Freedom of religion in Saudi Arabia

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is an Islamic absolute monarchy in which Sunni Islam is the official state religion based on firm Sharia law. Non-Muslims must practice their religion in private and are vulnerable to discrimination and arrest. While no law requires all citizens to be Muslim, Children born to Muslim fathers are by law deemed Muslim.

Religious freedom is not provided for under the law. They live mostly in the eastern districts on the Persian Gulf (Qatif, Al-Hasa, Dammam), where they constitute approximately three-quarters of the native population, and in the western highlands of Arabia (districts of Jazan, Najran, Asir, Medina, Ta'if, and Hijaz).

Status of religious freedom

Saudi Arabia is an Islamic theocracy and the government has declared the Qur'an and the Sunnah (tradition) of Muhammad to be the country's Constitution. Proselytizing for religions other than Islam is illegal. Islam is the official religion. Under the law, children born to Muslim fathers are also Muslim, regardless of the country or the religious tradition in which they have been raised. The government prohibits the public practice of other religions but generally allows private practice of non-Muslim religions. Additionally, traditional tribal law and custom remain significant.

The only national holidays observed in Saudi Arabia are the two Eids, Eid Al-Fitr at the end of Ramadan and Eid Al-Adha at the conclusion of the Hajj and the Saudi national day. Contrary practices, such as celebrating Maulid Al-Nabi (birthday of Muhammad) and visits to the tombs of renowned Muslims, are forbidden, although enforcement was more relaxed in some communities than in others, and Shi'a were permitted to observe Ashura publicly in some communities.

Saudi law prohibits alcoholic beverages and pork products in the country as they are considered to be taboo in Islam, even though both can be consumed if Muslims are starving or dying of thirst. Those violating the law are handed harsh punishments. Drug trafficking is always punished by death.

Under Saudi law conversion by a Muslim to another religion is considered apostasy, a crime punishable by death.

In March 2014, the Saudi interior ministry issued a royal decree branding all atheists as terrorists, which defines terrorism as "calling for atheist thought in any form, or calling into question the fundamentals of the Islamic religion on which this country is based."

Non-Muslims are strictly prohibited by Saudi Arabia from entering the Holy City of Mecca. However, the ban on visiting Medina, Islam's second holiest city, was lifted in 2023, allowing non-Muslims to enter the city—though access to the Prophet's Mosque remains restricted. On highways, religious police officers may divert them or hand out a fine. In the cities themselves, road checks are randomly conducted.

Saudi Arabia prohibits public non-Muslim religious activities. Non-Muslim worshipers risk arrest, imprisonment, lashing, deportation, and sometimes torture for engaging in overt religious activity that attracts official attention. The Sri Lankan Embassy has rejected these reports. In the past, Sri Lankan officials have also rejected reports regarding labor conditions issued by New York-based Human Rights Watch.

The government has stated publicly, including before the U.N. Committee on Human Rights in Geneva, that its policy is to protect the right of non-Muslims to worship privately. 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. Those detained for non-Muslim worship almost always are deported by authorities after sometimes lengthy periods of arrest during investigation. In some cases, they also are sentenced to receive lashes prior to deportation.

The government requires noncitizen residents to carry a Saudi residence permit (Iqama) for identification in place of their passports.

Among other information, these contain a religious designation for "Muslim" or "non-Muslim."

Members of the Shi’a minority are the subjects of officially sanctioned political and economic discrimination. The authorities permit the celebration of the Shi’a holiday of Ashura in the eastern province city of Qatif. No other Ashura celebrations are permitted in the country, and many Shi’a travel to Qatif or to Bahrain to participate in Ashura celebrations.

In 2022, the government executed 81 men, including 41 Saudi Shia, in the largest known mass execution carried out in the kingdom's history.

Sunni Islamic religious education is mandatory in public schools at all levels. Private schools must also teach the same curriculum, except for private international schools which must teach Islamic studies. In 2022 the government reduced the number of hours required for religious education, in favor of more study time for Arabic and STEM.

Until 2016, the kingdom only used the lunar Islamic calendar, not the international Gregorian calendar, but in 2016 the kingdom announced its switch to the Gregorian calendar for civil purposes. Daily life is influenced by Islamic observance. Some businesses decide to close three or four times per day for 30 to 45 minutes during business hours while employees and customers are sent off to pray. The weekend is Friday-Saturday, not Saturday-Sunday because Friday is the holiest day for Muslims. For many years only two religious holidays were publicly recognized – ʿĪd al-Fiṭr and ʿĪd al-Aḍḥā. (ʿĪd al-Fiṭr is "the biggest" holiday, a three-day period of "feasting, gift-giving and general letting go").

In 2004, approximately half of the broadcast airtime of Saudi state television was devoted to religious issues. Ninety per cent of books published in the kingdom were on religious subjects, and most of the doctorates awarded by its universities were in Islamic studies. In the state school system, about half of the material taught is religious. 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. Public support for the traditional political/religious structure of the kingdom is so strong that one researcher interviewing Saudis found virtually no support for reforms to secularize the state.

Celebration of other (non-Wahhabi) Islamic holidays, such as the Muhammad's birthday and the Day of Ashura, (an important holiday for the 10–25% of the population that is Shīʿa Muslim), are tolerated only when celebrated locally and on a small scale. Shias also face systematic discrimination in employment, education, the justice system according to Human Rights Watch. Non-Muslim festivals like Christmas, Easter, Halloween, and New Year were not tolerated until recently. No churches, temples or other non-Muslim houses of worship are permitted in the country. Proselytizing by non-Muslims and conversion by Muslims to another religion is illegal. In legal compensation court cases (Diyya) non-Muslim are awarded less than Muslims. Atheists are legally designated as terrorists. At least one religious minority, the Ahmadiyya Muslims, had its adherents deported, as they are legally banned from entering the country.

