Educational Resource
International Religious Freedom Fact Sheet on Saudi Arabia (2018)
International Religious Freedom Fact Sheet on Saudi Arabia
Recent Reforms vs Institutionalized Repression
In 2017, 32-year-old Mohammed bin Salman was named crown prince of Saudi Arabia. He embarked on an ambitious set of economic and social reforms, called Vision 2030, that has won him support, particularly among youth and women. In his recent tour of Europe and the United States, he projected an image of Saudi Arabia as “a country of moderate Islam that is open to all religions and to the world.”
But overturning Saudi Arabia’s legacy of repression against minority religious groups will undoubtedly take time as conservative Muslim forces seek to guard the status of the home of Islam’s two holiest sites. Using force and oppressive laws criminalizing dissent and religious opposition, Saudi Arabia has been designated a “Country of Particular Concern” since 2004 by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), due to their systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom.
There is a disconnect between the Saudi government’s attitudes toward religious freedom on the global stage and the reality of religious persecution in country. On the one hand, Saudi Arabia helped establish the King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz International Centre for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue (KAICIID) in Vienna in 2012. KAICIID supports the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, focusing specifically on the right to freedom of religion. Saudi Arabian royal family members have contributed f inancially to groups promoting religious understanding, such as Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal’s $20 million gift to Georgetown University’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.