[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 167 (Thursday, December 16, 2010)] [Extensions of Remarks] [Pages E2170-E2172] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] BRIEFING ON ``SAUDI ARABIA: FUELING RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION AND EXTREMISM'' ______ HON. TRENT FRANKS of arizona in the house of representatives Thursday, December 16, 2010 Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Madam Speaker, I would like to submit the following for the Record: Remarks of Maria McFarland, Deputy Washington Director, Human Rights Watch In the last couple of years, Saudi King Abdullah has received praise in some circles for having taken a few cautious steps in support of religious tolerance through his Interfaith Dialogue Initiative. But that initiative has been limited to international settings. Within Saudi Arabia, repression of religious freedom continues unabated, particularly with respect to Shia Muslims. Saudi textbooks, including those used abroad, include material that promotes hostility toward the Shia creed and other religions and may in some cases justify violence. The right of non-Muslims to worship in private is subject to the whims of the local religious police. Public worship of faiths other than Islam remains prohibited as a matter of policy. Shia Saudis, who make up an estimated 10-15 percent of the population, are the group most affected by repression of religious freedom. Shia face systematic exclusion in employment, as well as discrimination in religious education and worship. In some cases, this discrimination amounts to persecution. Professing Shia beliefs in private or in public may lead to arrest and detention. Saudi Shia visiting the holy shrines in Mecca and Medina regularly face harassment by the Wahhabi religious police. A government promise to update the vague law outlining religious police jurisdiction and powers has remained unfulfilled for three years. In al-Ahsa' province, the governor, Prince Badr bin Jilawi, has repeatedly had Shia citizens arrested and detained on his authority and in violation of Saudi criminal procedure law simply for praying together in private or publicly displaying banners or slogans or wearing clothing associated with certain Shia rituals. In late January or mid-February, six young Shia of al-Ahsa', between 19 and 24 years old, were detained on Prince Badr's orders because of their peaceful exercise of their religious beliefs. As of mid-September, they remained in detention without charge or trial despite a limit of six months for pre-trial detention under the Saudi criminal procedure code. The Saudi government has yet to take meaningful steps to stop these abuses or bring to justice those responsible. Shia face officially sanctioned discrimination in the judicial system too. There has been no progress in affording Shia outside of the Eastern Province with courts for personal status matters to conclude marriages and adjudicate divorces, inheritances, child custody disputes, and such matters. This affects the so-called Nakhawila, Twelver Shia in Medina, and the Ismailis in Najran province as well as a small group of Zaidi Muslims in Jizan and Najran provinces. There is no separation of secular from religious law in Saudi courts, and all Shia, including in the Eastern Province where they have their own personal status courts, must follow Sunni law as interpreted in Saudi Arabia. Shia are sometimes not allowed to testify in court. Saudi officials who engage in anti-Shia speech rarely face any reprimand for doing so. For example, on December 31, 2009, Shaikh Muhammad al-`Arifi, the government-paid imam of the Buradi mosque in Riyadh, as well as Salih bin Humaid, Saudi chief judge, visited frontline troops in southern Saudi Arabia fighting Yemeni Huthi rebels, who belong to a branch of Shiism, albeit different from that of most Saudi Shia. Al- `Arifi can be seen in photos wearing camouflage, firing weapons, and preaching to soldiers. Press reports said al- `Arifi stressed the necessity of jihad (holy war) and commended the soldiers for performing their national and religious duty. Upon returning to Riyadh, al-`Arifi, in a sermon on Friday, January 1, 2010 condemned the Huthi rebels and called Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani--an Iranian living in Iraq, who is the highest religious authority for many Saudi Shia-an ``obscene, irreligious atheist.'' Meanwhile, Saudi authorities have taken steps to silence Shia critics. Saudi domestic intelligence agents have been holding Munir al-Jassas, a Shia who criticized state repression against the Shia online, in detention without charge for over a year. On June 22, 2008, authorities arrested Shia cleric Shaikh Tawfiq al-`Amir, after he spoke out in a sermon against a May 30 statement signed by 22 prominent Saudi Wahhabi clerics, in which they called the ``Shia sect an evil among the sects of the Islamic nation, and the greatest enemy and deceivers of the Sunni people.'' Of the 22 signatories, II were current government officials and 6 were former government officials. In its annual reports on religious freedom on Saudi Arabia, the United States Department of State has consistently and accurately documented severe repression of religious freedom and systematic violations against certain groups, including especially the Shia. Yet, while the United States has for years designated Saudi Arabia as a Country of Particular Concern, it has failed to take meaningful steps to promote reform in Saudi Arabia. The United States has continually waived sanctions provided under the law, and aside from issuing the annual report, has remained mostly silent in public on the subject. The United States has also applauded King Abdullah's Interfaith Dialogue Initiative (IDI) as evidence of greater promotion of religious tolerance. Cynical observers would see the IDI as a promotional tour of Western countries designed to soften Saudi Arabia's image of an exporter of religious hatred. Uncritical supporters of the initiative claim it as evidence that the kingdom is opening up. Whatever its motivation, the fact remains that this initiative abroad has had no policy repercussions at home. Saudis recognize domestic state-controlled media reporting on the IDI as an official campaign, and it only serves to highlight the stark contrasts between ideals upheld abroad and the harsh reality of repression at home. If the United States is serious about promoting religious tolerance in Saudi Arabia, it cannot remain content to publish a report once a year about religious repression or to praise Saudi Arabia for symbolic commitments to religious tolerance. Instead, it must take a clear, public stance on Saudi Arabia's systematic repression of religion and press the Saudi government to undertake effective institutional reforms to end discrimination and repression on the basis of religion in that country. Remarks of Mansour Al-Hadj, Editor, Aafaq At the outset, I would like to say that my paper is based on my personal experience as someone who was born and grew up in Saudi Arabia, and has always been concerned about Saudi Arabia--since it's my homeland and also since I have been monitoring the Saudi media closely for the last four years as co-founder of the liberal Arabic-language website Aafaq, of which I am currently editor-in-chief. There is great conflict and tension between liberals and conservatives in Saudi Arabia--but it is unfortunately a fake war, because both sides are working for the government--that is, the House of Saud. Both the liberals--who are actively writing articles for government-owned newspapers or appearing on government-owned TV channels--and the conservatives--who are active in mosques and on websites and who are also appearing on government-owned TV channels--are well aware of their limits and of the red lines that they must not cross. The one red line that neither conservatives nor liberals dare to cross is talking or writing anything about political reform or the rights of religious minorities. Those who refuse to follow these limits are banned from writing in Saudi newspapers, and many of them are imprisoned and/or prohibited from leaving the country. Saudi liberals are very hesitant to question the illegal arrest and persecution of reformers. One such case, that went completely unreported in Saudi Arabia, is that of Hadi Al- Mutif, an Ismai'i Shi'ite who has been imprisoned since 1993, serving what is by now the longest prison sentence ever in Saudi Arabia for insulting the Prophet Muhammad. Also, not a single Saudi newspaper reported on the arrest of Mokhlif Al- Shammari, a Saudi human rights activist accused of annoying others for posting online articles criticizing radical sheikhs who call for the eradication of the Shi'ites. Saudi liberals have never advocated for the reformers who openly demand political and constitutional reform--such as Ali Aldumaini, Matrook Al-Faleh, and Abdallah Al-Hamid, who are officially banned from writing in Saudi newspapers and from traveling outside the country. The liberals do not dare to question the brutal punishments of beheading, amputation and flogging carried out by the Saudi authorities. They avoid writing about the plight of the Shi'a minorities whose mosques are repeatedly shut down and whose imams are arrested for conducting prayers in their homes. They never dare to call for a new and modern interpretation of the Koran, never dare to advocate for gays' and lesbians' right to not be punished or even killed for something they could not choose. All of these issues are on the other side of the red line that they cannot cross. Last month, Saudi women's rights activist Wajeha al- Huwaider was interviewed by the LBC (Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation) [[Page E2171]] ``No Censorship'' show, with airing scheduled for October 2010. However, the show has not yet aired. Observers said that a high-level Saudi official ordered LBC not to broadcast Wajeha's interview, in which she talked about women's right to drive cars in Saudi Arabia, the plight of the Shi'a minorities in the country, the male guardian system, and the unjust punishment of Saudi reformers. Wajeha is banned from writing in Saudi newspapers. Last week, the Saudi daily Al-Jazirah refused to publish an article by female university professor Fawziyah Abdallah Abu Khaled. In her article, Abu Khaled called the government to allow those who oppose its policies to be part of society and for it to stop persecuting and criminalizing them. She wrote: ``Peaceful opposition is part of the social power of any society, and it should not be handled with hostility, eradication, or constant persecution.'' The only people who enjoy freedom of expression are the radicals--as long as they do not call for Jihad against the House of Saud. Sheikh Abdel Rahman Al-Barak has called many times for the killing of Shi'ites and many Saudi