CDHR’s
Comment: At the opening of the Saudi-financed King Abdullah International Center for Interreligious
and Intercultural Dialogue in
Vienna, Austria, Dr. Abdul Rahman Al-Sudais, the Saudi head of the Presidency
of the Two Holy Mosques, is reported to have said that the Center “…would
promote human values, tolerance and peaceful coexistence among people of
different religious faiths and cultures.” His misleading speech was amplified
by the Saudi Foreign Minister, Saud Al-Faisal, who said that, “the sectarian differences are to be elements for
understanding and not elements for
collision.”
The question that must
be asked of Dr. Al-Sudais and Saud Al-Faisal is how they can go around the
world promoting religious tolerance while at home they discriminate against
their Muslim minorities and consider them heretics.
Saudi Arabia is the
only country where non-Muslims cannot practice their religious rituals openly
and if caught doing so privately, they can be punished and deported. “Peaceful
coexistence” means live and let live regardless of
cultures, compulsory dress codes, gender, ethnicity and above all
beliefs.
Why have Dr. Al-Sudais
and Saud Al-Faisal not condemned the endemic discrimination against Saudi
religious minorities, oppression of women in the name of god,
and complete intolerance of non-Muslims? Saudi officials and their
apologists cannot fool the world anymore, thanks to modern technology and many
courageous Saudi men and women who openly denounce their country’s religious
extremism and discrimination against people because of their religious
orientations and gender.
No comments:
Post a Comment