By BosNewsLife News Center
BUDAPEST, HUNGARY (BosNewsLife)– Christian bishops in Austria, Germany and Russia have condemned Saudi Arabia’s top religious official after reports that he issued a fatwa, or decree, saying all churches on the Arabian Peninsula should be destroyed.
In separate statements on Friday, March 23, the Roman Catholic bishops in Germany and Austria slammed the ruling by Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz Al al-Shaikh as an unacceptable denial of human rights to millions of foreign workers in the Gulf region, Reuters news agency reported Friday, March 23.
Archbishop Mark of Yegoryevsk, head of the Russian Orthodox department for churches abroad, called the fatwa “alarming” in a statement.
It came after BosNewsLife news agency and other Christian websites said Sheikh Abdulaziz, one of the most influential religious leaders in the Muslim world, issued the fatwa last week after a question from a Kuwaiti non governmental organization.
Earlier a Kuwaiti parliamentarian had called for a ban on the construction of new churches. The NGO, called the Society of the Revival of Islamic Heritage, asked the Sheikh to clarify what Islamic law says on the matter.
DESTROYING CHURCHES
He said in response that it is “necessary to destroy all the churches of the region.”
The Grand Mufti, who is the highest official of religious law in Saudi Arabia, as well as the head of the Supreme Council of Islamic Scholars, cited the Prophet Mohammed, who said the Arabian Peninsula is to exist under only one religion.
Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, chairman of the German Bishops Conference, said the mufti “shows no respect for the religious freedom and free co-existence of religions”, especially all the foreign laborers who made its economy work.
“It would be a slap in the face to these people if the few churches available to them were to be taken away,” he said.
At least 3.5 million Christians live in the Gulf Arab region. They are mostly Catholic workers from India and the Philippines, but also Western expatriates of all denominations.
BANNING PRAYER
Saudi Arabia bans all non-Muslim houses of prayer, forcing Christians there to risk arrest by praying in private homes.
Several house churches have been raided, BosNewsLife reported earlier.
There are churches for Christian minorities in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Yemen.
The bishops conference in Austria, where Saudi King Abdullah plans to open a controversial center for interfaith dialogue, demanded an official explanation from Riyadh.
“How could the grand mufti issue a fatwa of such importance behind the back of his king?” they asked in a statement published by Reuter. “We see a contradiction between the dialogue being practiced, the efforts of the king and those of his top mufti.”
RUSSIAN ARCHBISHOP
In Moscow, Archbishop Mark told the Interfax news agency he hoped that Saudi Arabia’s neighbors “will be surprised by the calls made by this sheikh and ignore them”.
The Catholic Church has urged Muslim states in recent years to give Christian minorities in their countries the same freedom of religion that Muslims enjoy in Western countries.
There are few Orthodox Christians in the Gulf region, but the Moscow Patriarchate – which was mostly silent during the decades of Soviet communism that ended in 1991 – has become increasingly vocal in defending the rights of Christians around the world, Reuters news agency reported.
Bishop Paul Hinder, who oversees Catholic churches in the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Yeman, told Catholic news agency KNA that the fatwa had not been widely publicized in Saudi Arabia. “What is worrying is that such statements have influence in part of the population,” he said.
