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Wahhabism is a reformist movement within Sunni Islam, based on the teachings of 18th century Hanbali cleric Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab. The term "Wahhabism" is primarily an exonym; it was not used by Ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab himself or adherents to the movement, who typically prefer to be called "Salafi". The movement's early followers referred to themselves as Muwahhidun derived from the term Tawhid. The term "Wahhabism" has also been used as a sectarian and Islamophobic slur.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is an Islamic absolute monarchy in which Sunni Islam is the official state religion based on firm Sharia law. Non-Muslims must practice their religion in private and are vulnerable to discrimination and arrest. While no law requires all citizens to be Muslim, non-Muslim foreigners attempting to acquire Saudi Arabian nationality must convert to Islam. Children born to Muslim fathers are by law deemed Muslim, and conversion from Islam to another religion is considered apostasy and punishable by death. Blasphemy against Sunni Islam is also punishable by death, but the more common penalty is a long prison sentence; there have been 'no confirmed reports of executions for either apostasy or blasphemy' in the 21st century.
Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in West Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and has a land area of about 2150000 km2, making it the fifth-largest country in Asia, the second-largest in the Arab world, and the largest in West Asia and the Middle East. It is bordered by the Red Sea to the west; Jordan, Iraq, and Kuwait to the north; the Persian Gulf, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to the east; Oman to the southeast; and Yemen to the south. Bahrain is an island country off its east coast. The Gulf of Aqaba in the northwest separates Saudi Arabia from Egypt and Israel. Saudi Arabia is the only country with a coastline along both the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, and most of its terrain consists of arid desert, lowland, steppe, and mountains. Saudi Arabia's capital and largest city is Riyadh; the kingdom also is the location of Islam's two holiest cities of Mecca and Medina.
Human rights in Saudi Arabia are a topic of concern and controversy. The Saudi government, which mandates both Muslim and non-Muslim observance of Islamic law under the absolute rule of the House of Saud, has been accused of and denounced by various international organizations and governments for violating human rights within the country. The authoritarian regime ruling the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is consistently ranked among the "worst of the worst" in Freedom House's annual survey of political and civil rights.
Salafi Islam is the state religion of Saudi Arabia. The connection between Islam and modern-day Saudi Arabia is uniquely strong. The kingdom is called the "home of Islam"; the kingdom is also the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad, with all territories of Saudi Arabia and the Arabian Peninsula being united and ruled by him. It is the location of the cities of Mecca and Medina, where Muhammad, the messenger of the Islamic faith, lived and died. The kingdom attracts millions of Muslim Hajj pilgrims annually, and thousands of clerics and students who come from across the Muslim world to study. The official title of the King of Saudi Arabia is "Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques"—the two being Al-Masjid al-Haram in Mecca and Al-Masjid al-Nabawi in Medina—which are considered the holiest in Islam.
The Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice is a government religious authority in Saudi Arabia that is charged with implementing the Islamic doctrine of hisbah in the country. Established in 1940, the body gained extensive powers in the 1980s and continued to function as a semi-independent civilian law enforcement agency for almost 35 years until 2016, when societal reforms driven by then-deputy crown prince Mohammed bin Salman led to limiting some its authority through a royal decree by King Salman bin Abdulaziz, including the rights of pursuing, questioning, detaining and interrogating suspects.
Najran, is a city in southwestern Saudi Arabia near the border with Yemen. It is the capital of Najran Province. Designated as a new town, Najran is one of the fastest-growing cities in the kingdom; its population has risen from 47,500 in 1974 and 90,983 in 1992 to 246,880 in 2004 and 505,652 in 2017. The population mostly originates from the ancient tribes of Yām, Mákram, and Hamdan.
Hinduism is the 3rd largest religion in Saudi Arabia, followed by nearly 1.3% of total population residing in the nation. As of 2020, there were nearly 708,000 Hindus residing in Saudi Arabia, among whom most of them were from Indians and Nepalis. There has been a large migration of Indians to Saudi Arabia, with the number of Hindus also witnessing a growth.
