Reform is underway in Saudi Arabia but it must be step-by-step, Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz insisted Wednesday as a storm raged over the role of women in the arch-conservative kingdom.
"The changes are underway. We are moving forward with changes, but we have to do this step-by-step," the de facto ruler said when asked about the debate over female empowerment.
The storm broke after women took centre stage in a country where "the ladies", or nisaa in Arabic, have begun to break out of the straitjacket of male domination and puritanical tradition.
The unprecedented spectacle of businesswomen and female professionals, some daring to shed the veil, on stage at an international gathering of more than 1,000 men at this week's Jeddah Economic Forum proved too much for the grand mufti.
Saudi Arabia's highest religious authority issued a thunderous condemnation Tuesday, charging the women with skirting the rules of segregation of the sexes.
"We followed what happened at the Jeddah Economic Forum and which should be denounced... namely, the mixing of men and women and the latter's appearance without wearing the Islamic hijab ordered by God," said Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh.
"This is prohibited. Moreover newspapers published their pictures in this state which violates sharia (Islamic law)," he said.
"The liberals in Jeddah are moving too fast," said the crown prince's eldest son Mutab bin Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz.
"The government agrees to a step-by-step approach," said the major-general, deputy commander of the National Guard which his father heads.
"Pictures of women without the veil should not be published," he said. "We need to go step-by-step. These things make it difficult for the government to make changes."
A delegation of Islamic sheikhs led by a blind cleric attended Wednesday's audience with the crown prince and petitioned him against the events in Jeddah.
The mufti had railed that not only did newspapers splash the women on page one, some portrayed their conduct as "the beginning of the liberation of Saudi women - as if they were being constrained by Islamic law."
"I warn against the dire consequences" that such practices will have, said the head of the kingdom's council of senior ulema.
"What is even more painful is that such outrageous behaviour should have happened in Saudi Arabia, the land of the two holy shrines (in Mecca and Medina), whose rulers consistently abided by Islamic law without fear of criticism... and remain on this right path," Sheikh said.
The three-day forum which closed Monday saw the top Saudi businesswoman deliver the opening keynote address for the first time ever, a novelty hailed as "historic" in pro-reform media.
"Without real change there can be no real progress. If we in Saudi Arabia want to progress we have no choice but to embrace change," said Lubna al-Olayan, chief executive officer of Olayan Financing, a multi-billion-dollar group.
But she stressed that "those changes can be embraced in a way that preserves our core Islamic values."
Three prominent Saudi women also gave speeches and led a debate under the theme, "Women: the driving force for economic growth". Ex-US president Bill Clinton led numerous Saudi men in calling for a wider role for women in the kingdom where females make up barely five percent of the workforce but 58 percent of graduates.
Reem Abdul Aziz al-Jarbou, international relations adviser to the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said the backlash had to be expected.
"It's a natural reaction, claiming it was basically unIslamic," she said on Wednesday. "These women did nothing against Islam. If the authorities had not wanted this to go ahead they would have stopped it."
Al-Jarbou said women in Jeddah and Riyadh were preparing a letter of petition in response to the mufti and would send it to Crown Prince Abdullah.
"This is all part of the national dialogue," she said, referring to a process launched by the crown prince to support the tentative reforms at the same time as security forces battle armed Islamist sympathizers of the al-Qaeda network blamed for suicide bombings that left 52 people dead in Riyadh last year.
Abdullah warned last week that he "will not permit anyone to interfere with reform, be it by appeals to ultra-conservatism and stagnation or to ill-considered adventure."
The religious establishment has been badly buffeted in the post-9/11 furore and owes allegiance to the Saud dynasty which in turn follows a strict form of Islam, known as Wahhabism.
Blair blasts Britons over Iraq war