Famous Saudi preacher Emad al-Moubayed has been missing since his last tweet last week in which he criticized the government of Saudi Arabia. And now, activists are asking where he is.
A week ago on March 1st, Emad al-Moubayed, who is among the most prominent preachers residing in Saudi Arabia, and is also known for his anti-government remarks, tweeted a video criticizing recent reforms in the kingdom’s entertainment industry, including allowing once-banned concerts.
In the video, al-Moubayed advised “those in power” to “fear God”, warning the Saudi authorities that the reforms were in opposition to the Islamic faith. In less than a week after the video was published, it has been viewed more than 7 million times. “This country was established on the basis of faith and the establishment and application of the religion of God Almighty, and what is happening today is contrary to what the country was founded on,” al-Moubayed said in the video. In recent months, Saudi Arabia has relaxed rules barring cinemas, gender-mixed concerts and sporting extravaganzas as part of efforts to improve its image, diversify its economy, and attract tourists.
But now, Saudi activists have raised concerns over the whereabouts of al-Moubayed as he has been missing since the day of the release of the video. They believe that as because al-Moubayed referred in his video directly to King Salman, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and Turki al-Sheikh, the kingdom’s chief of entertainment, he might be in the custody of the Saudi government.
Saudi Arabia has in fact a very infamous record in dealing with opponents and critics of the governments, particularly King Salma and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Although Saudi police in the eastern Al-Khobar governorate said this Monday that a Saudi man was arrested for “violating anti-cybercrime laws by filming and publishing visual content that included false information, which would disrupt public order”, they didn’t clarify whether this man was indeed al-Moubayed or someone else. Reacting to the news, Saudi activists took on Twitter to demand more information about the detainee and a hashtag #WhereIsEmadMoubayed trended on Monday after the police statement.
Bin Salman and zero tolerance policy over criticism
After the dismissal of Crown Prince Muhammad bin Nayef, King Salman’s nephew, Mohammed Bin Salman the first child of Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz, rose to power as Crown Prince back in 2017.
Since then, 38-year-old Bin Salman has marketed a social and economic change across Saudi Arabia, but has also made the country more repressive than it has ever been. He has particularly been applying aggressive crackdown on any hint of dissent posted on social media.
By his direct order, for example, a Saudi appeals court in early August 2022 dramatically increased the prison sentence of Saudi doctoral student Salma Al-Shehab from 6 years to 34 years because of criticizing Bin Salman in Twitter. The sentence was in fact the longest ever imposed on a Saudi woman for her peaceful online expression.
Also last year in October, the Saudi Kingdom sentenced an American citizen to 16 years in prison for criticizing the Saudi regime in a tweet. Saad Ibrahim Almadi, 72, a dual US-Saudi national, was detained in Riyadh in November 2021 after arriving for a two-week work and personal trip in his own country.
Then in December, university professor Turki al-Shalhoub was also detained and given a 30-year prison term for his critical tweets about the House of Saud, its propaganda strategies, and the country’s security situation.