The Grand Mosque seizure, by the Juhayman group, lasted from 20 November 1979 to 4 December 1979, when extremist militants in Saudi Arabia calling for the overthrow of the House of Saud besieged and took over Masjid al-Haram, the holiest Islamic site, in the city of Mecca. The besieging militia who referred to themselves as the 'al-Ikhwan', in reference to the religious militia Ikhwan that played a part in establishing Saudi Arabia, declared that the Mahdi had arrived in the form of one of their leaders: Muhammad Abdullah al-Qahtani; the militants called on all Muslims to obey him. In the aftermath of the seizure, the Saudi Arabian Army, supported by France through advisors from the GIGN, fought the Ikhwan for almost two weeks in order to reclaim Masjid al-Haram.
Multiple forms of media including books, newspapers, magazines, films, television, and content published on the Internet are censored in Saudi Arabia.
Accurate religious demographics are difficult to obtain in Saudi Arabia, but there are approximately 2.1 million Christians in Saudi Arabia in 2020. Christians in Saudi Arabia are reported to face widespread discrimination, including both foreign-born Christians and native Christians.
It is estimated that in the Middle East, over 900,000 people profess Buddhism as their religion. Buddhist adherents make up just over 0.3% of the Middle East total population. Many of these Buddhists are workers who have migrated from Asia to the Middle East since the late 1990s, many of them come from countries that have large Buddhist populations, such as China, Vietnam, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Nepal.
The Saudi government does not conduct a census on religion or ethnicity, but some sources estimate the Shiite population in Saudi Arabia to make up around 10–15% of the approximately 23 million natives of Saudi Arabia.
Islam is the state religion of Saudi Arabia.
The legal system of Saudi Arabia is based on Sharia, Islamic law derived from the Qur'an and the Sunnah of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. The sources of Sharia also include Islamic scholarly consensus developed after Muhammad's death. Its interpretation by judges in Saudi Arabia is influenced by the medieval texts of the literalist Hanbali school of Islamic jurisprudence. Uniquely in the Muslim world, Sharia has been adopted by Saudi Arabia in an uncodified form. This, and the lack of judicial precedent, has resulted in considerable uncertainty in the scope and content of the country's laws. The government therefore announced its intention to codify Sharia in 2010, and, in 2018, a sourcebook of legal principles and precedents was published by the Saudi government. Sharia has also been supplemented by regulations issued by royal decree covering modern issues such as intellectual property and corporate law. Nevertheless, Sharia remains the primary source of law, especially in areas such as criminal, family, commercial and contract law, and the Qur'an and the Sunnah are declared to be the country's constitution. In the areas of land and energy law the extensive proprietorial rights of the Saudi state constitute a significant feature.
Saudi Arabia is a theocracy organized according to the principles of Islam, which puts emphasis on the importance of knowledge and education. In Islamic belief, obtaining knowledge is the only way to gain true understanding of life, and as such, both men and women are encouraged to study. The way of practicing Wahhabi Islam has therefore led to gendered segregation in education in Saudi Arabia, which further perpetuates gender division in political, economic, and labor force environments.
There has been an increase in incidents involving alleged radical Islamism in the Balkans since the 1990s.
The response of Saudi Arabia to the Islamic State has taken many forms. For example, Saudi government agencies have worked with the United States since late 2014 to train and equip Syrian fighters hoping to engage with Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants. The challenges of dealing with ISIL is complicated by the fact that around 2,500 militants originally from Saudi territory have left for Syria in order to join ISIL, the destabilization created by the Syrian Civil War having a big effect on the region.
The Saudi–led intervention in Bahrain began on 14 March 2011 to assist the Bahraini government in suppressing an anti-government uprising in the country. The intervention came three weeks after the U.S. pressured Bahrain to withdraw its military forces from the streets. As a decision by Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the intervention included sending 1,000 (1,200) troops with vehicles from Saudi Arabia at the invitation of the Al-Khalifa ruling family, marking the first time the GCC used such a collective military option for suppressing a revolt.
The 2017–2020 Qatif unrest was a phase of conflict in the Qatif region of Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia, between Saudi security forces and the local Shia community, that arose sporadically starting in 1979, including a series of protests and repression during the 2011–12 Saudi Arabian protests.
References
- ↑ "Major reshuffle in Saudi Arabia". BBC News. February 14, 2009. Retrieved May 23, 2010.
- ↑ "The Religious Policeman FAQ". The Religious Policeman. December 3, 2005. Retrieved 2006-07-09.
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