Freedom of religion in Saudi Arabia
[1] While no law requires all citizens to be Muslim,[1] non-Muslim foreigners attempting to acquire Saudi Arabian nationality must convert to Islam.
The Saudi Mutaween (Arabic: مطوعين), also known as the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (CPVPV) or "religious police" was enforcing the prohibition on the public practice of non-Muslim religions, though its powers were significantly curtailed in April 2016.
Non-Muslim worshipers risk arrest, imprisonment, lashing, deportation, and sometimes torture for engaging in overt religious activity that attracts official attention.
[13] In the past, Sri Lankan officials have also rejected reports regarding labor conditions issued by New York-based Human Rights Watch.
However, non-Muslim organizations have claimed that there are no explicit guidelines for distinguishing between public and private worship, such as the number of persons permitted to attend and the types of locations that are acceptable.
Such lack of clarity, as well as instances of arbitrary enforcement by the authorities, obliges most non-Muslims to worship in such a manner as to avoid discovery.
[1] Members of the Shi’a minority are discriminated against in government employment, especially with respect to positions that relate to national security, such as in the military or in the Ministry of the Interior.
Laws and regulations state that defendants should be treated equally; however, under Shari’a as interpreted and applied in the country, crimes against Muslims may result in harsher penalties than those against non-Muslims.
In 2022 the government reduced the number of hours required for religious education, in favor of more study time for Arabic and STEM.
[1] In 2007, Saudi religious police detained Shiite pilgrims participating in the Hajj and Umrah pilgrimage, allegedly calling them "infidels in Mecca and Medina".
In contrast, assigned readings over 12 years of primary and secondary schooling devoted to covering the history, literature, and cultures of the non-Muslim world come to a total of about 40 pages.
[31] "Fierce religious resistance" had to be overcome to permit such innovations as paper money (in 1951), female education (1964), and television (1965) and the abolition of slavery (1962).
The announcement was made on social media by the country's Minister of Islamic Affairs who warned people against association during the Friday sermon.
[1] Saudi Arabia has criminal statutes making it illegal for a Muslim to change religion or to renounce Islam, which is defined as apostasy and punishable by death.
[59] On 3 September 1992, Sadiq 'Abdul-Karim Malallah was publicly beheaded in Al-Qatif in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province after being convicted of apostasy and blasphemy.
Sadiq Malallah, a Shi'a Muslim from Saudi Arabia, was arrested in April 1988 and charged with throwing stones at a police patrol.
He was reportedly held in solitary confinement for long periods during his first months in detention and tortured prior to his first appearance before a judge in July 1988.
Sadiq Malallah is believed to have been involved in efforts to secure improved rights for Saudi Arabia's Shi'a Muslim minority.
[60] In 1994, Hadi Al-Mutif a teenager who was a Shi’a Ismaili Muslim from Najran in southwestern Saudi Arabia, made a remark that a court deemed blasphemous and was sentenced to death for apostasy.
As of 2010[update], he was still in prison, had alleged physical abuse and mistreatment during his years of incarceration, and had reportedly made numerous suicide attempts.
[61][62] In 2012, Saudi poet[63] and journalist Hamza Kashgari[64][65] became the subject of a major controversy after being accused of insulting the Islamic prophet Mohammad in three short messages (tweets) published on the Twitter online social networking service.
[66][67] King Abdullah ordered that Kashgari be arrested "for crossing red lines and denigrating religious beliefs in God and His Prophet.
"[64] Ahmad Al Shamri from the town of Hafar al-Batin, was arrested on charges of atheism and blasphemy after allegedly using social media to state that he renounced Islam and Mohammad, he was sentenced to death in February 2015.
[68] based on the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol, I'm rahaf mohmed, formally seeking a refugee status to any country that would protect me from getting harmed or killed due to leaving my religion and torture from my family.
On her way to Australia, she was held by Thai authorities in Bangkok while her father tried to take her back, but Rahaf managed to use social media to attract significant attention to her case.
The girl's father had laid charges against the two men after he failed to convince the young woman to return home from Lebanon and abandon her new faith.
The branch of Imam Mohamed Bin Saud University in Fairfax, Virginia instructs its students that Shia Islam is a Jewish conspiracy.
"[80] In 2007, Saudi religious police detained Shiite pilgrims participating in the Hajj and Umrah pilgrimage, allegedly calling them "infidels in Mecca and Medina".
"[82] On 14 December 2005, Republican Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Democratic Representative Shelley Berkley introduced a bill in Congress urging American divestiture from Saudi Arabia, and giving as its rationale (among other things) "Saudi Arabia is a country that practices religious apartheid and continuously subjugates its citizenry, both Muslim and non-Muslim, to a specific interpretation of Islam.
[84] In 2007, there were news reports that according to Saudi policy for tourists it was not permissible to bring non-Muslim religious symbols and books into the kingdom as they were subject to confiscation, and that the U.S. State Department disputed this, saying that the regulation restrictions were no longer in place.
