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:
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.
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).
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.
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].
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.)
Saudi criminal laws aren’t codified. In theory, the Quran is the source of law, with various royal decrees layered on top. In the Quran, it’s actual homosexual acts that are the crime. So simply being homosexual should not, in theory, get you in trouble. But in practice, the CPVPV has wide latitude. People have been arrested for flying a rainbow flag: https://www.google.com/amp/www.independent.co.uk/news/world/.... People have also been arrested for their social media activity: https://www.google.com/amp/www.washingtonblade.com/2016/03/2...
As a person who visited SA I know for a fact that even among muslims who have homosexual inclinations, that it's not a problem unless one acts upon it or tries to 'propagate' against the established and accepted moral foundations. Not sure about the specifics of the visit rules tho, but I doubt that they would ask you about that, instead they would ask you about your religion.
Keep in mind realities of class and power exist in Saudi Arabia as well. As a guest of the World Chess Championship, you'll be given much more leeway than a regular Saudi citizen.
How rich and/or successful do you have to be to not be imprisoned for being gay in KSA? Is there a specific level of achievement or do you fill out a waiver application?
Apparently, there is no level to avoid being imprisoned, but if you are suitably wealthy, you will be held at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel and Detainment Facility.
Which country is being excluded? I have no idea what you're talking about. Are you talking about the article or the comment or some imagined point? The article is about a player voluntarily choosing not going to a country. Its important to note that people can disagree over methods being employed to reduce discrimination.
Until the very last minute, Saudi Arabia refused to issue visas to any players from Israel, Iran, or Qatar. At the last minute, they allowed players from Iran and Qatar in.
They continued to refuse to allow any players from Israel in.
A pretty easy litmus test of whether a country is worth visiting: would you be comfortable standing on a corner in a major city with a sign critical of the dominant religion?
That is a poor test, and no travel website AFAIK uses it. Most people don't feel the need to offend someone over their personal beliefs. Its not a useful technique if your goal is to get people to be more inclusive.
This is a great moment to show solidarity in the face to stupid and backward policies. I sincerely hope the great minds choose to boycott this tournament and support a meaningful cause.
Israel banning people who are actively involved with the BDS movement from flying into Tel Aviv does not strike me as especially comparable to the Saudis prohibiting Israeli grandmasters from participating in a chess tournament in Riyadh. But that's just my opinion!
Strongly disagree. Why does actively being involved in BDS matter? It's a political stance against Israel's violations of international law by creating settlements and trying to annex them into Israel (among other things). Banning people because they don't agree with your politics is exactly what Saudi is doing.
> It's a political stance against Israel's violations of international law by creating settlements and trying to annex them into Israel (among other things).
This is the BDS viewpoint. The Israeli viewpoint is that BDS's singular focus on Israel to the exclusion of other human rights violation is a form of anti-Semitism. Though I am weary of endless Israeli claims of anti-Semitism, looking at the founders of BDS, this viewpoint is not without a kernel of truth. Without endorsing either view, it's important to recognize that for the Israelis, this is "banning hate speech" not "banning certain political views." Many many countries (including the US and UK) ban foreigners with a record of hate speech from entering their country.
> Banning people because they don't agree with your politics is exactly what Saudi is doing.
No. Saudi Arabia bars all Jews and Atheists from entering the country, regardless of their political ideas. Disbelief in God is not a political viewpoint by any normal standard.
> The Israeli viewpoint is that BDS's singular focus on Israel to the exclusion of other human rights violation is a form of anti-Semitism.
This is called "whataboutism" btw and is a recognized logical fallacy. It can be used against any group who tried to raise awareness of a specific injustice.
Because political activism takes a stance on a political issue. Simply being born in a country and playing chess does not.
Banning people because they don't agree with your politics is exactly what Saudi is doing.
No, it is what Israel is doing and Mozilla is doing as well. And Germany is doing with Nazi party, and so on. All are going to say it's because the given issue is that major for them. But what Saudi is doing is banning someone for being born in a country. Playing chess has nothing to do with agreeing with someone's politics.
So if playing chess has nothing to do with agreeing with someone's politics why is it okay to ban people for disagreeing with your state's politics?
It isn't. Israel is doing it. Saudi Arabia is retaliating. There isn't a BDS on Saudi Arabia though, so they ban players from Israel. Being born in a country is one thing, but all Israelis (all Jewish, 18+ year old Israelis) also participate in the IDF and along with that they are a bit more complicit in any human rights violations they may commit and in furthering the political agenda of Israeli annexation of Palestinian territory as a result.
You can’t get a visa to KSA if you are Jewish, no matter where you are from. Used to be you couldn’t get one if you wrote “Atheist” either. Then again they don’t have tourist visas (though isn’t that what a visit to Mecca is?)
> Luckily this nonsense hasn't spread to Europe and North America for the most part.
Umm, you have it backwards: there are people still alive who were subject to such rules in the Europe and North America (famously up into the 1940s, but also through 1990s in Balkans at least) and there are large numbers of people trying to revive such rules, some of whom are in governments (e.g. Hungary, Poland, Austria, USA...)