liberals, and issued a new fatwa stating that the U.S. is the real enemy of the Muslims and that Jihad cannot be superseded by international conventions. You might ask, what about the launch of the Saudi national dialogue, the establishment of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, the appointment of the first female vice minister for women's education, the municipal election, the interfaith conferences organized by the Saudi government to which Christians and Jews were invited, and the recent ruling restricting the right to issue fatwas to senior religious leaders. The national dialogue has accomplished nothing; the new university is a closed and isolated institution for international students and a very few Saudis that is aimed at producing Saudi engineers and doctors, not at encouraging unfettered research, and certainly not to produce new and modern interpretations of the Koran that are peaceful and that respect the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This university is one of dozens of Islamic universities in Saudi Arabia. The appointment of Noura Al-Fayz as the first female member of the Saudi Arabia Council of Ministers means nothing--she still cannot drive a car, travel by herself, go jogging or engage in other sports, choose her own husband, or receive decent child support if she divorces. Regarding the election, we all know that women were not allowed to vote; and the interfaith conferences will remain meaningless until a church is built in Saudi Arabia and Christians are allowed to worship freely. As to the restriction on fatwas, no one pays any attention at all; new fatwas are issued on a daily basis. The House of Saud has used its oil wealth to control people's lives. Whether conservative or liberal, ultimately people need to put food on the table, and as long as almost everything in the kingdom is controlled by the government, it will be very difficult to both cross red lines and make a living. That is how the House of Saud maintains its game of balance. I understand this on a very personal level; I have seen how people struggle to swim upstream under totalitarian regimes. What I cannot understand, however, is how a country like the U.S. that has always championed human Rights and religious freedom has been unable to free a young man who has been imprisoned for 17 years because of his religious belief as an Isma'ili Shi'ite. I can only hope that the House of Saud is not aiming to play the game of balance internationally-- because I have heard that a $60 billion arms deal is in the works. Remarks of Nina Shea, Director, Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom Last Sunday, a December 2009 cable that was cited by the New York Times but has not yet been posted by Wikileaks says that Saudi donors remain the chief financiers of Sunni militant groups such as Al Qaeda. America's top financial-counterterrorism official, Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levey, believes there's a strong link between education and support for terror. As he wrote in the Washington Post last June, to end support for such terror, among other steps: ``we must focus on educational reform in key locations to ensure that intolerance has no place in curricula and textbooks. . . . [U]nless the next generation of children is taught to reject violent extremism, we will forever be faced with the challenge of disrupting the next group of terrorist facilitators and supporters.'' Saudi Arabia is one such ``key location.'' The kingdom is not just any country with problematic textbooks. As the controlling authority of the two holiest shrines of Islam, Saudi Arabia is able to disseminate its religious materials among the millions of Muslims making the hajj to Mecca each year. Such teachings can, in this context, make a great impression. In addition, Saudi textbooks are also posted on the Saudi Education Ministry's website and are shipped and distributed free by a vast Sunni infrastructure established with Saudi oil wealth to many Muslim schools, mosques and libraries throughout the world. In his book The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright asserts that while Saudis constitute only 1 percent of the world's Muslims, they pay ``90 percent of the expenses of the entire faith, overriding other traditions of Islam.'' Others estimate that, on an annual basis, Saudi Arabia spends three times as much in exporting its Wahhabi ideology as did the Soviets in propagating Communism during the height of the Cold War. From the Netherlands and Bosnia, to Algeria and Tunisia, to Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to Somalia and Nigeria, nationals of these countries have reported that over the past twenty to thirty years local Islamic traditions are being transformed and radicalized under intensifying Saudi influence. The late President of Indonesia Abdurrahman Wahid wrote that Wahhabism was making inroads even in his famously tolerant nation of Indonesia. To understand why Jim Woolsey and other terrorism experts call Wahhabism as it spreads through the Islamic diaspora ``kindling for Usama Bin Laden's match,'' it is important to know the content of Saudi textbooks. They teach, along with many other noxious lessons, that Jews and Christians are ``enemies,'' and they dogmatically instruct that that it is permissible, even obligatory, to kill various groups of ``unbelievers''--apostates (which includes Muslim moderates who reject Saudi Wahhabi