Extract from the Annual Report on International Religious Freedom for 1999: Saudi Arabia
Released by the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
Washington, DC, September 9, 1999
Freedom of Religion does not exist. Islam is the official religion, and all citizens must be Muslims. The Government prohibits the public practice of other religions. Private worship by non-Muslims is permitted.
The Government has declared the Islamic holy book the Koran, and the Sunna (tradition) of the Prophet Muhammad, to be the country's Constitution. The Government bases its legitimacy on governance according to the precepts of a rigorously conservative form of Islam. Neither the Government nor society in general accepts the concept of separation of religion and state.
Conversion by a Muslim to another religion is considered apostasy. Public apostasy is a crime under Shari'a (Islamic law) and punishable by death.
Islamic practice generally is limited to that of the Wahabi order, which adheres to the Hanbali school of the Sunni branch of Islam as interpreted by Muhammad Ibn Abd Al-Wahab, an 18th century religious reformer. Practices contrary to this interpretation, such as visits to the tombs of renowned Muslims, are discouraged.
The Shi'a Muslim minority (roughly 800,000 of nearly 14 million citizens) lives mostly in the Eastern Province, where it constitutes about one-third of the population.
Approximately 6 million foreigners, including about 1.2 million Indians, 1.2 million Egyptians, 800,000 Pakistanis, 600,000 Filipinos, 130,000 Sri Lankans, and 40,000 Americans live throughout the country. These foreigners include Muslims of different denominations, Christians of different denominations, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, agnostics, and atheists.
There are no statistics available regarding the exact number of foreigners in the country belonging to each religion or denomination, and foreigners continually arrive and depart when their labor contracts expire. One available statistic reveals that over 90 percent of the Filipino community (or well over half a million persons) is non-Muslim, and includes Catholics and Protestants.
The Ministry of Islamic Affairs directly supervises, and is a major source of funds for, the construction and maintenance of almost all mosques in the country. The Ministry pays the salaries of imams (prayer leaders) and others who work in the mosques. A governmental committee is responsible for defining the qualifications of imams. The Government monitors mosques to prevent the raising of politically and religiously sensitive subjects during sermons. Religious police, or Mutawwa, make up the Committee to Promote Virtue and Prevent Vice, which receives its funding from the Government. The President of the Mutawwa holds the rank of cabinet minister.
The Mutawwa have the authority to detain persons for no more than 24 hours for violation of strict standards of proper dress and behavior. However, they sometimes exceeded this limit before delivering detainees to the police. Current procedures require a police officer to accompany the Mutawwa at the time of an arrest. Mutawwa generally complied with this requirement. During 1998 in the more conservative Riyadh district, the number of reports received of Mutawwa accosting, abusing, arresting, and detaining persons alleged to have violated dress and behavior standards was slightly higher than in 1997. The Jeddah district received a similar number of reports as in 1997.
Mutawwa practices and incidents of abuse varied widely in different regions of the country, but were most numerous in the central Nejd region, which includes Riyadh. In certain areas, both the Mutawwa and religious zealots acting on their own harassed, assaulted, battered, arrested, and detained citizens and foreigners. The Government requires the Mutawwa to follow established procedures and to offer instruction in a polite manner; however, Mutawwa did not always comply with the requirements. The Government has not criticized publicly abuses by Mutawwa and religious vigilantes but has sought to curtail these abuses.
Mutawwa enforcement of strict standards of social behavior included the closing of commercial establishments during the five daily prayer observances, insisting upon compliance with strict norms of public dress, and dispersing gatherings of women in public places. Mutawwa frequently reproached Saudi and foreign women for failure to observe strict dress codes, and arrested men and women found together who were not married or closely related.
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