Isn't Israel denying voting and movement rights to millions of people within its formal borders merely because of the religious/ethnic identity of those individuals?
I could have sworn that is what the BSD movement is all about...
The Middle east is full of countries that act backwards. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Israel, to name just the worst...
People say Israel withholds Palestinian voting rights in the occupied territories, but that's simply not true since the Oslo Accords. Palestinians aren't Israeli citizens. They can vote in PA elections, and do, when they have elections. Except the PA rarely has elections but that has nothing to do with Israel or the occupation.
Israeli Arabs, like all Israeli citizens, can vote in Israeli elections, and do. Israel is the only place in the Middle East Arabs regularly vote.
The Palestinian Territories aren’t within Israel’s formal borders, and it has nothing to do with religion or ethnicity. There are 1.7mm Israeli Arabs (20% of population, 90% are Muslim) who vote and have representation in government.
Actually you are correct, Trump promised this in his campaign and has tried to enact it in a few different ways. I am unsure why you are being voted down.
Source for this please. This claim is repeated quite often, but the only 'source' I've been able to find is when Trump was being mobbed by yelling people(after a debate or a speech), some activist asked him about 'banning muslims', and Trump started talking about how we need to build a wall and secure our borders. Basically - Trump misheard or misunderstood the question, and people take that as him advocating for a general Muslim ban.
"Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on," his campaign said in a statement.
Not exactly a campaign promise, but Trump did inquire about how he could legally ban Muslims. One of his travel bans was even thrown out because a judge interpreted this to be evidence that Trump really was trying to do a Muslim ban https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/01/29/tr...
You know why this claim is “repeated quite often”? Others have already given multiple citations. But it’s one thing to miss a news item or two, it’s quite another to essentially say, “I don’t pay attention to the news whatsoever, so imma gonna need a citation for that thing that was the headline in every major newspaper last year.” Hell, even I knew that Beyoncé was pregnant.
If your values and ideas aren't so convincing and inherently good and right that people voluntarily moving to your country don't want to adopt them and you need to resort to banning them rather than accepting them into your country and proving with your way of life how much better your values and ideas are, then how good are those values and ideas really?
Free speech but when free speech doesn't work ban the other speakers and live in a bubble. Awesome.
You really think that your beliefs are so obviously superior to every other belief system ever - even millennia-old self-reinforcing super-memetic religious ideologies - that everyone will just automatically start thinking like you if given the chance? Really?
This strikes me very much as a classical cognitive failure: An inability to understand that other people actually, truly think differently than you do. E.g. Other people actually believe that God is real. Actually, truly, like he's really there. And they'll act like it.
You're completely wrong on this entire thing. The ban is not about values, it is about not being able to acceptably vet who is entering the country when they originate from certain areas.
And to your point, even though it is an incorrect analysis of the situation - what makes you think that people just do what is inherently good and right? Prisons exist in every country for a reason.
> The ban is not about values, it is about not being able to acceptably vet who is entering the country when they originate from certain areas.
My spouse is an Iranian national and affected by the ban. I'm from Germany, where we live. Why can't the Trump administration vet her, given that previous administrations could and did?
As you write, not comparable, but in their defense, NASA's administrative side is pretty thoroughly hoarked. It shouldn't suprise anyone that they occasionally make idiotic decisions.
See, that's why I admire Billie Jean King so much. When she got fed up by the hypocrisy of the world tennis association giving men 10x more price money then women, whilst women were 50% of the spectators she just created her own association, tour and sponsors, and persuaded all of her colleagues to go with her. Even when they told them they cannot participate in any grand slam. In the end she won, and it was a huge victory. There's a lot of shady corruption going on with these tournaments there. They should just create their own association.
It's one thing to force players to adopt certain behaviors which are the norm in the place hosting it, but an entirely different thing to ban certain players because of the country they happen to come from.
I was reading the justifications of women who are attending and they generally have 3 things to say:
1) All countries are at different places in the march towards human rights. But participating in a women's sporting event in countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia is a chance to help further women's rights in those countries as more women might want to play, become very very good, and have a high profile from which to challenge the regime. Refusing because you have to wear hijab or abaya is not worth giving up that chance to help women in such countries.
2) Saudi seems to be sponsoring much more prize money and accommodations. One ranked player complained that many participants had to fund their own travel in the past, that European countries aren't willing to sponsor the tournament, and only the top 4 players received any kind of compensation at all in the past. In Saudi it is supposed to be a better prize and travel is comped. One player said that such pitiful prize compensation as in the past is no less oppressive than having to wear a hijab.
3) Only one player mentioned this but I think it was worth mentioning. She said that human and women's rights are bad in Saudi but human and women's are ignored in other countries (for example, China multiple times in the past 20 years, Russia right after its annexation of Ukraine) the championship is in, and the 'principled' chess players never speak up then.