doctrine), polytheists (which can include Shias and Sufis, as well as Christians, Hindus, and Buddhists), Jews, and adulterers. The texts also teach that the ``punishment for homosexuality is death'' and discusses that this can be done by immolation by fire, stoning or throwing the accused from a high place. Under the Saudi Education Ministry's method of rote learning, these teachings amount to indoctrination, starting in first grade and continuing through high school, where militant jihad on behalf of ``truth'' has for years been taught as a sacred duty. The ``lesson goals'' of one of the text books is to have the children list the ``reprehensible'' qualities of Jewish people and another, that Jews are pigs and apes. Reformist Muslims can also be labeled as ``apostates,'' and thus they can be killed with impunity. In the opening fatwa of a Saudi government booklet distributed to educate Muslim immigrants in 2005 by the Saudi embassy in the United States, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia (a cabinet level government post) responded to a question about a Muslim preacher in a European mosque who said ``declaring Jews and Christians infidels is not allowed.'' The Grand Mufti accused the unnamed European cleric of apostasy: ``He who casts doubts about their infidelity leaves no doubt about his own infidelity.'' The intellectual pioneer of takfiri doctrine is the medieval Islamic scholar Ibn Tamiyya. He is cited as a moral guide in the Saudi textbooks--including in the newly edited, heavily redacted texts used in the Islamic Saudi Academy, a school operated in Fairfax County, VA, by the Saudi embassy. Students of Saudi high school textbooks are instructed to consult his writings when they face vexing moral questions. West Point's Center for Combating Terror found that Ibn Tamiyya's are ``by far the most popular texts for modern jihadis.'' Saudi foreign-affairs officials and ambassadors do not dispute the need for education reform. Their reactions, though, have alternated over the years between insisting that reforms had already been made and stalling for time by stating that the reforms would take several years more to complete, maybe banking on the hope that American attention would drift. Four years ago, the Saudis gave a solemn and specific promise to the United States. Its terms were described in a letter from the U.S. assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs to Sen. Jon Kyl, then chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security: ``In July of 2006, the Saudi Government confirmed to us its policy to undertake a program of textbook reform to eliminate all passages that disparage or promote hatred toward any religion or religious groups.'' Furthermore, the State Department letter reported that this pledge would be fulfilled ``in time for the start of the 2008 school year.'' Saudi Arabia has failed to keep its promise to the United States. One Wikileak cable from the U.S. embassy reports that Saudi education reform seems ``glacial.'' In its newly released 2010 annual report on religious freedom, the State Department itself asserted, albeit with diplomatic understatement, with respect to Saudi Ministry of Education textbooks: ``Despite government revisions to elementary and secondary education textbooks, they retained language intolerant of other religious traditions, especially Jewish, Christian, and Shi'a beliefs, including commands to hate infidels and kill apostates.'' (emphasis added.) Meanwhile, Saudi royals have stepped up their philanthropy to higher education around the world, for which they have garnered many encomiums and awards. Hardly a month goes by without a news report that one of the princes is endowing a new center of Islamic and Arabic studies, or a business or scientific department, at a foreign university. The king himself recently founded a new university for advanced science and technology inside Saudi Arabia. These efforts have bought the royal family much good will, but they should not distract our political leaders from the central concern of the Saudi 1-12 religious curriculum. This is not the time for heaping unqualified praise on the aging monarch for promoting ``knowledge-based education,'' ``extending the hand of friendship to people of other faiths,'' promoting ``principles of moderation tolerance, and mutual respect,'' and the like (phrases with which our diplomatic statements on Saudi Arabia are replete). [[Page E2172]] The State Department needs to begin regular and detail reporting on the remaining objectionable and violent passages in Saudi government textbooks and to press in a sustained manner for the kingdom to keep its 2006 pledge to us regarding textbook reform. As USCIRF recommends, the administration should also lift the indefinite waiver of any action pursuant to the designation of Saudi Arabia as a ``Country of Particular Concern'' under the International Religious Freedom Act--the only ``CPC'' to receive an indefinite waiver. In one of the Wikileaks cables written earlier this year on Saudi King Abdullah to Secretary Clinton, U.S. Ambassador James Smith makes the following observation: ``Reflecting his Bedouin roots, he judges his counterparts on the basis of character, honesty, and trust. He expects commitments to be respected and sees actions, not words, as the true test of commitment. . . .'' Bedouin or not, we should start demanding the same from him. Remarks by R. James Woolsey, Former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency