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Middle East|Saudi Grand Mufti, an Archconservative in a Changing Kingdom, Dies
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/23/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-grand-mufti-dies.html
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The death of Abdulaziz Al Asheikh, Saudi Arabia’s most senior cleric, was the symbolic end of an era as the kingdom transforms.
Sept. 23, 2025, 9:57 a.m. ET
Saudi Arabia’s grand mufti, the ultraconservative Sheikh Abdulaziz Al Asheikh, died on Tuesday after having served as the kingdom’s top religious authority for more than two decades.
Sheikh Abdulaziz was appointed in 1999 to the head of the Council of Senior Scholars, a government body that issued religious edicts.
The council once held considerable sway, both in Saudi Arabia and for Muslim communities around the world. But its authority has waned over the past decade as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud has remade the kingdom, loosening social and religious restrictions while consolidating power under himself.
The Saudi royal court announced the mufti’s death in a statement. It did not include his age or cause of death, but he was believed to be in his early to mid-80s. His replacement has not yet been named.
The death was the symbolic end of an era for Saudi Arabia, which has transformed rapidly over the past decade.
Like many Saudi religious scholars, Sheikh Abdulaziz espoused a strict and deeply conservative interpretation of Islam. In 2004, he made headlines after he criticized the mixing of unveiled women with men at an economic forum in Jeddah, calling their behavior a cause of “evil and catastrophe,” Reuters reported at the time.
