# Top Religious Leader of Saudi Arabia bans Chess **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [January 22, 2016, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-religious-leader-of-saudi-arabia-bans-chess/743892 "2016-01-22T18:04:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![Emiliana](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f0a364/32.png) [@Emiliana](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Emiliana)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-religious-leader-of-saudi-arabia-bans-chess/743892/161 "2016-01-25T00:11:42Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > Obsequiousness is pathetic. Oh dear. That was not the word you were looking for. ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-religious-leader-of-saudi-arabia-bans-chess/743892/162 "2016-01-25T00:19:58Z")
> [@Emiliana](#): > > You are also an idiot, incapable of seeing any degree of power or authority between infallible Pope and utterly irrelevant scholar. How odd…for a man who is “utterly irrelevant,” he gets a lot of news coverage and provokes a lot of impassioned discussion. If he was Grand Mufti Bill of Chester WV and pronounced against chess on his myspace page, you’d have more of a point. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-religious-leader-of-saudi-arabia-bans-chess/743892/163 "2016-01-25T01:07:33Z")
> [@Scumpup](#): > > How odd…for a man who is “utterly irrelevant,” he gets a lot of news coverage and provokes a lot of impassioned discussion. If he was Grand Mufti Bill of Chester WV and pronounced against chess on his myspace page, you’d have more of a point. I don’t read \*\*Emiliana \*\*to be saying he is utterly irrelevant. But either way this argument is dumb. This fatwa got lots of attention precisely because it is insane, just like Jerry Falwell gets lots of attention. People can properly criticize Jerry Falwell and argue that his insane rantings reflect on Christianity and Christians in general (and, indeed, that is exactly the kind of thing the atheists Emiliana is bemoaning do). But it is just as specious in that context as this one. Obviously, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia benefits from having the backing of a fanatical dictator. But that doesn’t change the extent to which his opinion is reflective upon Islam or Muslims in general. ---
**Author:** ![Emiliana](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f0a364/32.png) [@Emiliana](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Emiliana)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-religious-leader-of-saudi-arabia-bans-chess/743892/164 "2016-01-25T01:08:55Z")
> [@Scumpup](#): > > How odd…for a man who is “utterly irrelevant,” he gets a lot of news coverage and provokes a lot of impassioned discussion. If he was Grand Mufti Bill of Chester WV and pronounced against chess on his myspace page, you’d have more of a point. Is January ignoramus month? Is there some sort of contest underway? Try reading the entire sentence, addressed to coremelt: “You are also an idiot, incapable of seeing \*\*any degree of power or authority between \*\*infallible Pope and utterly irrelevant scholar.” Now that you’ve read the sentence, do you really think I was claiming that the Grand Mufti was an irrelevant scholar? If so, I’m so sorry. ETA: Richard Parker you are a far, far better person than I. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-religious-leader-of-saudi-arabia-bans-chess/743892/165 "2016-01-25T01:24:25Z")
> [@Hooleehootoo](#): > > It is my experience that when on this board someone criticizes The death penalty for apostasy to Islam, for drawing images of Mohammed, general lack of human rights for women, Islamic finance, etc. etc., apologists often make an excuse that it is a cultural or political practice. :dubious: Can you provide a cite for this alleged “experience” of yours? I’ve participated in lots of discussions on these boards about draconian oppression perpetrated by adherents of various radical-Islamist ideologies, but I don’t remember ever seeing another poster attempting to _excuse_ such oppression on religious, cultural or any other grounds. Now, some of the better-informed posters in such threads often cite cultural and political context to help _explain_ the rise and persistence of such oppressive practices. But that’s not at all the same thing as “making an excuse” for them. [QUOTE=Hooleehootoo] And on the other side of the coin, if Islam is so individualistic, how can it be claimed that ISIS’s version is not also a variant of Islam? [/QUOTE] Who is trying to claim that ISIS’s ideology is not a variant of Islam? There are many diverse variants of pretty much **all** religious faiths and identities, and some of those variants endorse violent and oppressive ideologies. That’s in no way unique to Islam. ---
