Religion in Saudi Arabia

Religion of kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Islam is the state religion of Saudi Arabia and its law requires that all citizens should be Muslims. Public worship by adherents of religions other than Islam is forbidden. Any non-Muslim attempting to acquire Saudi Arabian nationality must convert to Islam. Saudi Arabia has been criticized for its implementation of Islamic law and its poor human rights record.

Saudi Arabia is an Islamic theocracy. Religious minorities do not have the right to practice their religion. Non-Muslim propagation is banned, and conversion from Islam to another religion is punishable by death as apostasy. Proselytizing by non-Muslims, including the distribution of non-Muslim religious materials such as Bibles, is illegal. In late 2014 a law was promulgated calling for the death penalty for anyone bringing into the country "publications that have a prejudice to any other religious beliefs other than Islam" (thought to include non-Muslim religious books).

The official form of Islam is Sunni of the Hanbali school, in its Salafi version. According to official statistics, 85–95% of Saudi Arabian citizens are Sunni Muslims, 10–15% are Shia. (More than 30% of the population is made up of foreign workers who are predominantly but not entirely Muslim.) It is unknown how many Ahmadi Muslims there are in the country. The two holiest cities of Islam, Mecca and Medina, are in Saudi Arabia. For many reasons, non-Muslims are not permitted to enter the holy cities although some Western non-Muslims have been able to enter, disguised as Muslims.

The large number of foreign workers living in Saudi Arabia (8 million expatriates out of a total population of 27 million) includes non-Muslims.

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