When Saudi King Abdullah appeared in a newspaper photo with 40 veiled women in April, he broke a taboo by mixing with the opposite sex in public.
Since then, the 86-year-old monarch has crimped the power of conservative Muslim clerics more than any of his five predecessors since the foundation of the kingdom in 1932. He prohibited unauthorized religious edicts, or fatwas, and shut some of the websites where they’re issued. In the past month, he backed supermarkets employing females for the first time.
“This is really a part of the struggle over who controls Saudi Arabia,” Robert Lacey, author of 2009 book ‘Inside the Kingdom,’ said in a telephone interview from the Saudi city of Jeddah. “Ten to 15 years ago, it would have been very difficult for a Saudi king to discipline the clergy.”
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