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: The Center For Democracy And Human Rights In Saudi Arabia
Famous quotes containing the words religious and/or freedom:
“The best conversation is rare. Society seems to have agreed to treat fictions as realities, and realities as fictions; and the simple lover of truth, especially if on very high grounds, as a religious or intellectual seeker, finds himself a stranger and alien.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“An accurate charting of the American woman’s progress through history might look more like a corkscrew tilted slightly to one side, its loops inching closer to the line of freedom with the passage of time—but like a mathematical curve approaching infinity, never touching its goal. . . . Each time, the spiral turns her back just short of the finish line.”
—Susan Faludi (20th century)