The Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia (MIRA), which succeeded in organizing a rare protest in Riyadh, is the best-known Saudi opposition group, but few are aware it is also inspired by the same brand of conservative Wahhabism that reigns in the kingdom.

Based in London, MIRA was created in 1996 after it split from the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights (CDHR), a Saudi group founded by academics and Islamists in May 1993 to rally against the ruling regime's "corruption and anti-democratic methods." The CDHR was banned by the Saudi authorities soon after its launch and its spokesman, Muhammad Al Massari, sought political asylum in Britain after fleeing his country to neighboring Yemen in April 1994.

The sidelining of the CDHR allowed MIRA, through its spokesman Saad Al Faqih, to carry the mantle of opposition and become a thorn in the side of the ruling Al Saud family.

Faqih, a trained surgeon, was assistant professor in the surgery department at the prestigious King Saud University before falling out with the ruling family and moving to London in the mid-1990s to head the CDHR's bureau there.

MIRA defines itself as an "organization aiming to achieve total reform in Saudi Arabia with political reform being its foremost goal... and all its work is governed by Islamic sharia [law], the Koran and sunna [prophet Muhammad's teachings]," according to a message posted on its website www.yaislah.org.

Wahhabism is a puritanical form of Islam that emerged in the Arabian peninsula and has spread to central Asia with Saudi Arabia's oil money.

The sect is named after its founder Muhammad Bin Abdel Wahhab (1703-1792), whose purist interpretation was taken up in 1745 by Muhammad Ibn Saud, the founder of the Saud dynasty which controls modern Saudi Arabia.

Today Wahhab's descendants known as the Ash Shaykh family still control the religious institutions of Saudi Arabia in a cooperative and consensual relationship with the royal family.

MIRA also spells out on its website what it sees as the deficiencies in the current political, economic, foreign relations and social policies pursued by the ruling family.

"Foreign relations have always been the weakest point of contemporary Saudi Arabia," says MIRA, criticising the ruling family for hedging all its bets first with the British and then the Americans.

MIRA says it advocates a foreign policy centred on "uniting Muslims... and ceasing to support oppressors and those who oppose Muslims." Since December 2002, MIRA has launched another platform for its attacks on the Saudi royal family through the London-based Voice of Islah radio, which mainly broadcasts talk shows and programs involving the Saudi public, often hosted by Faqih himself.

"For the first time, Saudi opposition can directly address the Saudi population," said Faqih, adding that the radio's transmissions can be heard in Europe, North Africa, the Gulf and most countries in the Middle East.

Faqih was attacked at his home in London last June by two men who, according to Faqih, told him they "were carrying a message from the Saudi government." Following a call from MIRA, hundreds of people demonstrated in Riyadh on Tuesday to denounce arrests of dissidents as a human rights conference was underway for the first time in the Saudi capital.

Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef Bin Abdel Aziz, the object of Faqih's most vociferous criticism, minimized the importance of the protest, while the reaction on Saudi Internet message boards was mixed.

Some wondered if "Faqih is sounding the knell of the house of Saud," but others denounced him as "Great Britain's henchman".

AFP