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-religious-leader-of-saudi-arabia-bans-chess/743892/166 "2016-01-25T01:34:40Z")
> [@Emiliana](#): > > You are also an idiot, incapable of seeing any degree of power or authority between infallible Pope and utterly irrelevant scholar. Nope, I never said that. What I said was “even the pope gets ignored by catholics”. Again and again when an islamic leader says something stupid always the excuse is “he has no power, wah, we don’t have priests, wah not all muslims”. Any lame excuse rather than accept and confront the problems with islam. ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-religious-leader-of-saudi-arabia-bans-chess/743892/167 "2016-01-25T01:43:40Z")
> [@Emiliana](#): > > ETA: Richard Parker you are a far, far better person than I. I’d say just about everybody is. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-religious-leader-of-saudi-arabia-bans-chess/743892/168 "2016-01-25T01:44:50Z")
> [@coremelt](#): > > Nope, I never said that. What I said was “even the pope gets ignored by catholics”. Again and again when an islamic leader says something stupid always the excuse is “he has no power, wah, we don’t have priests, wah not all muslims”. > > Any lame excuse rather than accept and confront the problems with islam. When you hold up an individual’s opinion as reflective upon a billion people, you shouldn’t be too surprised when the main rebuttal concerns how representative that opinion is. It will continue to be the principal flaw in your argument, no matter how you alter the details, and therefore you will continue to face the same rebuttal. In this case, the argument is especially weak because the errors made by the mufti are empirical and political more than theological. The theological premise is that gambling is bad. That’s pretty uncontroversial in mainstream Islam. The more controversial premises are that chess inherently involves gambling (false, and not representative of Muslims) and that the state should ban that which is sinful (false, and representative of a large population of Muslims like adherents of other religions, though many hundreds of millions of Muslims disagree). And while the last point is probably the worthiest of debate, it also the least relevant to this particular fatwa, since literally every fatwa issued by the Grand Mufti of a fucking insane theocracy will involve that opinion. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-religious-leader-of-saudi-arabia-bans-chess/743892/169 "2016-01-25T01:49:24Z")
> [@coremelt](#): > > Nope, I never said that. What I said was “even the pope gets ignored by catholics”. Again and again when an islamic leader says something stupid always the excuse is “he has no power, wah, we don’t have priests, wah not all muslims”. > > Any lame excuse rather than accept and confront the problems with islam. You seem to be another of the folks who don’t understand what the word “excuse” means. Nobody here is attempting in any way to excuse the absurd anti-chess pronouncement of this particular Saudi cleric. Nor is anybody here in any way trying to avoid accepting and confronting the severe problems with oppressive and violent radical-Islamist ideologies. In fact, right out of the gate in the fourth post in this thread, **Ramira** didn’t hesitate to call this particular radical-Islamist ideologue a “stupid narrow-minded wahhabi salafiste idiot”. Can’t get much more confrontational than that, actually. Where you are, to put it kindly, confused is in thinking that condemning this sort of stupid narrow-minded wahhabi salafiste idiot (and his fellow oppressive radical-Islamist ideologues) requires also condemning the entire religion and faith community of Islam as a whole. ---
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-religious-leader-of-saudi-arabia-bans-chess/743892/170 "2016-01-25T02:11:46Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > requires also condemning the entire religion and faith community of Islam as a whole. Again, read my posts and you will see I have never done that. I condemn certain practises and beliefs that are wide spread in Islam - harsh penalties for apostasy, inferiority of women, justification of violence against women, justification of violence against homosexuals, justification of pedophilia and justification of violence against non believers or those from other islamic schools. Of all of these I regard the last point and terrorism in general as the least significant because all of the other points I mention are far more commonly accepted by larger numbers of muslims. ---
**Author:** ![Emiliana](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f0a364/32.png) [@Emiliana](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Emiliana)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-religious-leader-of-saudi-arabia-bans-chess/743892/171 "2016-01-25T02:21:32Z")
> [@Scumpup](#): > > I’d say just about everybody is. Ouch, I burn. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-religious-leader-of-saudi-arabia-bans-chess/743892/172 "2016-01-25T02:39:47Z")
