[dropcap]S[/dropcap]audi Arabia is a desert country in the Middle East and is most known as the birthplace of Islam. The kingdom is an Islamic theocracy meaning there is virtually no religious freedom for the 8 million non-Muslims out of a total population of 27 million.
A theocracy is a system of government in which priests rule in the name of God or a god.
In Saudi Arabia, non-Muslims are not allowed to hold Saudi citizenship and the government do not provide legal recognition or protection for freedom of religion. However, in Islam, it states that a non-Muslim residing in a Muslim country must be protected by the government as long as they are paying taxes. (Dhimmi tax)
In addition to this, the government have prohibited public religious practice but they do guarantee and protect the right to private worship for all non-Muslims who gather in homes for practice. However, this is not in law and the right is not often respected. Non-Muslims who do worship in public often face the threat of arrest, lashing, imprisonment or deportation. This, again, is not totally from Islam as it is forbidden to force the religion upon a person; Everyone is entitled to follow and believe what they please and restricting religious freedom is an opposition to this ruling.
An example of the heavy restriction on other religions is Christianity. it is very difficult to obtain accurate religious demographics within Saudi but there are believed to be around 1.5 million Christians. Saudi Arabia does allow Christians to enter the country for work but they are prohibited from openly practising their religions and items such as Bibles, Crucifixes, Carvings and other religious symbols/artefacts are banned. due to this, there are no official Churches in the country.
One ban placed on Muslims that Islam does order is the ban on visiting the holy city of Makkah. This is due to it being the area of pilgrimage for Muslims all throughout the year. It holds a high significance in Islam and to avoid it being made lesser/into a tourist attraction, only Muslims are permitted to enter. The rest of the country, however, is permissible (In Islam).
In Saudi, there is also an app that helps with security problems (i.e the problem with hackers a few weeks ago)
A rough translation of these tweets is the first person complaining about her encounter with a non-Muslim and the app asking her to give them the details so they can report it to the police for her. Whilst the app isn’t solely for reporting atheists like the tweet says it is, the exchange is still worrying.
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