Religious Freedom
Religious freedom is an important issue for the center. It is forbidden to practice any other religion in The Kingdom other than Wahhabism, which is the state-sanctioned interpretation of Islam. Representative of an estimated one percent of Muslims in Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism is considered by most to be and extremist sect of Islam that openly sponsors terrorism and the persecution of other religions. While modest efforts have been made by the Saudi government to modernize their strict adherence to Wahhabism and to try to separate themselves from the negative aspects of this brand of Islam(2008 Interfaith Conference. Madrid, Spain), CDHR believes that “unless the international community takes concrete measures to discourage the Saudi institutions from promoting religious hatred in Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arab world, the consequences could be catastrophic.”
Read more about this topic: Center For Democracy And Human Rights In Saudi Arabia
Famous quotes containing the words religious and/or freedom:
“I have been grateful to you from the day you turned your attention to the follies and fanaticisms of religious sects. Against those fools and impostors you employ the most appropriate weapons: to use others would be to imitate them. It is by ridicule that they must be attacked, and by scorn that they must be punished.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“The essence of the modern state is that the universal be bound up with the complete freedom of its particular members and with private well-being, that thus the interests of family and civil society must concentrate themselves on the state.... It is only when both these moments subsist in their strength that the state can be regarded as articulated and genuinely organized.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)