> [@Emiliana](#): > > You (sky fairies) and Robert 163 (Spider-man) are equally idiotic when it comes to religion. Those arguments are idiotic, sure, but to be intellectually honest, it is important to note a spectrum of which those arguments are one end: How much _do_ you have to know about something in order to criticize it? We’ve been hung up on the definition of “priest” in this thread, and that’s actually a fairly deep topic as regards the effective and dogmatic sources of authority in Islam. How much do you have to know about that topic to criticize someone who has a following and says idiotic things? Is it edgelord idiocy to condemn the followers of someone with traditional views on marriage and wife-beating? This shades into the “Courtiers’ Reply”: “Ah, but it is wrong of you to imply that the Emperor has no clothes unless and until you’re _au fait_ with every word written on the subject of every stitch His Royal Highness is ostensibly wearing!” (I trust you understood every word I used, BTW.) ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-religious-leader-of-saudi-arabia-bans-chess/743892/173 "2016-01-25T02:40:59Z")
> [@coremelt](#): > > Again, read my posts and you will see I have never done that. I condemn certain practises that are wide spread in Islam But you seem to be unwilling to condemn them and their supporters **except** as symptomatic of problems with Islam **in general**. As I noted, the sort of condemnation you claim to be making was already stated very forcefully by **Ramira** right in post #4: > [@Ramira](#): > > The stupid Saudi mufti issued a stupid opinion and he is the usual stupid narrow-minded wahhabi salafiste idiot And instead of agreeing with that perfectly reasonable condemnation, you embarked on a long rhetorical dance about how this stupid mufti should somehow be acknowledged as somehow legitimately or at least influentially speaking as a voice of Islam as a religion: > [@coremelt](#): > > Imams and Muftis perform exactly the same role as a priest does in other religions […] > > I never said “exactly” like Priests, don’t put words in my mouth […] > > They have influence, people listen to them and they shape opinion in islamic society. […] > > Every time an muslim religious figure says something outrageous this line is trotted out to try and claim they have no authority and people are free to ignore them. […] > > Are you trying to argue that islamic religious leaders have no influence at all? Because otherwise, when they say something stupid or abhorrent we’re perfectly justified in criticising them. […] > > They have influence, and their opinions are widely spread by local and international media. If they say abhorrent / stupid things then I’m going to call them on it for being sexist / ignorant / backwards assholes. […] > > I care about what they say, not what their title is. […] > > Are you trying to say that no one can ever criticise islam? […] > > So lets bring this discussion back to what islam religious “not priests” say and if thats acceptable or not. […] > > Can we talk about the stupidity of what this particular islamic leader says or not? […] > > Any lame excuse rather than accept and confront the problems with islam. If what you want is to condemn specific oppressive practices and specific hard-core ideologues that endorse them, then **why don’t you simply do that?** Why don’t you just say _“This mufti is a stupid repressive bigot, and telling people they can’t play chess is nothing but stupid narrow-minded religious oppression, and I condemn it unreservedly”_? Certainly nobody here would be disagreeing with you about any of that. Why are you so unwilling to declare your condemnation of **particular** Muslim individuals and doctrines unless you can somehow manage to rhetorically associate them with Islam _per se_ and in general? ---
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-religious-leader-of-saudi-arabia-bans-chess/743892/174 "2016-01-25T02:50:14Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Why are you so unwilling to declare your condemnation of **particular** Muslim individuals and doctrines unless you can somehow manage to rhetorically associate them with Islam _per se_ and in general? I’m reacting to the “not a priest” excuse which is an attempt to deflect criticism of islamic practises by claiming they have no influence or power. Clearly they do so the entire definition of priests is a hijack to this thread. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-religious-leader-of-saudi-arabia-bans-chess/743892/175 "2016-01-25T03:38:37Z")
