changing there, with MbS at the helm.

Christianity does not have schools of jurisprudences. However in the past the Catholic Church has had opinions on how to govern and in the future "dominionist" sects of protestantism may gain influence [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Apostolic_Reformation

In Germany both the Catholic church and the Evangelical church are registered religious organisations governing various religious communities and institutions. The German Catholic church is obviously subject to the Vatican, but the Evangelical church is a lot more democratic, consisting of a large number of otherwise independent religious communities (including Lutherans, Calvinists and Unionists).

This sounds similar though a lot more aggressively expansionist.

I'm not sure I fully understand the distinction but I guess the big difference is that very few Christian countries are theocracies (i.e. in these countries Christian religious law has no impact outside the very limited authority held by clergy, e.g. denying entry to places of worship).

But historically as an outside it seems that Islamic sects are fairly analogous to Christian ones. There was an early split between Rome (Catholicism) and Constantinople (Eastern Orthodoxy), later various reformers led to Protestant sects, some of which eventually joined in alliances like the Evangelical Church in Germany (which includes Lutherans and Calvinists but has established a shared consensus).

At a glance, Christianity is defined by a split between Catholicism and Protestantism, with Protestantism being a fairly diverse collection of various groups ranging from Lutherans to Baptists.

Much of Christianity's present form is owed to the Peace of Westphalia, which in a nutshell led to the widely accepted ideology that it's okay for other countries not to share your religious beliefs (or even allow a diversity of beliefs in their own territories).

Thanks for expanding in that. I wasn't aware of Peace of Westphalia.

For what it's worth, early Islam is basically game of thrones. Worth checking out what happened in the decades following the death of Muhammad SAW.

I hadn't seen that abbreviation before, but it's apparently this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_be_upon_him

The modern conception of sovereign states that people seem to think is some ancient invariant is actually the result of the Peace of Westphalia and the Congress of Vienna. The post colonial borders were shaped by that understanding.

Do people who grew up in former Ottoman territory have the same conception? Within that empire the idea of nation was quite different.

Not in Saudi. In Saudi it's pretty much a single "normal" form of Islam, Wahabbi. Same one that Al Qaeda and ISIS adhere to, except Saudis are "friends".

It appears my comment was not clear. Any Muslim cleric can issue a fatwa on any topic just as any pastor in America can burn a Koran or picket a store with signs saying “god hates fags”. The existence of such statements does not make either country hypocritical, which was the claim I was responding to. There are plenty of examples of “competing fatwas” just as there are plenty of examples of competing claims from the pulpit.

And though I consider the KSA tyrannical I don’t think they, any more than anyone else, should be condemned on incorrect grounds.

I would make some distinctions here: a lot of the laws in Saudi Arabia are repressive, but the government (read: the royal family) isn't especially religious. Rather, the government "outsources" some of the lawmaking to the clerics, whose fatwas may be enforced, not enforced, or partially enforced. The government has the final say.

Further, these kinds of rulings don't apply to non-Muslims, so nothing is violated by inviting people from around the world (non-Muslims) to play chess in Saudi Arabia (as long as they don't visit the Hejaz).

Another thing to note is that Saudis play video games and watch foreign (read: American) movies. It would be pretty outlandish if that was tolerated but chess was banned. So I highly, highly doubt that chess is banned.

Straying off topic a bit: the dynamic with Israel is interesting. The Saudi government is pretty much aligned with Israel (anti-Iran, close American ally, anti-Islamist uprisings, wish to maintain the status quo), but they have to keep up a facade of zero diplomatic contact because being anti-Israeli/pro-Palestine is part of the Arab-Muslim identity at this point. You can bet Israel and Saudi Arabia have contact, it's just not out in the open.

Finally, something interesting to note is that Israeli-Arabs can visit Saudi Arabia and often do (for the Hajj). They just have to do get a Cypress or Jordanian visa and cross through Jordan.

Israeli tech firms do business with Saudi Arabia. From previous discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13553478

Then the cleric doesn't have the power people imagine he has. It seems to be good news...

Would it be hypocritical for Italy to host a chess tournament if the Pope banned it?

Vatican City may be surrounded by Italy but it is classed as a separate country. Your comment only makes sense if you replaced Italy with the Vatican City, in which case - Yes.

So if any kind of religious or secular authority bans something, everyone from that country has to abide by that or be a "hypocrite?" Sorry, but that's illogical. Back in the day, holding inclusive events in the face of societal prejudice was an act of defiance. In the real world, progress is made by chipping away, not by grand gestures with emotional background music, followed by "The End." If you want to show that a group is being disadvantaged unfairly, then meritocratic competitions are what you want! Some women might find that participation in such action is worth wearing an abaya. Some might not. It's for them to choose, and calling one choice hypocritical strikes me as a bit reductive.

That's not what the argument is about at all.

Presumably the religious edict is upheld by the state, so the tournament is hypocritical because it's making an exemption for a small elite of international athletes to participate in a sport that is illegal for most of the population to enjoy.

That's not what the argument is about at all.

Is it? Isn't the performance of that small elite evidence that the state's edict is nonsense? By your logic, shouldn't Jesse Owens have boycotted the 1936 Olympics? Wasn't he a hypocrite for his performance? Even if he hadn't won, the fact of his superlative performance as part of a small meritocratic elite was a spotlight on the falsity of the Nazi state's ideology. In a scant few years, it would be against the wishes of the state for non "aryan" people to even live within the Nazi state, much less to run in track competitions. (1)

Sometimes I think people are more interested in passive-aggression in their protesting than in a coherent ideological message and position.

(1 - With the exception of some African American GI's, some of whom related being treated well by their captors. This was the edict of the higher-ups in the German military, in the interest of maintaining the Geneva conventions.)

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