Islam
Islam was a third factor that influenced Saudi foreign policy. Solidarity with Muslim countries in Asia and Africa was an important objective. Since the 1970s, countries such as Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Somalia have received special consideration in terms of foreign aid because of religious affinity. Many Pakistani military personnel were on secondment to the Saudi armed forces during the 1980s.
Islam, The Faith on which The Kingdom is Founded
To understand the history of the Kingdom and its political, economic and social development, it is necessary to realize that Islam, which permeates every aspect of a Muslim's life, also permeates every aspect of the Saudi Arabian state.
It is not the function of this information resource to attempt to describe or explain Islam. It is nevertheless true that some grasp of the spirit of Islam will help the user to see, in the correct context, the policies of the Kingdom, both in terms of its efforts to benefit its own citizens and in terms of the aid it has given to other countries.
Human Rights
Saudi Arabia has been cited by several international human rights monitoring groups for its alleged failure to respect a number of basic rights. London-based Amnesty International reported receiving credible testimony from political prisoners who alleged they were arbitrarily arrested, held in prolonged detention without trial, and routinely tortured during interrogations. Torture methods in the Mubahathat (office of secret police) prisons included months in solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, beatings to the soles of the feet, suspension by the wrists from ceilings or high windows, and the application of electric shocks to all parts of the body. Amnesty International cited reports that sixty-six persons had been detained without charge or trial for radical Shia activity, although forty-one of these, as well as other political opponents of the government, were released in 1990 on the occasion of a royal pardon for more than 7,000 common criminals.
The human rights organization Middle East Watch, the Minnesota Lawyers International Human Rights Committee, and the International Committee for Human Rights in the Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula issued reports in 1991 and 1992 that detailed extensive use of torture in Saudi prisons as a means to extract confessions from detainees. Prisoners reportedly signed confessions to crimes they had not committed in order to escape physical and psychological torture. As of October 1992, human rights organizations had identified forty-three political prisoners who had been detained for more than one year without formal charges. Several prisoners are alleged to have died while in police custody.
The Department of State reported in early 1991 that there was no automatic procedure for informing a detainee's family or employer of his arrest. Embassies usually heard of the arrest of their nationals informally within a few days; official notification took several months. A policy requiring Ministry of Foreign Affairs approval of consular access to prisoners had caused delays in consular visits.
In spite of calls after the Persian Gulf War for modernization of laws and relief from the influence of strict Islamism in the imposition of punishment, the royal family showed little disposition to liberalize the criminal justice system. As of early 1992, the conservative religious establishment seemed to have solidified its ability to block reforms of the codes of law and judicial procedures that were the sources of increasing domestic and international criticism.
Crime and Punishment
Crimes subject to the death sentence included murder, apostasy from Islam, adultery, drug smuggling, and sabotage. Under certain conditions, rape and armed robbery could also lead to execution. Executions could be carried out by beheading, firing squad, or stoning of the convicted person in a drugged state. All seventeen executions carried out in 1990 were by beheading.
The sharia sets forth rigorous requirements for proof of adultery or fornication. For the crime of adultery, four witnesses to the act must swear to having witnessed the crime, and if such an accusation does not hold up in court, the witnesses are then liable to punishment. No one was executed for adultery in 1990, although during 1989 there were reliable reports of nonjudicial public stonings for adultery
In 1987, based on a ruling by the ulama, drug smugglers and those who received and distributed drugs from abroad were made subject to the death sentence for bringing "corruption" into the country. First-time offenders faced prison terms, floggings, and fines, or a combination of all three punishments. Those convicted for a second time faced execution. By the end of 1987, at least nine persons had been executed for offenses that involved drug smuggling, most of them non-Saudis. According to the police, the antidrug campaign and the death penalty had by 1989 reduced addiction by 60 percent and drug use by 26 percent.
By late 1991, more than 110 drug sellers had been arrested since the law was put into effect. Saudi officials claimed that the kingdom had the lowest rate of drug addiction in the world, which they attributed to the harsh punishments and the pious convictions of ordinary Saudis.
Drug use was said to persist, however, among wealthy younger Saudis who acquired the habit abroad. Drug users included some members of the royal family, who took advantage of their privileged status to import narcotics.
An unusual, if not unique, internal security force in Saudi Arabia was the autonomous and highly visible religious police, or mutawwiin (see Glossary). Organized under the authority of the king in conjunction with the ulama, the mutawwiin were charged with ensuring compliance with the puritanical precepts of Wahhabism. A nationwide organization known in English as the Committees for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (also seen as Committees for Public Morality), the mutawwiin earned a reputation for fanaticism and brutality that had become an embarrassment, but the Al Saud has seemingly been reluctant to confront the ulama in a showdown. Primarily, the mutawwiin enforced public observance of such religious requirements as the five daily prayers, fasting during Ramadan, the modesty of women's dress, and the proscriptions against the use of alcohol (see Wahhabi Theology , ch. 2).
Once an important instrument of Abd al Aziz for upholding standards of public behavior, the ultraconservatism of the mutawwiin had become an anachronism, contrasting with the modernization processes working in other sectors of society. The government has occasionally disciplined overzealous mutawwiin, following complaints from a foreign government over treatment of its nationals. After a series of raids on rich and influential Saudis in 1990, the government appointed a new and more compliant leader of the religious police.
The religious police had the legal right to detain suspects for twenty-four hours before turning them over to the regular police and were known to have flogged detainees to elicit confessions. They often used switch-like sticks to beat those perceived to be in violation of religious laws. Foreign workers, including some from the United States, have been targets of harassment and raids. According to one estimate, there were about 20,000 mutawwiin in 1990. Most mutawwiin wore the traditional white thaub, were salaried, and were regarded as government employees. Some incidents of harassment have been attributed to self-appointed vigilantes outside the regular religious police hierarchy.
And oh, there is so much more about these *peaceful* people that export their zealotry using bribes of oil money to backward countries, recreuiting Jihadists, training them, and building mosques for them to take refuge in, tusting that westerners would not invade holy places. Here is where they have set up shop:
Please note these amounts are in MILLIONS.