Influence
Al Watan became a forum for reformist issues in the early 2003. Columnists initiated a discussion regarding whether the teachings of strict Muslim scholars were granted too much credence within Saudi society. They also began to challenge the authority of the mutaween, the religious police force. Late Interior Minister Prince Nayef, who effectively controlled the press in Saudi Arabia, clearly showed his distaste for the new discussions taking place. As a result of its progressive approach, religious conservatives began to call Al Watan Al-Wathan, that means "the idol" in Arabic. The paper is regarded as the youngest and one of the highest distribution papers in Saudi Arabia.
Read more about this topic: Al-Watan (Saudi Arabia)
Famous quotes containing the word influence:
“It behooves every man to see that his influence is on the side of justice, and let the courts make their own characters.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Constitutional statutes ... which embody the settled public opinion of the people who enacted them and whom they are to govern—can always be enforced. But if they embody only the sentiments of a bare majority, pronounced under the influence of a temporary excitement, they will, if strenuously opposed, always fail of their object; nay, they are likely to injure the cause they are framed to advance.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)