"King Abdullah receives loyalty oath from top Islamic clerics"

[Bluebear]

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) -- King Abdullah received oaths of loyalty from hundreds of top Islamic clerics, tribal chiefs and other prominent Saudis on Wednesday in a traditional Islamic investiture ceremony that bestows his legitimacy after the death of his half brother, King Fahd.

Members of the Supreme Council of Senior Islamic clerics were the first to file by Abdullah in a Riyadh palace, shake his hand and pronounce their allegiance to him as Saudi Arabia's sixth king.

The House of Saud has depended on the support of clerics from the kingdom's strict Wahhabi version of Islam ever since Abdullah's father, Abdul-Aziz bin Saud, welded the Arabian peninsula tribes into a nation under his name in 1932.

"At times when shouldering this responsibility, and I feel the weight is too heavy and the trust is great, I will derive help from God, and I ask him to give me strength to continue the march begun by the founder of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the great Abdel-Aziz al-Saud and then his sons," the new king said in his first televised address to the public on Wednesday.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/SAUDI_KING_ABDULLAH?SITE=NVLAS&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

[elehhhhna]

1. Check that quote--he calls Allah "God" now? Right.

i call bullshit.

[Meeker Morgan]

4. He calls Allah "God" now?

No doubt the oath was in Arabic.

"Allah" is the Arabic word for "God", even for Arabic speaking Christians.

When translating Arabic to English, "Allah" is often left untranslated for political reasons.

[Deja Q]

2. So there is no jihad then.

Fahd supported the US. Therefore those same clerics are against the fanatical terrorism being made against the US.

[Maple]

3. Interesting disclaimer

"I hear and obey, except in what would disobey God"

Because, of course, clerics can then spin that to mean anything they want.