In a recent move to promote a modern image, Saudi Arabia banned the religious group known as 'Tablighi Jamaat'. The announcement was made on social media by the country's Minister of Islamic Affairs who warned people against association during the Friday sermon.

Ahmadiyya

Ahmadis are persecuted in Saudi Arabia on an ongoing basis. Although there have been many foreign workers and Saudi citizens belonging to the Ahmadiyya sect in Saudi Arabia, Ahmadis are officially banned from entering the country and from performing the Hajj and Umrah pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina.

By 2022, authorities indicated that they considered Ahmadiyya Muslims to be Muslims; however the group's legal status is unclear. For this reason, Saudi Arabia is known as 'the hell for apostates', with many ex-Muslims seeking to leave or flee the country before their non-belief is discovered, and living pseudonymous second lives on the Internet.

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. 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. The judge reportedly asked him to convert from Shi'a Islam to Sunni Wahhabi Islam, promising a more lenient sentence if he complied. After he refused, Malallah was taken to al-Mabahith al-'Amma (General Intelligence) Prison in Dammam where he was held until April 1990. He was then transferred to al-Mabahith al-'Amma Prison in Riyadh, where he remained until the date of his execution. Malallah is believed to have been involved in efforts to secure improved rights for Saudi Arabia's Shi'a Muslim minority.

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. , he was still in prison, complained of physical abuse and mistreatment during his incarceration, and had reportedly made numerous suicide attempts.

In 2012, Saudi poet

In January 2019, 18-year-old Rahaf Mohammed fled Saudi Arabia after having renounced Islam and being abused by her 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. After diplomatic intervention, she was eventually granted asylum in Canada, where she arrived and settled soon after.

Witchcraft and sorcery

In the past, the country has used the death penalty for crimes of sorcery and witchcraft and claims that it is doing so in "public interest". In 2022, sorcery is still an arrestable offence.

In July 2012, two men who had evangelized a young woman who subsequently converted to Christianity were arrested in the Saudi Gulf city Al-Khabar, on charges of "forcible conversion". 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.

Saudi practices as "religious apartheid"

Testifying before the U.S. Congressional Human Rights Caucus on June 4, 2002, in a briefing entitled "Human Rights in Saudi Arabia: The Role of Women", Ali Al-Ahmed, Director of the Saudi Institute, stated:

<blockquote>Saudi Arabia is a glaring example of religious apartheid. The religious institutions from government clerics to judges, to religious curricula, and all religious instructions in media are restricted to the Wahhabi understanding of Islam, adhered to by less than 40% of the population. The Saudi government communized Islam, through its monopoly of both religious thoughts and practice. Wahhabi Islam is imposed and enforced on all Saudis regardless of their religious orientations. The Wahhabi sect does not tolerate other religious or ideological beliefs, Muslim or not. Religious symbols by Muslims, Christians, Jews and other believers are all banned. The Saudi embassy in Washington is a living example of religious apartheid. In its 50 years, there has not been a single non-Sunni Muslim diplomat in the embassy. The branch of Imam Mohamed Bin Saud University in Fairfax, Virginia instructs its students that Shia Islam is a Jewish conspiracy.</blockquote>

In 2003, Amir Taheri quoted a Shi'ite businessman from Dhahran as saying "It is not normal that there are no Shi'ite army officers, ministers, governors, mayors and ambassadors in this kingdom. This form of religious apartheid is as intolerable as was apartheid based on race."

In 2007, Saudi religious police detained Shiite pilgrims participating in the Hajj and Umrah pilgrimage, allegedly calling them "infidels in Mecca and Medina".

Until March 1, 2004, the official government website stated that Jews were forbidden from entering the country. Prejudice against Jews is fairly high in the kingdom. While the webpage has been modified, no one who admits to be Jewish, on the visa paperwork or has an Israeli government stamp on their passport is allowed in the kingdom.

Alan Dershowitz wrote in 2002, "in Saudi Arabia apartheid is practiced against non-Muslims, with signs indicating that Muslims must go to certain areas and non-Muslims to others."

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." Freedom House showed on its website, on a page titled "Religious apartheid in Saudi Arabia", a picture of a sign showing Muslim-only and non-Muslim roads.

In 2007, news outlets reported that Saudi policy prohibited tourists from bringing non-Muslim religious symbols and books into the kingdom, and that doing so could result in confiscation. The U.S. State Department disputed this, claiming the restrictions were no longer in place. The 2007 U.S State Department International Religious Freedom (IRF) Report detailed several cases in which bibles were confiscated in Saudi Arabia, but said that there were fewer reports in 2007 of government officials confiscating religious materials than in previous years and no reports that customs officials had confiscated religious materials from travelers. In the past the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (CPVPV) and security forces of the Ministry of Interior (MOI) conducted raids on private non-Muslim religious gatherings and sometimes confiscated the personal religious materials of non-Muslims. The 2022 IRF report noted that there were no reports of visitors having their personal, non-Islamic religious materials confiscated; however the media did report the confiscation of sorcery-related items. In 2025, it was ranked as the 12th worst place in the world to be a Christian.

References

External links

Religious Freedom and the Middle East at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy PolicyWatch
Does Saudi Arabia Preach Intolerance in the West?
Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia