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The Church in The World
Saudis Shred Bible, Rights
Campaigners Claim
By Patrick Goodenough CNSNews.com
International Editor May 19, 2005(CNSNews.com) - Bibles
found in the possession of visitors to Saudi Arabia are routinely
confiscated by customs officials, and in some cases copies
allegedly have been put through a paper shredder, according to
religious rights campaigners.
Reports from the Islamic world of the abuse of Bibles and other
items important to Christians emerge from time to time, but
generally have little impact - in contrast to the wave of Muslim
anger sparked by a Newsweek report, since retracted, of Koran
desecration by the U.S. military.
"The Muslims respect the Koran far more than Christians
respect the Bible," says Danny Nalliah, a Sri Lankan-born
evangelical pastor now based in Australia.
During the 1990s, Nalliah spent two years in Saudi Arabia, where
he was deeply involved with the underground church.
"It's a very well-known fact that if you have a Bible at
customs when you enter the airport, and if they find the Bible,
that the Bible is taken and put in the shredder," he said in
an interview this week.
"If you have more than one Bible you will be taken into
custody, and if you have a quantity of Bibles you will be given
70 lashes for sure - you could even be executed."
Nalliah had not himself seen a Bible being shredded but said the
practice was widely acknowledged among Christians in the kingdom.
Abuse of Christians and their symbols was not restricted to the
destruction of Bibles, he added.
A friend of his, a fellow Christian in Saudi Arabia, told him of
witnessing a particularly unpleasant incident involving a
Catholic nun.
The man had been in the transit lounge at the airport in Jeddah -
the gateway to Mecca, used by millions of Hajj pilgrims each year
- when a nun arrived at the customs desk.
"Some fool [travel agent] had put her on a transit flight in
Jeddah. You don't do that to a Catholic nun, because she's going
to be tormented."
"They opened her bag, went through her prayer book, put the
prayer book through the shredder ...took the crucifix off her
neck and smashed it, tormented her for many minutes."
Eventually another Muslim official objected to their conduct,
came across and "rescued" her, pointing out to the
customs officials that she was not entering the country but only
in transit and would be leaving on the next plane.
Briefed beforehand about the risks, Nalliah said he did not carry
a Bible when he arrived in the kingdom in 1995.
Subsequently, however, he took possession of hundreds of Bibles
that had been smuggled into Saudi Arabia to be used by believers
there.
Nalliah said he had a close call one morning when armed members
of the notorious Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the
Prevention of Vice - the religious police, or muttawa - hammered
at his front door at 1 a.m.
With 400 smuggled Bibles "sitting on the dining room
table," he believed his life to be in serious danger.
"That was a crime equal to rape, murder, armed robbery, and
in Saudi Arabia you get the same punishment," he said - the
death penalty.
Nalliah said he had prayed earnestly and, in what he could only
describe as a miracle, the men left without entering his home.
"Contraband"
Claims of Bible desecration in Saudi Arabia have been made by
others.
"One Christian recently reported that his personal Bible was
put into a shredder once he entered customs," the late Nagi
Kheir, spokesman for the American Coptic Association and a
veteran campaigner for religious freedom in the Middle East,
wrote in an article several years ago.
"Some Christians have reported that upon entering Saudi
Arabia they have had their personal Bibles taken from them and
placed into a paper shredder," the U.S.-based organization
International Christian Concern said in a 2001 report.
In its most recent report on religious freedom around the world,
the State Department made no reference to Bible destruction, but
said they were considered contraband.
"Customs officials routinely open mail and shipments to
search for contraband, including ... non-Muslim materials, such
as Bibles and religious videotapes," it said. "Such
materials are subject to confiscation, although rules appear to
be applied arbitrarily."
In a 2003 report on Saudi Arabia, the U.S. Commission on
International Religious Freedom, an independent watchdog set up
under the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act, said:
"Customs officials regularly confiscate Bibles and other
religious material when Christian foreign workers arrive at the
airport from their home countries initially or return from a
vacation."
Inquiries about the legality of Bibles and about the shredder
claims, sent to the Saudi Embassy in Washington and the Saudi
Information Ministry in Riyadh, were not answered by press time
.
Koran vs. Bible
After Nalliah left Saudi Arabia in 1997, he went to the U.S. and
took part in the lobbying effort on Capitol Hill in support of
what eventually became the International Religious Freedom Act,
signed into law the following year.
He heads an evangelical ministry in Australia, where late last
year he and a colleague became the first people to be found
guilty under a controversial state religious hatred law, after
Muslims accused them of vilifying Islam during a post-9/11
seminar for Christians.
Nalliah said this week it did not surprise him that Muslims have
reacted strongly to the claims that U.S. interrogators at the
Guantanamo Bay base, where terrorism suspects are held, had
thrown a Koran into the toilet.
While Bible scholars say the Bible is written by men who were
inspired by God, Muslims believe the Koran is "the copy of
an original that is sitting in heaven, and has been sent down [by
revelation to Mohammed]."
The book is seen as something sacred in itself, he explained, its
words having come "directly from Allah. That's why they are
so mad when they think something [unseemly] is being done to the
Koran."
A Muslim will never keep a Koran at ground level, for instance.
The Pentagon says a January 2003 memo issued to U.S. personnel at
Guantanamo Bay instructed them to "ensure that the Koran is
not placed in offensive areas such as the floor, near the toilet
or sink, near the feet, or dirty/wet areas."
Even in Western societies, Nalliah noted, copies of Bibles could
often be found in witness boxes of courts, ready for use when
witnesses are sworn in. But the Koran will generally be kept in
safe storage elsewhere, covered in cloth, to be brought in when
required by a Muslim witness.
He said such reverence for the Koran stood in stark contrast to
some Muslims' feelings about the Bible, however.
Nalliah said the Koran was "confusing" on this score.
In places (e.g.: sura 29:46-47) it appeared to urge Muslims to
respect the Bible and those who believe in it; elsewhere it
exhorts them to fight those who don't accept Islam until they pay
tribute and accept inferior status (sura 9:29-31).
According to author and Islam scholar Robert Spencer, "a
devout Muslim might very well mistreat a Bible, because
traditional Islamic theology regards it as a corrupted and
unreliable version of the genuine revelations that were given to
Moses, Jesus, and other Prophets."
Spencer noted that in sura 9:30 the Koran says those who believe
Jesus is the Son of God are under Allah's curse.
"Throughout history, most Muslim theologians have held that
the New Testament has been tampered with since it teaches that
Jesus is the Son of God."
Some of the more notorious reported incidents of Muslims abusing
Christian symbols implicate Palestinian radicals, including the
trashing of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in 2002; and
the desecration of Maronite churches in Damour, Lebanon in 1976.
In the Damour episode, Yasser Arafat's PLO killed more than 500
of the Christian town's inhabitants before turning it into a
stronghold, and used the interior of the St. Elias church for a
shooting range, according to published accounts.
©2005, Cybercast News Service, reprinted with permission. Http://www.cnsnews.com.
Think Tank Affirms that Saudis Do Destroy Bibles
In a follow-up report (May 23, 2005) CNSNews.com was able to
affirm prior allegations that the Saudi government actively
pursues a policy of destroying Bibles.
CNSNews reported the following:
"A U.S.-based think tank critical of the Saudi government
has added its voice to allegations that authorities in the
kingdom routinely destroy Bibles." 'As a matter of official
policy, the government either incinerates or dumps Bibles,
crosses and other Christian paraphernalia,' the Saudi Institute
said in an article posted on its website. "Although
considered as holy in Islam and mentioned in the Koran dozens of
times, the Bible is banned in Saudi Arabia, and is confiscated
and destroyed by government officials," it said." Every
year human rights organizations list Saudi Arabia as one of the
world's worst violators of religious freedom. The CNSNews report
continues: "In another article posted on its site and
published as an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Friday
Saudi Institute director Ali Al-Ahmed wrote of his fellow Saudis:
'As Muslims, we have not been as generous as our Christian and
Jewish counterparts in respecting others' holy books and
religious symbols.' "
TSS
July
/ August 2005 The Sabbath Sentinel
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