> [@coremelt](#): > > I’m reacting to the “not a priest” excuse which is an attempt to deflect criticism of islamic practises by claiming they have no influence or power. What do you mean, “deflect criticism of islamic [_sic_] practises”? _ **Nobody here is trying to deflect any criticism of the stupid and oppressive practice of forbidding Muslims to play chess.** _ Nobody is in any way defending the Muslim cleric who decreed it. What’s apparently bothering you is that you’re not able to get away with your insinuated extension of this perfectly justified specific criticism to unspecified “islamic practises” in general. That’s the point of noting that this Muslim cleric is not equivalent to a “priest” in the sense of being an official spokesperson for an official body of doctrine in an official religious organization. Nobody’s denying that many non-priest Muslim clerics are very influential and have many devoted followers. Nobody’s denying that many radical-Islamist clerics are endorsing oppressive and bigoted practices that deserve condemnation. **And nobody’s making any kind of “excuse”** for stupid oppressive radical-Islamist clerics at all. _ **The only thing we’re objecting to in your condemnation of oppressive radical-Islamist doctrines is your continued insistence on sloppily conflating them with “Islam” and “Islamic practices” and “Islamic leaders” in general, indiscriminately.** _ So, **coremelt** , what’s your problem with that? Why don’t you just condemn this stupid mufti and his stupid anti-chess prohibition, and all stupid oppressive bigoted doctrines such as executing apostates and endorsing violence against women and children and so on and so forth, and we can have a nice happy Pitting all round? Why do you find it so unsatisfying to Pit a **specific** Muslim individual or sectarian position as such, in its own right? Why do you feel you have to tar everything “islamic” in general with the same broad brush as the particular instance of radical-Islamist extremist bigotry you’re complaining about? ---
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-religious-leader-of-saudi-arabia-bans-chess/743892/176 "2016-01-25T03:46:42Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Why do you feel you have to tar everything “islamic” in general with the same broad brush as the particular instance of radical-Islamist extremist bigotry you’re complaining about? I have never done this, I have listed my specific issues with islam above, and I condemn equally other religions which have abhorrent practises. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-religious-leader-of-saudi-arabia-bans-chess/743892/177 "2016-01-25T04:12:59Z")
> [@coremelt](#): > > I have never done this, I have listed my specific issues with islam above, and I condemn equally other religions which have abhorrent practises. **“Specific issues with _islam_”**. That’s exactly the sort of insidious broad-brushing I’m talking about. The specific **practices** you said you condemned (and rightly so, in my opinion) were “harsh penalties for apostasy, inferiority of women, justification of violence against women, justification of violence against homosexuals, justification of pedophilia and justification of violence against non believers or those from other islamic schools”. Those practices are not the same thing as “Islam”. They are not unique to Islamic communities, and they are not universal in Islamic communities. So why can’t you just say you condemn **those specific practices, and the particular Islamist-extremist ideologues who endorse them** , without sneakily trying to ascribe them to “Islam”, unqualified (and uncapitalized)? You are apparently not in the least interested in condemning oppressive practices within specific Islamist-extremist contexts unless you can stick the undifferentiated label “Islam” on them. ---
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-religious-leader-of-saudi-arabia-bans-chess/743892/178 "2016-01-25T04:46:28Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Those practices are not the same thing as “Islam”. Complete bullshit. Everything I list is justified in Islam by direct quotes from the Quran or the Hadith. No they’re not taken out of context. When these things are justified using religious scripture or the recorded actions of the founder of the religion, then the problem is the belief system of the religion, not “cultural”. I don’t have time this exact second but it wouldn’t take me long to find cites for all of these: “harsh penalties for apostasy, inferiority of women, justification of violence against women, justification of violence against homosexuals, justification of pedophilia and justification of violence against non believers or those from other islamic schools”. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-religious-leader-of-saudi-arabia-bans-chess/743892/179 "2016-01-25T05:57:56Z")
