According to the BBC, the Foreign Office minister Kim Howells believes that the UK and Saudi Arabia have shared values1 and that the two kingdoms ought to unite around these purported shared values. Excuse me?
According to the U.S. Department of State’s International Religious Freedom Report 2006 for Saudi Arabia, “Islam is the official religion, and the law requires that all citizens be Muslims. The Government does not provide legal recognition or protection for freedom of religion, and it is severely restricted in practice. The public practice of non-Muslim religions is prohibited2.”
The Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2004 for Saudi Arabia says, “The Government continued to discriminate against women, ethnic and religious minorities and to impose strict limitations on worker rights3.”
The report continues, “Mutawwa’in detained women of many nationalities for actions such as riding in a taxi with a man who was not their relative, appearing with their heads uncovered in shopping malls, and eating in restaurants with males who were not their relatives. Many such prisoners were held for days, sometimes weeks, without officials notifying their families or, in the case of foreigners, their embassies4.”
But this is just the tip of the iceberg, the collection of current reports on Saudi Arabia5 on the Department of State’s website covers a whole gamut of human right violations .
Did I forget to mention that Israelis and anyone with a passport that contains Israeli stamps is denied entrance to Saudi Arabia. So the country is also virulently anti-Semitic.
So, where are these purported shared values that the minister speaks of?
1 Red carpet welcome for Saudi king, BBC News Online.
2 International Religious Freedom Report 2006 for Saudi Arabia, United States Department of State. (NB: link was originally http://www.state.gov/p/nea/ci/80123.htm but no longer exists, 3 July 2023)
3 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2004 for Saudi Arabia, United States Department of State. (NB: link was originally http://www.state.gov/p/nea/ci/80173.htm but no longer exists, 3 July 2023)
4 Ibid.
5 Link was originally http://www.state.gov/p/nea/ci/c21101.htm but is no longer available, 3 July 2023.