June  2005 
Year 11    No.108

Religious Intolernce


Sacrilege in Saudi Arabia

India needs to dialogue with Riyadh on the treatment meted out by Saudi Arabia’s
religious police – Muttawa – to Indian nationals

BY JOHN DAYAL

Let me begin by stating firmly my sense of horror at reports emanating from the Guantanamo Bay military prisons that the United States of America have on the soil of Cuba and where the Pentagon now houses prisoners from Iraq and possibly others arrested in its drive against Islamic terrorism.

If the pictures of women soldiers torturing unclothed Iraqi prisoners were not enough, the US government has without much grace admitted that its soldiers also desecrated the Holy Koran by such means as soiling it with urine and kicking it around.

The Koran is the holy Word of God revealed directly to the Prophet Muhammad. It is for Islamic scholars to say if the Word once printed on paper or metal maintains its sanctity, but the truth is that a billion Muslims across the world hold it to be holy, sacred and worthy of both reverence and veneration. The Word has inspired the finest artistic minds over the ages, resulting in volumes of Korans of exceeding beauty.

No one has the right, least of all a soldier and a government employee, to desecrate a Koran seized from a captured soldier. The United States owes an apology not only to the Muslims of the world but also to all people of faith who believe in the Universal God.

It is in the same context that other religious works such as the Holy Bible of the Christians, the Torah of the Jews, the Zend Avesta of Zoroastrians, the Guru Granth Sahib of the Sikhs, are all religious, holy beyond reproach, and therefore also beyond the reach of governments and agencies who may want to mutilate them, insult them, censor them, or in any other way deny them the sanctity cherished by their readers and followers.

Surely punishment is moot for anyone found guilty of this crime and therefore the US government would do well to see that its military and civil justice systems move swiftly to punish its guilty soldiers.

However, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and its religious and military police could also do with some honest introspection as they quite correctly chastise their dear ally in Washington. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has erred grievously in its treatment of both non-Muslim human beings and non-Islamic texts and religious paraphernalia. The kingdom’s Wahhabi regime has displayed scant regard for humane governance, bilateral relations and universal human rights and freedom of faith conventions that are observed by even the poorest regimes in the world, in Africa and Asia.

And possibly the KSA’s worst victims have been people from India and other South Asian countries professing non-Islamic faiths such as Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism. People will recall how at one time a carpenter from the Punjab going to Saudi Arabia would drop the ‘Singh’ from his passport name for fear that he would be denied entry or lose a job. This has apparently changed over the years but migrant labour is still denied any or all freedom of even private religious expression in the kingdom.

Over the years I have documented several cases where Christians, their faith, their Bibles, their cross, have run foul of the Saudi administration and its brutal religious police. Even rich Western technocrats cannot worship openly (nor of course can their women drive cars openly). But American and European oil engineers and businessmen do find the sanctity of their embassies or consulates safe havens to carry on what they cannot do otherwise.

Indians, particularly, have no such luck. Even in more liberal countries, Indian embassies and consulates hardly spread welcome mats for their nationals, nor are Indian consular officials known for their approachability, or for their alacrity in intervening when Indian citizens are in trouble.

Over the years the Indian embassy has watched helplessly while Saudi Arabia’s religious police arrest scores of Indian citizens, among them Christians, Hindus and Sikhs, and take them away to unknown dungeons and torture them. Just in the past two months we have documented the arrests of several such people though they were all released subsequently (see box).

Whenever the religious police or airport authorities search non-Islamic Indians they have been reported to be most harsh and brutal. Bibles have been summarily confiscated, rosaries destroyed, crosses insulted. I am most concerned with such religious intolerance. The Saudi Arabians have full freedom to have their own sovereign laws but they cannot rob a visitor of his faith, nor do they have the right to insult things that he holds holy.

His Majesty the King of the House of Saud was gracious enough to hear an appeal by me, and the international community, whereupon the Saudi Arabia government released a Karnataka youth, Brian O’Connor, who had been arrested on charges of carrying on religious activities last year. Some weeks ago, after another international outcry, they released seven other Indians, all Christians, who were arrested on similar charges.

This poses a question to the Government of India’s Ministry of External Affairs and my old friend Shri K. Natwar Singh. I have requested him to consider several measures so that the harassment of Indians by the Saudi Arabian religious police is minimised. I think this calls for a dialogue between the secular Government of India and the Wahhabi Government of Saudi Arabia. The Government of India should impress upon the Saudi government the need for justice and fair play of evidence of human rights, even of prisoners. Above all, Minister Natwar Singh should instruct the ambassador and the consular staff at the Indian embassy in Riyadh to adopt a more compassionate and humane attitude towards their compatriots.

Our diplomats would do well to remember their duties towards their fellow Indians even if the Saudi religious police charge them with carrying on religious activities. Consulate advice and assistance must be available to Indian prisoners in the shortest time possible and all efforts should be made to get them released and brought back to India. If they still need to serve a prison term let it be in India. After all, does not India release even convicted terrorists and criminals when British PM Blair makes an appeal? n

(John Dayal is national president of the All India Catholic Union and a senior journalist and human rights activist).


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