CHAPTER 1
Humanity
The Arabian Peninsula

There are few places in the world more difficult to be a Christian than Saudi Arabia. Consider the story of Fatima, a Saudi woman who converted to Christianity from Islam in her mid-twenties. After her conversion, she started blogging under the pseudonym Rania, the Arabic woman’s name meaning “eye-catching” or “noticeable” (Open Doors Australia 2013). Fatima was certainly both.

Her first blog post had a comment posted to it, which read – “You worship a foolish, crucified, cursed Lord. We are not honored by Saudi Arabian Christians. If I had you in my hands, I would slaughter you twice.”

Gracefully, Fatima responded by referencing the eighth beatitude of Jesus, who declared, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Things spiraled downwards for Fatima after her first post. Her brother went into a fit of rage when he found out that she had converted to Christianity. One day, in fear for her life, Fatima locked herself in her bedroom and started blogging. The title of that particular post was “I am in big trouble.”

Fatima was right. Her brother, disgusted by her conversion to Christianity, eventually mangled her face by throwing acid on it. He then cut out her tongue. She later died from her injuries.

Fatima’s story raises concerning questions on the presence of DEUCE and the well-being of humanity in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam. I define humanity as the quality of being benevolent, hospitable, inclusive, kind, and sympathetic towards one’s fellow human beings, who constitute one human race. The opposite of humanity – inhumanity – is the state or quality of being cruel, exclusive, extreme, monstrous, and even violent towards one’s fellow human beings, let alone one’s sibling.

Today, Saudi Arabia ranks as the thirteenth most difficult country in the world to live in as a Christian (Open Doors USA n.d.a.). There is not a single official church in the country. Handing out Bibles is illegal. Converts to Christianity, foreign-born Christians, and native-born Christians all face systematic discrimination, intolerance, and prejudice, all of which fester in societies steeped in extremism and supremacy.

How, exactly, did Christianity become virtually intolerable in Saudi Arabia?

PART ONE – THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS

Wahhabism and the House of Saud

The eyes of the world turned to Saudi Arabia in the days following 9/11. Fifteen of the hijackers, who launched their terrorist attacks by crashing commercial flights into the Twin Towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington D.C., were Saudi nationals. The attacks killed 2,977 people (9/11 Memorial and Museum n.d.). It was the single largest loss of life resulting from a foreign attack on American soil in the history of the USA.

My previous book The Humanity of Muhammad – A Christian View (Considine 2020) started with my personal experience on that fateful day. As a fifteen-year-old junior at Needham High School in Massachusetts, I had little context – and a lack of education or understanding – to make sense of the terror-driven media narratives about Islam and Muslims. I had no Muslim friends, I had never visited a mosque, and I never learned about Islamic history in Catholic school or public school. I had a lot of questions as to what happened on that day.

Naturally, the American government had questions, too. It started pointing the blame at Al-Qaeda – a transnational terrorist network – and the Taliban – an Islamist government – in Afghanistan. Most Americans had never heard of either group at the time. Questions also swirled on whether Muslim-majority countries around the world may have assisted the terrorists in their attacks.

Clarity on the perpetrators’ identities was provided in December 2002, when a joint House of Representatives and Senate intelligence committee provided evidence of possible links between the government of Saudi Arabia and some of the fifteen Saudi citizens involved in the attacks (Ottaway 2016).

Osama Bin Laden (d. 2011), the Saudi-born founder of the pan-Islamic terrorist organization known as Al-Qaeda, emerged as the ringleader of the attacks of 9/11. In May 1998, when interviewed in Afghanistan by ABC, he outlined his vision for the Clash of Civilizations, stating:

It is far better for anyone to kill a single American soldier than to squander his efforts on other activities … We believe that the worst thieves in the world today and the worst terrorists are the Americans. Nothing could stop [Muslims] except perhaps retaliation in kind. We do not have to differentiate between military or civilian. As far as we are concerned, they are all targets (Public Broadcasting Service n.d.).

