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Like Apartheid South Africa? | November 13, 2008

New York Times' Neil MacFarquhar has an interesting take on the all the "interfaith" hooplah going on in NYC at the moment.

He leads off his reportage this way

UNITED NATIONSSaudi Arabia, which deploys a special police force to ensure that a narrow sect of Islam predominates in the kingdom, is sponsoring a discussion at the United Nations on religious tolerance starting Wednesday.

And later goes on to say

Most of those attending are political rather than religious figures.

But human rights groups are crying foul that Saudi Arabia is being given a platform to promote religious tolerance abroad while actively combating it at home.

“It’s like apartheid South Africa having a conference at the U.N. on racial harmony,” said Ali al-Ahmed, a Shiite Muslim dissident from Saudi Arabia based in Washington.


Saudi Arabia Seeks U.N. Platform to Promote Pluralism Abroad
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

UNITED NATIONS — Saudi Arabia, which deploys a special police force to ensure that a narrow sect of Islam predominates in the kingdom, is sponsoring a discussion at the United Nations on religious tolerance starting Wednesday.

More than a dozen world leaders are scheduled to attend the meeting, including President Bush; the British prime minister, Gordon Brown; the Israeli president, Shimon Peres; and the heads of seven Arab states. King Abdullah, the Saudi monarch, and Mr. Peres were both expected as guests of Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general, at a dinner Tuesday night, a rare chance for an encounter.

The United Nations avoids religious discussions, so the two-day session of the General Assembly is officially being labeled as a meeting about the “culture of peace.” Most of those attending are political rather than religious figures.

But human rights groups are crying foul that Saudi Arabia is being given a platform to promote religious tolerance abroad while actively combating it at home.

“It’s like apartheid South Africa having a conference at the U.N. on racial harmony,” said Ali al-Ahmed, a Shiite Muslim dissident from Saudi Arabia based in Washington.

Human Rights Watch issued a statement calling on Saudi Arabia to start the fight against religious intolerance at home by ending “systemic religious discrimination.”

The position taken by Western leaders, including Mr. Bush, is that any attempt by the leader of a Muslim state to promote tolerance, especially one as influential as Saudi Arabia, merits support. Mr. Bush is due to address the session on Thursday.

“He is hopeful that this dialogue will provide a platform for voices from many different religions to foster tolerance,” said Gordon D. Johndroe, a White House spokesman, noting that tolerance will be the theme of the president’s speech.

Mr. Bush believes in “the importance of people, especially people in the Muslim world, being empowered to say that suicide bombings are not O.K. and to make that case especially to the young people of the Muslim world,” Mr. Johndroe said.

Neither the Saudi Embassy at the United Nations nor in Washington responded to phone and e-mail messages seeking comment about the criticism of the kingdom’s record on religious discrimination.

An extended argument also has erupted between Western and Muslim delegates over whether the discussion would result in a declaration including a condemnation of “the derision of what people consider sacred.”

That wording was included in a declaration issued after an interfaith dialogue sponsored by the kingdom in Madrid in July. It was an attempt to condemn anything that might echo the cartoons published in Denmark that disparaged Islam and the Prophet Muhammad. But Western states considered that wording a knock against freedom of speech.

“We are arguing human rights, they are arguing values,” said Jean-Maurice Ripert, France’s ambassador to the United Nations. “The reconciliation of those two differences is very complicated.”

The compromise formula is that there will be no formal resolution, but an oral statement that condemns disparaging other religions.

Saudi Arabia bars its citizens and its sprawling expatriate community, including tens of thousands of Christians, from any public worship outside Islam. The more than two million Saudi Shiites face widespread discrimination in worship, education and employment.

A special police force, the Society for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, ensures that Muslims go to prayer five times a day and that the Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam prevails.

The Saudi government portrays King Abdullah as a reformer wrestling with a puritanical religious establishment. It cites the interfaith dialogue as a prime example, because the extremist fringe has been grumbling about reaching out to “infidels.”

But critics point out that the kingdom promotes interfaith dialogue abroad, not at home. They maintain that the long alliance between the ruling Saud dynasty and the clerical establishment remains robust.

The senior ulema, or religious scholars, endorse the absolute rule of the princes as mandated under Islam in exchange for the religious establishment’s near monopoly over social and religious policy, they say.

The rise of Al Qaeda has been a disaster for Saudi Arabia, because the terrorist group’s teachings are rooted in the same puritanical traditions debasing anything foreign that circulate freely in the kingdom.

“It is a public relations exercise, they want to shed the image that they are the kingdom of intolerance and extremism and xenophobia,” Mr. Ahmed said about the interfaith dialogue. “The government controls the whole religious establishment, that is the problem. The problem is that the Saudi government doesn’t want to change anything.”

Meanwhile, Neither the White House nor Mr. Ban was willing to predict the outcome of the dinner being attended by King Abdullah and Mr. Peres. Mr. Ban said the discussion on religious tolerance was meant to encourage such encounters.

“The purpose of the meeting itself is to promote mutual understanding and to address all differences of opinion, either political or religious,” Mr. Ban said at a news conference, while avoiding any comment about the lack of religious freedom inside Saudi Arabia itself.

Diplomats around the building noted that because the Saudi government recently donated $500 million to the World Food Program, no one was likely to confront it openly about domestic issues of religious freedom.

Posted by admin at November 13, 2008 03:01 PM


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