Reuters reports:

Saudi Arabia has released over 700 suspected militants after clerics "corrected" their thinking in a special program aimed at stemming a three-year-old campaign of violence by al Qaeda, officials said.

"They are sympathizers. There are many of this kind of people, who are subject to the process of an advisory committee. Hundreds of them have gone through this and been released," Interior Ministry spokesman Mansour al-Turki said….

Turki said the men had believed in 'takfiri' ideology, which permits branding Muslim governments or ordinary Muslims as infidels because of policies, behavior or beliefs….

Sheikh Mohammed al-Fifi, a member of the committee leading the dialogue with suspects, said this week that those released, accounted for over 90 percent of all detainees whose thinking clerics had tried to "correct." He put the number of those freed at around 700.

"First we would deal with them in groups, then individually as they related their thoughts," he told the al-Madina newspaper in an interview published this week.

"They became like this through provocative religious edicts on the Internet or in books, or via preachers who stir up young people's passions in sermons and lectures," he added.

Fifi said he did not blame Saudi Arabia's controversial educational curriculum which foreign rights groups and Western governments have said promote extremism.

Here are just a few examples of “controversial” publications funded by the Saudi government.