A Glance at Saudi Religious Thinking

Saudi Arabia as most of us would know is referred to as a religious nation with stringent laws and having rigid beliefs towards its religion. The nation of Saudi Arabia is an Islamic nation where in Islam is the official religion. Even though the law of the nation does not call for the citizens or the passport holders to be Muslims, nearly all the citizens are Muslims. Child born from a Muslim father is lawfully considered Muslim and adaptation from the religion to another religion is considered a crime and is punishable by law.   

Apart from this, profanity against Sunni Islam is considered to be punishable to death; however, a common penalty is that of a long term imprisonment. There have so far been no definite reports of capital punishment for either religion conversion or blasphemy in the past years.

Religious freedom is something that is practically unreal in Saudi Arabia. The government of the kingdom refrains from offering legal recognition or security for freedom of religion and is sternly constrained in practice. As a matter of fact, the government assures and secures the right to private worship for all, integrating Non-Muslims who assemble in homes for religious practice. Nevertheless, this is a law that is not undertaken practically and is neither mentioned anywhere in the law. Further, the public practicing of any other religion other than Islam is strictly forbidden. It is the Saudi Mutaween (Arabic) or Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (The religious police) pouts into practice the prevention on the public preaching of the Non-Muslim religions. However, Sharia law is the one that pertains to every person residing in Saudi Arabia, no matter what their religion is. 

The government of the kingdom refrains the public preaching of different religions but permits private and personal practice of such religions. The government bases its legality as per the principle of the severely traditional and stringent explanation of the Salafi or the Wahhabi school of Sunni branch of Islam and categorizes every other subdivision of Islam. However, what might hold your interest is that neither the present government nor the people in general agree towards the notion of segregation of the religion and the state and this sort of diversity do not exist practically.    

The lawful system of Saudi Arabia is based on Sharia (Islamic Law), with the Sharia courts supporting their verdicts based on a code resulting from the Quran and the Sunnah. The government of the nation however allows the  Shia Muslims to preach their authorized tradition to give a ruling on eth noncriminal cases within their society.