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HRW: Saudi Regime Still Tolerates Hate Speech

HRW: Saudi Regime Still Tolerates Hate Speech
folder_openSaudi Arabia access_time6 years ago
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Local Editor

In a report released on Tuesday, Human Rights Watch said that Some Saudi state clerics and institutions incite hatred and discrimination against religious minorities, including the country's Shia Muslim minority.


The 62-page report, "‘They Are Not Our Brothers': Hate Speech by Saudi Officials," documents that Saudi Arabia has permitted government-appointed religious scholars and clerics to refer to religious minorities in derogatory terms or demonize them in official documents and religious rulings that influence government decision-making.

In recent years, regime clerics and others have used the internet and social media to demonize and incite hatred against Shia Muslims and others who do not conform to their views.

"Saudi Arabia has relentlessly promoted a reform narrative in recent years, yet it allows government-affiliated clerics and textbooks to openly demonize religious minorities such as Shia," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at HRW.

"This hate speech prolongs the systematic discrimination against the Shia minority and - at its worst - is employed by violent groups who attack them," Whitson added.

HRW found that the incitement, along with anti-Shia bias in the criminal justice system and the Education Ministry's religion curriculum, is instrumental in enforcing discrimination against Saudi Shia citizens.

Public school textbooks in the kingdom still include language that discriminates against other forms of worship.

The New York-based watchdog recently documented derogatory references to other religious affiliations, including Judaism, Christianity, and Sufism in the country's religious education curriculum.

Regime clerics, all of whom are Sunni, often stigmatize the beliefs and practices of Shias. They have also condemned mixing and intermarriage. One member of Saudi Arabia's Council of Senior Religious Scholars, the country's highest religious body, responded in a public meeting to a question about Shia Muslims by stating that "they are not our brothers ... rather they are brothers of Satan...".

The group explained that such hate speech may have fatal consequences when armed groups such as the Wahhabi Daesh [Arabic acronym for "ISIS" / "ISIL"] or al-Qaeda use it to justify targeting Shia civilians. Since mid-2015, Daesh had attacked six Shia mosques and religious buildings in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province and Najran, causing the martyrdom of more than 40 people. Daesh news releases claiming these attacks stated that the attackers were targeting "edifices of shirk," (polytheism), and "rafidha", terms used in Saudi religious education textbooks to target Shia.

Saudi Arabia's former grand mufti, Abdulaziz Bin Baz, who died in 1999, condemned Shia in numerous religious rulings. Bin Baz's body of fatwas and writings remain publicly available on the website of Saudi Arabia's Permanent Committee for Islamic Research and Issuing Fatwas.

International human rights law requires governments to prohibit "[a]ny advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence." Implementation of this prohibition has been uneven and sometimes used as a pretext to restrict lawful speech or target minority groups. Any steps to counter hate speech should be carried out within overall guarantees of freedom of expression.

HRW had documented that the speech by Saudi religious scholars sometimes rises to the level of hate speech or incitement to hatred or discrimination.

The rights group urged the Saudi authorities to order an immediate halt to hate speech by state-affiliated clerics and government agencies.

Furthermore, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom [USCIRF] has repeatedly classified Saudi Arabia as a "country of particular concern" - its harshest designation for countries that violate religious freedom.

Source: HRW, Edited by website team

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