Since its creation in 1999, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has urged the U.S. State Department to place Saudi Arabia on the “Countries of Particular Concern” (CPC) list. If placed on the list, Saudi Arabia would stand alongside nations such as Myanmar (Burma), China, Iran, North Korea and Sudan that violated the basic human right of religious freedom.
This year, for the first time, the State Department named Saudi Arabia as a “Country of Particular Concern.” It is about time the State Department took such action.
The 2004 Report on International Religious Freedom declared, “Freedom of religion does not exist” in Saudi Arabia. “It (religious freedom) is not recognized or protected under the country’s laws, and basic religious freedoms are denied to all but those who adhere to the state-sanctioned version of Sunni Islam.” The version embraced by Saudi Arabia is known as Wahhabi.
Saudi Arabia is notorious for its religious police — the Muttawa. The Alabama Baptist has regularly published stories of the Muttawa breaking into homes and arresting people if a house search turned up a Bible or any type of Christian literature. Christians have been jailed, beaten, deported, even threatened with execution because they dared share their faith with Saudis who inquired about Christian beliefs.
Saudi officials ban all public religions activity by non-Muslim groups. Conversion to a non-Muslim faith is outlawed. Distribution of printed material is illegal. The nation is one of the most closed societies in the world, especially when it comes to religion.
But Christians are not the only religious group persecuted by the Saudi government. In making the report, a State Department spokesman said, “Non-Wahhabi … Sunni Muslims as well as Shia and Sufi Muslims face discrimination and sometimes severe restrictions in the practice of their faith. A number of leaders from these traditions have been arrested and imprisoned.”
Wahhabism is described as a fundamentalist school of Sunni Islam. Chief among its characteristics are hatred and violence toward non-Muslims and non-Wahhabi Muslims. It is not coincidence that Osama Bin Laden is a Saudi or that 15 of the 19 terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attack on the United States were Saudi citizens.
Although Saudi Arabia is known as an oil-rich nation, its largest export may be Wahhabism. The report pointed out that the Saudi government funds Wahhabi mosques, clerics and schools both in that nation and across the world. “There are frequent instances in which mosque preachers, whose salaries are paid for by the government, used violent language against non-Sunni Muslims and other religions in their sermons,” the State Department spokesman said.
Preeta Bansal, chairperson of USCIRF, said it more strongly. She said, “[Listing Saudi Arabia as a CPC] has been based not only on the Saudi government’s violation of religious freedom within its own borders, but also based on reports of its propagation and export of an ideology of religious hate and intolerance throughout the world.”
This is not a new charge. It has been going on for decades. There is evidence that Saudi Arabia underwrites much of the unrest in Africa where civil war threatens to break out between Christians and Muslims. Some of the underwriting is ideological. Some is financial. Similar charges date back at least as far as the Ugandan bloodbath caused by Idi Amin in the 1970s. Religious-freedom advocates also draw lines back to Saudi Arabia from other hot spots in the world.
In the United States, many of the mosques that have sprung up near college and university campuses were financed by the Saudi government. Some of these, the Commission on International Religious Freedom charges, promote violence and hatred. Bansal said, “The Saudi government’s funding and global propagation of a particular brand of Islam (Wahhabism) impedes the development of voices of toleration and debate.”
The missionary zeal of Saudi Arabia for its form of Islam has known no boundaries, paid for by its vast oil holdings. At the same time, the government has banned any Christian witness within its own borders.
Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission and a member of the USCIRF, said, “I can’t think of a better way to end my service than to have the Bush administration name Saudi Arabia a ‘Country of Particular Concern.’ ” Land just completed three years on the Commission. He said, “Naming Saudi Arabia will give us tremendously increased credibility in criticizing other nations around the world, none of whom, with the possible exception of North Korea, have less religious freedom than Saudi Arabia.”
Saudi politicians see it differently. One said Saudi Arabia is becoming an election issue and the CPC designation was made to blunt criticism of Bush’s handling of the issue. Another joked, “Are they proposing to have churches or synagogues or Buddhists temples here? All Saudis are Muslims, and this is a Muslim state.”
The latter response demonstrates the contempt evident in Saudi Arabia for the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted in 1948. Article 18 declares, “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”
If the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were taken seriously, the politician would know churches, synagogues and temples are exactly what freedom of religion means if that is what the individuals of that nation desire.
As Christians, we understand that human rights do not come from the United Nations or from government. Human rights have their foundation in the God who called us all into being. When God placed His image in humanity, He made us for Himself.
As Baptists, we understand that one comes to God voluntarily or one does not come at all. Freedom of religion is a hallmark of our faith. Belief cannot be coerced or forced. No government has the right to invade that sacred spiritual space between God and a human being to force belief or to prevent belief.
The egregious actions of Saudi Arabia in violating religious freedom should stop. At last the United States has issued its first word of caution on this subject, and it is about time.
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