The Clash of Civilizations is a term that captures the perceived antagonistic relationship between Christians and Muslims. It was popularized by Samuel P. Huntington (d. 2008), the former political scientist from Harvard University, following the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. He argued that the primary source of future conflicts will be rooted in “cultural values” rather than “economic values” (like capitalism versus communism) (Huntington 1993: 22). To drive home his thesis, Huntington’s book publisher – Simon and Schuster – created a book cover that juxtaposed two flags – the American flag (representing the West) and the white crescent placed against a green backdrop (representing the Ummah).

Bin Laden was famous for spreading discontent and resentment in the West by calling the American-led “War on Terror” a greedy and immoral war designed to bolster Western oil interests. He referred to Saudi Arabia as a “colony” of the USA and Saudi leaders as the “puppets” of Western leaders for allowing American military bases inside the birthplace of Islam.

Many media commentators suggested that 9/11 was the result of Wahhabism, which is recognized as a primary driver of “Islamic terrorism” and the “catchall term to describe all forms of Islamic militancy” (Pew Research Center 2005). In the West, Wahhabism is synonymous with extremism. In the Ummah, it is synonymous with the conservative Hanbali school of jurisprudence and the strictest interpretation of the Sharia. It has been identified as the only form of religion that can be openly taught or practiced in Saudi Arabia (Rohmaniyah and Woodward 2012: 3).

Wahhabism is named after Muhammad Ibn Abd Al-Wahhab (d. 1792), a jurist and theologian of the eighteenth century. He saw himself as a mujaddid, or a “restorer of the faith,” and encouraged a literal interpretation of the Qur’an and ahadith. Al-Wahhab was a strict proponent of tawhid, the Arabic term meaning the “oneness of God” or the “unity of God.” For those who may not be familiar with the term, tawhid celebrates Allah as indivisible, monolithic, and singular (Phillips 2018). For Al-Wahhab, it was incompatible with the Trinity – the Christian doctrine claiming that the Father (God), the Son (Jesus), and the Holy Spirit represent the true essence of God. From a Wahhabi perspective, the Trinity is the “ultimate evil” (Abdul-Rahman 2023). It positions Christians as “unsaveable,” or victims of what Pope Francis called the “throw-away culture,” in which human beings are discarded and excluded as outcasts and potential villains because they do not align with hegemonic worldviews.

Christians, it should be noted, do not worship three gods. Worshipping three gods amounts to polytheism. Rather, Christians typically worship one God who they believe exists as three distinct, co-equal, co-eternal persons, sharing all the attributes of deity, agreeing completely in will and purpose, and existing eternally in divine, loving relationships with one another (Phillips 2018). There also are Unitarian Christians who adhere to a strict monotheism in the unitary nature of God. An understanding of these distinctions and views is important for furthering constructive dialogue and beneficial engagement between Christians and Muslims.

Al-Wahhab was particularly harsh in maintaining a puritanical view of religious sites. He eschewed bid’ah – the Arabic term meaning “innovation” – including practices like decorating graves, mysticism, and worshipping saints. He considered all these practices to be shirk, or the sin of polytheism.

Al-Wahhab encountered problems while living in Iran in 1736 and then again in his birthplace of Al-‘Uyayna in 1744. He ended up finding refuge in Diriyah, an agricultural settlement that was then emerging as a commercial center.1 There, he was granted protection by Saud Bin Muhammad Al-Muqrin (d. 1725), an emir of the Nejd region of the Arabian Peninsula. Ibn Saud has been described as an ambitious and competent warrior. He is the progenitor of the current line of the Saudi royal family. His ally Al-Wahhab provided the House of Saud with military support and guidance on matters of religion and statecraft. Their connection was deepened when Al-Wahhab’s daughter married Abdul-Aziz, a son of Ibn Saud.

Few would contest that Al-Wahhab shaped the...