Saudi Arabia: where carrying the Rosary is a crime
April 05, 2011
Camille Eid, a professor at the University of Milan, describes the persecution Christians endure in Saudi Arabia. Eid, who has lived in Jeddah-- the nation’s second-largest city-- told the television program “Where God Weeps” that
it is hard to be a lay Catholic in Saudi Arabia because you have to have a very deep background in your faith. You cannot have copies of the Gospel in your home. You cannot have a rosary. You cannot have contact with your Christian friends as a community; you can have Christian friends, you can frequent the foreign communities but you are prohibited from talking about your faith … In other Islamic countries Friday is a holiday so Mass as a community [is allowed], but not on Sunday because Sunday is considered a working day; but even this is not the case in Saudi Arabia.
“We have a case of the martyrdom of a Saudi girl who converted to Christianity,” Eid adds. “Her brother discovered her. She wrote a poem to Christ and she had her tongue cut, she disappeared and was later found dead. Her name was Fatima Al-Mutairi and this happened in August of 2008. In 2008 two cases of raids by the religious police saw men, women and children less than three years old arrested. We have many reports of torture.”
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Posted by: hartwood01 -
Apr. 08, 2011 4:15 PM ET USA
We would have to have so much oil that we didn't care if we offended countries that persecuted our brothers in Christ. So,being non-Christian AND oil-hungry,we look the other way.
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Posted by: Chestertonian -
Apr. 05, 2011 7:48 PM ET USA
And the response from our government and secular media? ~sound of crickets chirping~ But if one US citizen burns a Koran, Karzai of Afghanistan tells our president how to deal with it. We can't burn a book without setting off riots and violence, but they can torture and kill and we say . . . what? I've seen a t-shirt asking, "When does the next crusade begin?" At what point do we say, "Enough!" and go forth to defend our fellow Christians? S'pose we'd have to be a Christian country still . .
