Saudis to host human-rights conference
U.N. invited to join event promoting Islam as religion of peace
Posted: July 3, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
Despite its regard by Western nations as one of the world's most repressive regimes, Saudi Arabia is preparing to host its first international conference on human rights this fall, promoting Islam as a "religion of peace."
With a theme of "human rights at the time of peace and war," the conference will "shed light on the Islamic approach toward human rights," according to the Arab News, a government-approved daily.
Some United Nations organizations, including UNESCO and UNICEF, have been invited to the Oct. 14 event, the Saudi paper said. Others include the Muslim World League, International Red Cross Society, Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Italy-based International Institute for Human Rights.
Abdullah Al-Hazza, a Saudi Red Crescent Society official who also is the conference's secretary-general, said the event was being organized in cooperation with the Saudi Ministries of the Interior, Justice and Foreign Affairs.
Red Crescent officials told Arab News the conference seeks to promote Islam as the religion of peace, tolerance and love.
Islam is the first to acknowledge the rights of the human being – a fact, which can be substantiated by historical evidence, they said.
Nevertheless, the Western understanding of human rights is decidedly at odds.
In its most recent human-rights report, issued in March, the U.S. State Department said Saudi Arabia's Islamic government in 2002 "prohibited or restricted freedom of speech, the press, assembly, association, religion and movement."
The State Department's annual report on religious freedom says bluntly, "freedom of religion does not exist in Saudi Arabia."
In its May report, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom said "Saudi Arabia is a uniquely repressive case where the government forcefully and almost completely limits the public practice or expression of religion to one interpretation: a narrow and puritanical version of Islam based on the Wahhabi doctrine."
Consequently, the commission – an independent panel established by Congress – said, "those Saudis and foreign contract workers who do not adhere to the Saudi government's interpretation of Islam are subject to severe religious freedom violations."
Among the most serious abuses and forms of discrimination, according to the USCIRF, are:
Virtually complete prohibitions on establishing non-Wahhabi places of worship, the public expression of non-Wahhabi religion, the wearing of non-prescribed religious dress and symbols, and the presence of identifiable clerics of any religion other than the government's interpretation of Islam;
The harassment, detention, arrest, torture and subsequent deportation by government authorities of Christian foreign workers for worshipping in private – with many forced to go to great lengths to conceal private religious practice to avoid these abuses;
The detention, imprisonment and, in some cases, torture of Shi'a clerics and religious scholars for their religious views, which differ from those of the government;
The offensive and discriminatory language found in Saudi government-sponsored school textbooks, sermons in mosques and articles and commentary in the media about Jews, Christians and non-Wahhabi streams of Islam; and
The interpretation and enforcement of religious law in Saudi Arabia, which affects every aspect of women's lives and results in serious violations of their human rights.
As WorldNetDaily reported, an American woman kidnapped by her Saudi father as a child sought refuge in the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah last month. She pleaded with U.S. officials to help her and her Saudi-born children, age 3 and 5, travel to America but was forced to leave the kingdom without them.
Saudi law dictates that no woman, American or not, can leave the country without permission of her husband or father.
The woman eventually fled the kingdom for the U.S., but left her children behind.
Related stories:
U.S. official: Saudi repression not 'severe'
U.S. gives Saudi persecution a pass
Christians claim torture by Saudis
Saudis delay release of Christians
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