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Mill
25-12-02, 20:10
bron: http://www.salon.com

Saudi Arabia frowns on Christmas cheer


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By GEORGE GEDDA



Dec. 25, 2002 | WASHINGTON (AP) -- At Christmas, the cultural divide between the United States and Saudi Arabia reaches a high point, at least for American Christians living in a kingdom where puritanical Islam is the norm.

There are no churches in Saudi Arabia. Public displays of Christian worship are unlawful and draw the attention of the Muttawa, government-paid agents who monitor religious deviationism. Customs officials confiscate materials considered offensive, such as Bibles.


U.S. officials said Christians in the American diplomatic community were holding Christmas services in private homes on Wednesday, as they do every year. Other Christians in the kingdom do the same.

Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, recalls the restrictions on Christmas services imposed on the hundreds of thousands of American troops deployed in Saudi Arabia in preparation for Desert Storm in December 1990.


In an article in the current issue of The National Interest, Pipes says the Saudis decreed that Christmas services could be held, but only in places "where they would be invisible to the outside world, such as tents and mess halls."

All citizens of Saudi Arabia must be Muslim. Conversion by a Muslim to another religion is considered apostasy and can be punishable by death. Christian missionaries are unwelcome.

Christians who go to Saudi Arabia for other kinds of work are welcome, so long as they abide by religious rules. At least 500,000 Roman Catholics are believed to be in Saudi Arabia, including many women from the Philippines who work as domestics.

A State Department report on religious freedom around the world, released in October, says, "Non-Muslim worshippers (in Saudi Arabia) risk arrest, imprisonment, lashing, deportation and sometimes torture for engaging in overt religious activity that attracts official attention."

Christians lack religious freedom in Saudi Arabia, but Jews for the most part are denied entry. Timothy Hunter, a former U.S. diplomatic official assigned to Saudi Arabia in the 1990s, says State Department policy was to avoid sending Jewish employees to the kingdom under an agreement with the Saudis.

In a letter this past June, Hunter told Pipes that it was "the duty of the foreign service director of personnel to screen all Foreign Service officers applying for service in the KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) and to `tick' Jewish officers' names using the letter `J' next to their names, so that selection panels would not select Jewish diplomats for service in Saudi Arabia."

Dutchguy
25-12-02, 23:22
SA laat zien waar fundamentalisme toe kan leiden. Een volslagen achterlijk land waar hypocrisie hoogtij viert. Ik hoop er nooit verzeild te raken.