"Work of Criminals"

This is good news!

The Associated Press reports that a second prominent Saudi religious leader has renounced and attacks against innocent people. Nasser Fahd, in an interview on Saudi state run television yesterday, said:

"The solution is not in bearing arms. There is no good in violence. Why should innocent people pay the price?"

This story is being widely carried in U.S. papers. An earlier article about another prominent Saudi cleric recanting wasn’t so broadly published in the U.S. A Google search revealed that it made more news abroad.

The Saudi government interrupted a popular television comedy to broadcast Ali al-Khudair recanting his previous fatwas, or religious edicts, calling for attacks on the West, said:

"If I had the choice I would not have said them. I hope that, God willing, I have time to correct them."

Al-Khudair, called the Nov. 8 suicide bombing of a residential compound in Riyadh "the work of criminals."

Al-Khudair, Nasser al-Fahd and another cleric, were arrested in a anti-terror sweep last May. They were charged with advocating violence in fiery sermons in mosques and on the Internet.

Maybe the Saudi’s are finally getting it. I hope it isn’t to late.

UPDATE: At Power Line, John H. Hinderaker "Hindrocket," noting that al-Fahd said, “We never imagined that things would go this far,” comments:

To give them the benefit of the doubt, it's possible that the clerics only meant to encourage murdering Hindus, Christians and Jews, not fellow Muslims.