Saudi Arabia’s religious restrictions hurt Muslims, non-Muslims

Experts on international religious freedom told a House committee Oct. 6 that broad religious restrictions in Saudi Arabia discriminate against many Muslims and non-Muslims alike, and help foster an extreme interpretation of Islam around the world.

“In Saudi Arabia, the government rigidly mandates religious conformity,” John V. Hanford III, ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom for the State Department, told the House International Relations Committee.

Hanford said that non-Muslims and “Non-Wahhabi Sunni, Shi’a and Sufi Muslims face discrimination and sometimes severe restrictions on the practice of their faith.”

In September Saudi Arabia was included for the first time in an annual report by the Commission on International Religious Freedom as a “country of particular concern” (CPC). Hanford defined CPCs as countries with the worst records “where people still suffer persecution, torture and imprisonment for their faith.”

Preeta D. Basnal, chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, said that she welcomed Hanford’s participation in drafting the report that included Saudi Arabia among the offending nations.

Basnal said, “The U.S. government should be highly concerned” about credible allegations that the Saudi government and members of the royal family, directly and indirectly, fund the global propagation of Wahhabism, an exclusionary religious ideology.

Wahhabis, she said, allegedly promote hatred, intolerance and other human rights abuses, including violence against non-Muslims and disfavored Muslims.

The director of the information office at the Saudi embassy in Washington did not immediately return phone calls seeking reaction.

Hanford also raised concerns about restrictions on religious freedom in China, Vietnam, Iran and Sudan.

Although the commission’s report did not include Iraq this year, Paul Marshall, senior fellow at Freedom House, said the human rights policy organization is particularly concerned about ethnic cleansing and the mass exodus of members of the ChaldoAssyrian community, the native Iraqi Christians.  (RNS)