Blasphemy law in Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia's laws are an amalgam of rules from Sharia (mainly the rules formulated by the Hanbali school of jurisprudence but also from other schools of law like the Jafari school), royal decrees, royal ordinances, other royal codes and bylaws, fatwas from the Council of Senior Scholars (Saudi Arabia) and custom and practice.

Saudi Arabian authorities use the kingdom's laws to repress all forms of public religious expression other than one school of Sunni Islam, namely, Salafism or Wahhabism. Numerous Ismaili Muslims are in prison on account of their religion, and many Shia Muslims are under arrest or in detention. The kingdom uses the Commission to Promote Virtue and Prevent Vice (religious police) to enforce its laws against apostasy. The Commission is composed in part of uncontrolled, zealous volunteers.

To secure convictions, Saudi Arabia's administrative and judicial authorities routinely seek confessions. To secure confessions, the authorities commonly engage in severe violations of human rights. Persons accused of blasphemy may be subjected to torture or to cruel and degrading treatment as well as to prolonged and solitary detention. The proceedings which determine an accused's fate may be secret. Execution is usually by beheading with a sword for males and by firing squad for females.

In 2009, Amnesty International reported that "at least 102 men and women, 39 of them foreign nationals, were executed in 2008. Many were executed for non-violent offences, including drug offences, 'sodomy', blasphemy and apostasy." In 2008, Human Rights Watch reported that Saudi Arabia frequently convicts persons for alleged insults to religion. In 1999, the Special Rapporteur of the United Nations Human Rights Commission expressed concern about the lack of response from Saudi Arabia to inquiries about the circumstances of detained persons.

In 2008 in Saudi Arabia, after Ra'if Badawi operated a website that criticized that country’s religious police and questioned Wahhabi interpretations of Islam, authorities charged him with “setting up an electronic site that insults Islam.” Faced with both the possibility of five years’ imprisonment and an $800,000 fine, as well as threats against his safety, he fled the country.

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