By Emma Burns
October 2, 2024
October 2, 2024
Credits @FFHR.CZ
10/1/2024 Saudi Arabia (International Christian Concern) — Long an indispensable player on the international stage because of its vast oil and gas reserves, Saudi Arabia has historically felt little need to abide by international human rights norms or even to pretend that it cared. Little has changed in the Islamic theocracy since its modern founding in 1930. However, various eras have brought varying levels of focus on the enforcement of Islamic law on Christians and other non-Muslims.
Restriction of Religion in Saudi Arabia
Though efforts were made in 2022 to codify the law, Saudi Arabia operates under a mostly unwritten version of Sharia law that gives prosecutors and judges extremely wide latitude as they prosecute even the most minor infractions of Sharia law. The royal Al Saud family, after which the country is named, carefully manages the judicial system, using it as a powerful tool to quell political and religious dissent.
In Saudi courts, confessions are sometimes obtained through torture, according to human rights groups, and defendants lack access to legal representation during their court proceedings. The country’s lack of written criminal code means that judges are free to sentence at will and, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, hand down some of the harshest sentences in the world for crimes like blasphemy.
Blasphemy and apostasy are both crimes under Saudi law, with punishment for these violations of Islamic morality including large fines, long terms in prison, floggings, and even death. However, the kingdom has not implemented the death penalty for some time. The country’s blasphemy law, in essence, outlaws the expression of minority religious belief, while the ban on apostasy prevents Muslims from leaving Islam for another faith. Combined with the idea — taught in schools — that all infants are born Muslim, this leaves little room to identify with any faith other than Islam.
Public worship of any faith other than Islam is prohibited in Saudi Arabia, with the government enforcing this restriction carefully and only allowing private gatherings under the strictest of conditions.
As do many authoritarian regimes around the world, the Saudi government considers religious freedom to be a threat to its absolute grip on power. While it has managed to twist and manipulate Islam into a tool for the state, it does not allow even Muslims to practice their faith in freedom. It even maintains an enforcement agency to ensure that Muslims practice their faith in a way that does not interfere with the interests of the state.
Attempts to Whitewash
Despite these longstanding pillars of legal and extralegal persecution in Saudi Arabia, the country has made numerous high-profile attempts to whitewash its record on religious freedom in recent years. While some efforts genuinely address flaws in the system — removing discriminatory teachings from the curriculum, for example — they typically include much-vaunted updates that fail to address issues comprehensively.
In other cases, the attempts to appear tolerant and open to religious freedom forgo even the appearance of addressing a real issue. Mohammed bin Salman, the country’s leader, invited the Coptic Church to lead Mass in 2018 and again in 2023. In the same year, he invited a delegation from Israel to lead Sukkot services at a hotel in Riyadh.
Intended to suggest some kind of breakthrough rapprochement, these sinister photo opportunities should highlight a much more obvious truth — the fact that these very same religious services would have been banned had they not been part of a propaganda campaign designed to dupe outside observers.
International Response
The challenges to religious freedom in Saudi Arabia stretch back decades and are deeply woven into a system that, unwritten as it is, cannot be changed overnight. Still, while photos and one-off public events with members of other religious groups may be some progress, they do not ease the plight of prisoners of conscience continuing to languish in prison for speaking about their faith or reducing the influx of new prisoners joining them for the same crimes.
With the world beholden to the kingdom for its vast energy reserves, Saudi Arabia’s claims of reform seem to have fallen on overly eager ears in the international community. With each change, the kingdom’s sycophants seem to quickly the dawn of a new era for religious freedom and human rights overall. The reality is much grimmer, and true reform in Saudi Arabia has proven harder to come by than the bi-annual photo-op or updated curriculum may suggest.
Source: persecution.org
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