|
Follow the Middle East Forum
|
|
Western
Leaders: Pressure Saudis to Give Christians Religious Rights
by Hilal Khashan
The Hill
November 1, 2016
|
|
Share:
|
Be the first of your friends to like this.
Originally published under the title "'Modernization'
without Religious Tolerance in Saudi Arabia."
Prince
Mohammed
met with
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in Silicon Valley last June. Three months
earlier, Saudi Grand Mufti Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah declared
that it's "necessary to destroy all the churches of the
region."
|
Bloomberg recently listed Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin
Salman 42nd on its list of 50
Most Influential movers and shakers in finance. An Oct. 15 New York
Times profile called him the "most dynamic royal" in Saudi
Arabia, "a man who is trying to overturn tradition."
Unfortunately, he's not trying hard enough.
Prince Mohammed, 31, is the public face behind Saudi
Vision 2030, a 15-year plan of regulatory, budget, and policy reforms unveiled
in April. It is designed to build a "prosperous and sustainable
economic future" for the kingdom by reducing dependence on oil exports
and implementing a privatization program that will supposedly create a
sovereign wealth fund of more than $2 trillion, the world's largest.
Acutely aware of its growing need for Western capital investment and
technology, the kingdom has shown small signs of reducing its horrendous
violations of political and civil liberties, such as granting women limited
suffrage, and improving government transparency. The Saudis are today even
willing acknowledge the role their kingdom played in creating Al-Qaeda and
other Islamist currents. "We did not own up to it after 9/11 because
we feared you would abandon or treat us as the enemy," one senior
Saudi official told Politico.
"And we were in denial."
But there is one area where no reform appears to be in the offing. As
the kingdom embarks on a revolutionary project to reduce its dependence on
oil and increase direct foreign investment, it does not seem to appreciate
the importance of religious tolerance in a society trying to open its
economy to the world.
The Saudis don't seem to appreciate
the importance of religious tolerance in a modern society.
|
In recent weeks, the Saudi authorities deported
27 Lebanese Christians for the crime of conducting non-Islamic prayers, the
kingdom's religious police ordered
a clothing outlet to cover the U.K. flag on the logo of British
International School uniforms because it displays the Christian cross, and
a video
surfaced of a leading Saudi cleric calling on God to grant mujahideen
(jihadists) in Syria and Iraq "victory over the godless Rafidah (Shia
Muslims) ... the treacherous Jews, and over the spiteful Christians"
in a sermon at the Grand Mosque in Mecca.
As William McCants of the Brookings Institution recently told
Politifact, "official Saudi textbooks teach that Christians are
seeking to destroy the religion and must be hated as a consequence."
Despite the fact that 1.5 to 2 million Christians, mostly Filipino and
other southeast Asian expatriates, live and work in the kingdom, Saudi
Arabia is the only country in the world that does not allow the building of
churches or even the open practice of Christian religious rites. Most
expatriates live in loneliness away from their families and loved ones.
Restrictions on their freedom to worship compounds this isolation.
The Saudis can take advantage of poor Christian workers (and those of
other faiths) because their remittance dependent governments lack
negotiating leverage.
There is a lot the West can do to
pressure Riyadh to extend full religious rights to Christians.
|
While there is little that labor-intensive Asian societies can do to
pressure Riyadh to extend full religious rights to Christian workers, there
is a lot that the West can do. So long as the Saudis depend on Western
capital investment and advanced technology, the United States is uniquely
positioned to press for greater religious freedoms for Christians and other
non-Muslims.
While it may be unrealistic to expect this from the White House, the
U.S. Congress has shown greater willingness to challenge Saudi Arabia as of
late. The Justice
Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), which would strip away the
"sovereign immunity" of foreign governments against terrorism
lawsuits, has passed both houses of Congress, with the Senate overriding
President Obama's veto last month. Another bipartisan
bill was introduced earlier this month to block the recently-proposed
sale of Abrams tanks and other military equipment to the kingdom until its
human rights record improves.
It's time for the United States and other Western governments to tell
the Saudis that business-as-usual relations cannot continue unless their
kingdom puts in place the building blocks of religious tolerance and
pluralism. Saudi officials may bitterly object, but those who are fighting
for real reform inside the kingdom need this ultimatum to win out over
hardliners.
Hilal Khashan is a professor of
political science at the American University of Beirut and a fellow at the
Middle East Forum. For more on this topic, see his article
in the Summer 2016 issue of Middle East Quarterly.
|
|
|
No comments:
Post a Comment