First Catholic church for Saudi Arabia
Negotiations are underway to build the first Catholic church in Saudi Arabia
with King Abdullah lending his support for its construction.
Vatican Radio reports the Vatican and the Saudi government are currently in
talks to allow the church despite the kingdoms ban on allowing the
construction of any non-Muslim place of worship.
No religion other than Islam is allowed to schedule public services,
and even the possession of bibles, rosaries, and crucifixes is forbidden.
Saudi Arabia is the only country on the Arabian Peninsula without a Catholic
church despite the 800,000 Catholics - virtually all of who are foreign workers.
While Saudi Arabia does not have formal diplomatic relations
with the Holy See, King Abdullah became the first reigning
Saudi monarch ever to visit the Vatican last November.
Commenting after his meeting with the Pope Vatican officials confirmed the
Pontiff pressed for permission to open a Catholic church in the kingdom.
Holy See spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi said that opening a Catholic
parish in the Islamic land would be "a historic achievement" for religious
freedom and a major step forward for inter-religious dialogue.
Source:
http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=6247
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/17/wsaudi117.xml
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article3571835.ece
Arab human rights activists have condemned a Saudi religious edict
calling for the execution of two writers for apostasy - giving a rare
glimpse of tensions over Islam inside the conservative kingdom.
The
ruling by Sheikh Abdul Rahman al-Barrak was called "intellectual
terrorism" by "clerics of darkness" in a statement obtained by Reuters
and signed by 100 human rights groups and intellectuals from the
region. Last month Barrak issued a fatwa against two Saudi writers he
denounced as "infidels".
Writing in al-Riyadh newspaper, Yousef
Aba Al-Khail and Abdullah bin Bejad had questioned the Sunni Muslim
view standard in Saudi Arabia that adherents of other faiths should be
considered unbelievers.
"Anyone who claims this has refuted
Islam and should be tried so that he can take it back. If not, he
should be killed as an apostate from the religion of Islam," Barrak
said. "It is disgraceful that articles [of] this kind of apostasy
should be published in ... the land of [Mecca and Medina]."
Barrak
is seen as Saudi Arabia's leading religious authority independent of
the establishment Wahhabi school. His call won support from clerics who
asked God to support him in the face of liberals with "polluted
beliefs".
Fatwas by radical Muslim clerics led to the
assassination in 1992 of the Egyptian writer Farag Foda and to an
attempt in 1994 in Cairo to murder the Egyptian Nobel prize-winner
Naguib Mahfouz.
Last month Saudi Arabia's Shura council threw out
a proposal for a law promoting respect for other religions and
religious symbols, apparently for fear it might lead to the building of
churches.
King Abdullah recently called for the first time for a
dialogue among Muslims, Christians and Jews after discussing the idea
with Pope Benedict XVI. But it was reported yesterday that the
kingdom's leading official cleric, the Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz Bin
Abdullah al-Sheikh, had denied issuing an invitation to Israeli rabbis
to take part in a conference.
A YouGov poll, broadcast by BBC
World, showed that nearly a third of Arabs believe Saudi Arabia is at
greater risk from religious extremism than any other country.
Ian Black, Middle East editor
The Guardian,
Thursday April 3 2008
"Deaths in the Bible. God - 2,270,365
not including the victims of Noah's flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, or the
many plagues, famines, fiery serpents, etc because no specific numbers
were given. Satan - 10."
TCOM.. that was a very late entrant on the list of fool's day.
by now all have become much more smarter than in the morning
[img_assist|nid=60386|title=.|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=|height=0]
all these newspapers are playing a trick on us all .. hehehe. well i will not be in that church when it opens . thank you ....
still april fool.....im guessing
Yeah, good luck with that one.
Hmmm this is quite intresting and unexpected.
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"Be Like a Flower, Which gives off it's fragrance
even to the hand that crushes it."