Saudi Arabia is an Apartheid State

There has been a lot of talk about tolerance since the plans to build a mosque near Ground Zero have become a big story in the news.  The point of this post is not to depict all Muslims as intolerant racists.  Painting an entire group of people as all thinking and acting alike is bigoted in itself.  However, the beacon of Islam, Saudi Arabia, gives us an interesting picture of the intolerance, hatred, and racism that so often runs rampant in Islamic nations.

It is the job of moderate Muslims to open Islam up to criticism, weaknesses, and faults that exist.  Certainly, Christianity has been used by evil men to advance agendas of hate and violence in the past.  The same is true for Islam today.

Consider, for example, why can Israelis not travel to Saudi Arabia?  It is because Saudi Arabia sees Israelis as the enemy despite the Egypt and Jordan have made peace with Israel.  But Jews are scorned and hated throughout Islamic countries, and this is not a post-1948 phenomenon, this is a fact that has existed for centuries.  There are mosques in Israel, but there are no synagogues in Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia is viewed as the most repressive country to Christians in the world along with North Korea.  Saudi Arabia purposely exports hate around the world through its subsidization of literature and educational material that explicitly promotes hate towards Christians, Jews and other "infidels".  And yet, we tolerate this repulsive behavior because they have oil? 

We, in the west, allow Saudi Arabia to fund the construction of mosques and madrases that often promote hate and intolerance despite that no church or synagogue can be built in Saudi Arabia, and no non-Muslim can set foot in Mecca.  Why?

There is talk of the Vatican opening a church in Saudi Arabia, but if that happens it would be the first in the entire country. And it is still the policy of the Saudi government that Christians are explicitly forbidden from worshipping in the Kingdom.

And the spread of hate and intolerance is a defined objective of the Saudi government: "Fundamentalists have financed the construction of scores of mosques and community centres as well as handing some followers up to £225 a month. They are expected not only to grow beards but also to persuade their wives to wear the niqab, or face veil, a custom virtually unknown in the liberal Islamic tradition of the Balkans."

No where are women treated more terribly than in the Islamic countries of Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Iran.  They are treated as property lacking the same rights as men, they have diminished or no standing politically or socially and are forced to wear clothing that conceals their identities thereby dehumanizing them. Women make up only 5% of the workforce in Saudi Arabia. Honour killings are common and accepted in practice if not in law.


Saudi Arabia is an apartheid state far worse than South Africa ever was.  Muslims are given preferential treatment over all other faiths and women are openly oppressed.  Why is it that Saudi Arabia is not banned from the Olympics or other world sporting events as South Africa was during the apartheid era?  It should be, so that light is cast into this nation of oppression and violence.

And yet, the Saudis continue to export hate and extremism throughout the world.  And we let it happen.  Most of the 9-11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, and still nothing changes. 

A May 2006 study of Saudi Arabia's revised schoolbook curriculum discovered that the eighth grade books included the following statements:



“They are the people of the Sabbath, whose young people God turned into apes, and whose old people God turned into swine to punish them. As cited in Ibn Abbas: The apes are Jews, the keepers of the Sabbath; while the swine are the Christian infidels of the communion of Jesus. ”


“Some of the people of the Sabbath were punished by being turned into apes and swine. Some of them were made to worship the devil, and not God, through consecration, sacrifice, prayer, appeals for help, and other types of worship. Some of the Jews worship the devil. Likewise, some members of this nation worship devil, and not God.

The west and all freedom loving nations who believe in equality and respect for individual rights should not be turning a blind eye to this hate filled, repressive nation.  There's plenty of oil around the world that provides us the ability to no longer appease the Saudis until they start respecting women's rights, treating other faiths with tolerance and civility, and reform internally.  It worked in South Africa, it can work in Saudi Arabia.  Sign the petition against religious oppression.