> [@coremelt](#): > > Complete bullshit. Everything I list is justified in Islam by direct quotes from the Quran or the Hadith. You aren’t paying attention to what I’m saying. I never claimed that radical-Islamist oppressive theocrats don’t cite specific parts of Muslim scriptures to justify oppressive practices. Of course they do. **All** oppressive theocrats and oppressive tyrants in **any** ideological system **always** cite specific statements from scriptural or other authorities to justify their oppressive practices. **But that doesn’t make those oppressive practices, or those oppressive theocrats and tyrants, _the same thing_ as the entirety of the religion they’re claiming to represent. Oppressive practices are not unique to Islamic communities, and they’re not universal within Islamic communities. So you can’t logically use the concept of “Islam” as a whole as a stand-in for those specific practices when you’re condemning them.** [QUOTE=coremelt] When these things are justified using religious scripture or the recorded actions of the founder of the religion, then the problem is the belief system of the religion, not “cultural”. [/quote] :rolleyes: And here at last, folks, is the classic Islamophobic (and more generally, antitheistic) fallacy revealed in all its squirming squinting glory. Thanks for finally coming clean with us, **coremelt**. This fallacy is a very common delusion, but it’s not a valid argument. It’s disproved by the simple fact that **different self-identified followers of the same religion interpret the exact same scriptural passages or doxographic records in different ways.** To take just one of innumerable examples, consider Islamic scriptural justifications of female genital mutilation (FGM). Some schools of Islamic jurisprudence say that this is a required observance for Muslims and quote a hadith that they claim supports their position. Other schools deny the authority of that hadith and claim that the Qur’an forbids FGM. Furthermore, many groups that traditionally practice FGM are not Muslim at all, but Christian or animist. (FGM was practiced in some 19th-century western countries in conformity with medical rather than religious doctrine.) It is historically indubitable that the practice of FGM originated before Islam and has spread outside as well as within the Muslim world. But anti-Muslim bigots would have us believe, contrary to all fact and reason, that because in some Muslim communities FGM is _“justified using religious scripture”_, then _"the problem is the belief system of the religion, not ‘cultural’ "_, which is patently ridiculous. [QUOTE=coremelt] I don’t have time this exact second but it wouldn’t take me long to find cites for all of these: “harsh penalties for apostasy, inferiority of women, justification of violence against women, justification of violence against homosexuals, justification of pedophilia and justification of violence against non believers or those from other islamic schools”. [/QUOTE] It wouldn’t take long to find cites for all of those positions (substituting the more general “other schools” for “other Islamic schools”) in the Bible, the Hindu Dharmasastra, the writings of the founders of the anti-theistic “Cult of Reason” in the French Revolution, and pretty much any other written authority of a pre-industrial ideological system that you cared to name, either. This, **coremelt** , is exactly the sort of hypocrisy and bad faith that gets anti-Islamic bigots so disliked around here. You joined this thread pretending that all you were interested in was condemning the eminently condemnable anti-chess decree of a stupid tyrannical Saudi mufti, along with other specific oppressive practices such as endorsing violence against women, children and homosexuals, which all of us in a modern free society agree with you in firmly opposing. And then you whinge and waffle for pages on end before finally coming out with your admission that what you really want to do here is **blame all such practices on “Islam” _en bloc_ and undifferentiated**. You don’t actually give a rat’s ass about condemning and fighting evil and oppression within particular Islamic communities and ideologies, as such. All you really care about is associating such instances of evil and oppression with the label “Islam”, and persuading people to hate the label instead of the actual wrongdoing. ---
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 6:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-religious-leader-of-saudi-arabia-bans-chess/743892/180 "2016-01-25T06:27:47Z")
Nope I’m not an Islamaphobe. I am against specific practises which are justified and widely practised by people practising Islam. But yes I take issues with the core beliefs of the religion, I don’t believe they are appropriate beliefs that anyone should live by or be forced to live by. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-religious-leader-of-saudi-arabia-bans-chess/743892.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-religious-leader-of-saudi-arabia-bans-chess/743892.md?page=10)