I think the last point is most revealing. Many of the players who boycott are concerned with regulations that affect them personally (I have to wear this. I won't be allowed to do this), and very few of them will ever care about the human rights violations or even women's rights violations that don't affect them. And of course we are not immune to this way of thinking either. It is easy for us to empathize when we have to go through what others go through. In China though (for example), when we are not having our family size culled and we are not being ethnically replaced with Han Chinese in our homelands, and we are not being suspiciously disappeared by the government like Ughyur Muslims, then we don't empathize enough to boycott a chess championship. We are not as up in arms about human rights and all this when it affects people who are not us. How many of us actually take our respective governments to task for their own rights violations (if you're American, a few years back, they bombed out an active, operating Red Cross Hospital, just as an example)?
I salute those that stand up for human rights for others, even when the oppression doesn't affect them. But then again, there is also nothing wrong with refusing to do something based on direct oppression to the person. You are right that people should stand up for rights of others too but this is a different discussion.
Here we have a woman that is expected to go to a country where she has to be escorted around by males, and is told how to dress. So this is directly affecting her, and her dignity. Maybe some will take the higher cash payments and not care if they have to become a second tier human for a bit, which is also fine. But this woman doesn't want to regardless of what the Saudis are paying.
I don't think she is trying to be a human rights champion, she is standing up for her dignity. I am glad the Saudis are making some progress on women's rights, but I also salute this woman for not wanting to take part while there is still blatant discrimination towards women/
I never said it was wrong, nor did the female player who made that argument. Good for her if she feels uncomfortable for voicing that and refusing to go. Only wishing it extended to other marginalized groups.
It's also interesting that you become a second-tier human in Saudi because of segregation but being paid pennies so little that you can't even pay for the travel expenses to the World Women's Chess Championship doesn't make a you a second-tier human. The fact that no other country even wants to host this championship this year doesn't make the women second-tier humans.
> All countries are at different places in the march towards human rights.
It’s a tightrope for sure. On one hand, you can’t completely alienate people, because then they will not engage with the rest of the world and see how life can be better. On the other hand, being too accommodating reinforces the existing power structures against domestic pressure. It signals that you can participate fully in the western international order without adopting its values.
Something like refusing to hold international events in a place is a great pressure point. It’s not something like economic sanctions, which will cripple countries and make the people hate the west. At the same time, it’s an embarrassment and a source of shame to the ruling elite.
I've heard variations on your arguments a few times, and while they seem reasonable on their face, it's frankly just a variation of "concern trolling."
1.) It's a huge reach to say that having foreign women participate in this tournament will have any impact whatsoever on Saudi Arabian women. Saudi Arabians have TV, they have twitter, they know what chess is. Frankly, the only people who actually care enough to watch a chess tournament are people who already understand chess. Also, "challenge the regime"? Come on, refusing to comply as a women in KSA just gets you arrested or killed.
2.)> "One player said that such pitiful prize compensation as in the past is no less oppressive than having to wear a hijab.". That's a terrible analogy. It's not just wearing a hijab that's the cost. It's actually putting yourself at the mercy of a nation which has encoded sexism into it's national laws and identity. It's knowing that if something bad happens, your word is worth less than a man's in a court of law. It's knowing that your movements are at someone elses mercy because of your chromosomes. It's about knowing that by going there and spending money, you are legitimizing the archaic, systematic oppression that treats half of all people as less human than others.
3. It would be great if more people spoke up for human rights that don't affect them, but you have to pick your battles sometimes. Women have the right to advocate for themselves before everyone else. It's hypocritical to fault a woman for calling out sexism but not other human rights abuses, if you wont fault men who call out neither. And sexism in China is hardly comparable to that of the KSA.
In short, I think she made the right call. As a woman, I would never willingly put myself at the mercy of a state that doesn't even pretend that I'm a full human being of equal worth to men. KSA is way out of the norm on this matter and need to change their laws if they expect western women to travel there.
Also, it is not a huge reach to say that it will have any impact whatsoever. Knowing what chess is and actually seeing / meeting a female world chess champion are different and most people realize that.
Furthermore, yes, activists in nearly every oppressive regime are jailed or killed. Mandela was jailed. MLK Jr. was jailed. Manal al-Sharif, a women's rights activist in Saudi Arabia, was jailed. All of them were jailed under existant laws in the country at the time of arrest. But the fact that countries jail outspoken activists isn't reason enough to boycott an international event, else you'd be able to go nowhere.
As someone else mentioned, there is a fine line between boycotting and attending international events in controversial settings. On the one hand, you have a chance to further international understanding, show citizens what other cultures and people are like, and influence the country which is hosting you. On the other hand, you may be legitimizing oppression. Jesse Owens ran in the Olympics hosted in Nazi Germany. If he had boycotted, perhaps some would have agreed and others disagreed. Similarly here, some women agree with the decision and some disagree. You and the chess champion in the headline, as women, would boycott. These women, as women, would not. Both have some valid reasons.
As long as it’s one country, one vote, you’re likely to get outcomes like this one, where a wealthy federation can buy off a large number of smaller federations. This is a perpetual problem in professional chess, hence the existence of proposals like this one: https://en.chessbase.com/post/one-vote-per-rated-game
Edit:
Also worth noting, Saudi Arabia was the ONLY bidder for this year’s championships.
[1] https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/fide-does-it-again-...
[2] https://2700chess.com/