The US Dept. of State has issued is global report on International Religious Freedom for 2008. The report covers the period of Summer 2007-Summer 2008. The global report can be found here.

The text below is taken from the introduction to the Country Report for Saudi Arabia. Click on the link to go to that section to read it in full.

Overall, the report finds general improvement in the status of religious freedom in Saudi Arabia. For instance, it reports no seizures of religious books or paraphernalia by Saudi Customs on entry into the country. It reports that officials interfered with far fewer private religious services during this period. It also reports efforts to rid schools and mosques of extremism and a tightening of the reins on the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.

The particular problems it notes involve great intolerance toward the Shi’a, particularly the Ismailis in Najran.

The bottom line, of course, is that by law, the Saudi government (and society) do not recognize the legitimacy of religions other than Sunni Islam. The Country Report is worth reading in full. The global reports, too, for comparative purposes

International Religious Freedom Report 2008

There is no legal recognition of, or protection under the law for, freedom of religion, and it is severely restricted in practice. The country is a monarchy and the King is both head of state and government. The legal system is based on the government’s official interpretation of Shari’a (Islamic law). Sunni Islam is the official religion.

The Government confirmed that, as a matter of public policy, it guarantees and protects the right to private worship for all, including non-Muslims who gather in homes for religious services. However, this right was not always respected in practice and is not defined in law. Moreover, the public practice of non-Muslim religions is prohibited, and mutawwa’in (religious police) continued to conduct raids of private non-Muslim religious gatherings. Although the Government also confirmed its policy to protect the right to possess and use personal religious materials, it did not provide for this right in law, and the mutawwa’in sometimes confiscated the personal religious material of non-Muslims.

While overall government policies continued to place severe restrictions on religious freedom, there were incremental improvements in specific areas during the period covered by this report, such as better protection of the right to possess and use personal religious materials; sporadic efforts to curb and investigate harassment by the mutawwa’in; increased media reporting on, and criticism of, the mutawwa’in; somewhat greater authority and capacity for official human rights entities to operate; and limited education reform. In addition, there were larger public and private celebrations of Shi’a holidays in the Qatif oasis of the Eastern Province.

There were also several positive developments in government policy that, if fully implemented, could lead to important improvements in the future. The Government reiterated its policy to halt the dissemination of intolerance and combat extremism, both within Islam and toward non-Muslim religious groups, in the country and abroad. For example, officials advised that they were monitoring sermons at government-supported mosques and would dismiss or retrain imams whose preaching promoted religious extremism. The Government continued to state its goal of “balanced development,” by promising greater infrastructure development in predominantly Shi’a and Isma’ili areas of the Eastern and Najran Provinces. Most significantly, this year saw the beginning of an interfaith dialogue process, led by King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud. The King, along with the support of the Muslim World League, sponsored an intrafaith dialogue in Mecca between June 4-6, 2008, bringing Sunnis and Shi’a together, and at the end of the reporting period, was planning to hold a similar conference in Madrid, Spain, in July, bringing together Christians, Jews, Muslims, and adherents of other faiths.
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