I met on several occasions with the late President of Indonesia, Abdurrahman Wahid, after his Presidency but while he was leading the world's largest libertarian Muslim organization, Nandlatul Ulama. What a truly magnificent man he was. Nandlatul Ulama's members, as is the case for the vast majority of Indonesia's Muslims, espouse essentially the Enlightenment's embrace of reason and in particular it's separation of the spiritual and secular realms. Indonesia's traditions in this regard harken back hundreds of years, and this country that contains more Muslims than any other does not call itself a Muslim nation. There are hundreds of millions of such truly moderate Muslims in the world, including a very substantial share of those in the U.S. They should be regarded as our colleagues and friends in trying to build a peaceful and prosperous modern world. To use a very rough analogy to the Cold War years, such truly moderate Muslims are something like the Social Democrats and Democratic Socialists--George Orwell, Helmut Schmidt--who were our colleagues in winning the Cold War against a communist empire that called itself ``socialist'' but whose essence was totalitarian. Of course terrorists, whether Muslim or not, are not our colleagues and friends but our enemies through and through, just as were the communists' instruments of violence such as the Spetznaz. But some have come to believe that in the world of Islam today these two groupings--moderate Muslims and terrorists--are the only ones that exist. Sadly such is not the case. During the Cold War there were non-violent totalitarians-- such as many members of the American Communist Party--who fervently worked for the triumph of communism and the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat but utilizing non-violent means. So also today there are some Muslim groups and individuals who work hard to replace our Constitution with the totalitarian socio-political doctrine that Islam calls shariah. Shariah has as its objective the establishment of a world-wide caliphate--a theocratic totalitarian state. Along the way to this objective adherence to shariah entails accepting a set of doctrines that calls for: death to apostates and homosexuals, brutal treatment of women, rejection of democracy (and indeed all man-made law), anti-semitism, and much else. In order to bring about the caliphate--the complete rejection of Article VI of the Constitution--it is not always tactically wise to utilize violence, or violent jihad. Sometimes what Muslim Brotherhood writers call ``civilization jihad'' is a shrewder tactic. It is well-defined in a document, ``An Explanatory Memorandum: On the General Strategic Goal for the Group'' entered into evidence in the 2008 case, United States v. Holy Land Foundation. The document was written by Mohammed Akram, a senior Hams leader in the U.S. and a member of the Board of Directors of the Muslim Brotherhood in North America. The document makes it clear that what is involved is a ``settlement process'' lead by the Muslim Brotherhood that constitutes a ``grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and `sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated. . . .'' In the Holy Land Foundation case, which dealt with terrorist financing, it was established that a number of Muslim Brotherhood organizations such as CAIR and ISNA, though not indicted, were part of the terror-financing conspiracy. In short, as during the Cold War, we need to understand that the central distinction is between those who accept democracy and the rule of (man-made) law and those who do not. We were on the same side during the Cold War as socialists George Orwell and Helmut Schmidt and both the Red Army and Gus Hall were on the other. Today we can make common cause with all Muslims who are neither planning to blow up airliners nor working on ``eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within.'' But we must not ignore those who are making such efforts or be deterred from dealing with them just because they engage in name-calling, such as labeling those who call them to account as ``Islamophobes.'' Those who bravely stood up against the Spanish Inquisition--whether Muslims, Jews, or Christians--were not ``Christianophobes.'' We need to find Constitutional means--drawings on our experiences during the Cold War--to thwart the Islamist sabotage called for by the Muslim Brotherhood document and to do so in such a way as to protect the rights of those Muslims who are not engaged in either violent jihad or ``civilization jihad'' against us. This will require us to think clearly about how to deal with Saudi Arabia, our ally on some aspects of fighting terrorism, but also the principal source of funding of a major share of the terrorists who attack us and the teaching of hatred that fuels the civilization jihad as well. Above all, we cannot begin to deal with these issues unless we speak clearly. It is time to end the euphemisms and the verbal dancing. One is hot accusing all Christians of burning women at the stake if one examines how the Salem witch trials grew out of some Puritan thinking. So too with totalitarian offshoots of any religion, including Islamism. Islamists' efforts to establish a caliphate and sabotage our Constitution have to be called what they are--they are not random acts of ``violent extremists.'' They are, for Islamists, jihad. And they must be defeated. ____________________