The distribution of Bibles is illegal in Saudi Arabia. Proselytizing can be punishable by death. The birthplace of Islam and the Prophet Muhammad is among the lowest countries in the world in terms of human rights. It is the home of the 15 of September 19. 11 attackers.
Delaware resident Pam Laurion loves it.
He has made three trips to sites related to biblical history, driven by reforms led by Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, who has begun to open up to the global outside and says he seeks to promote a more moderate form. of Islam, even though it is accused of building an absolute government and complicity in murder.
“The time and money invested in Saudi Arabia has been incredibly productive in building new relationships and lifelong friends, just for me and our team, but also for the Saudis we met,” Laurion told Newsweek. “It’s a step forward and money well spent. “
Laurion is among a growing number of Christians in the United States who have jumped at the chance to go to Saudi Arabia and are thrilled with what they find there.
These visits may also contribute to Saudi Arabia’s vast public relations effort to change the image of the country led by the leader, known by his initials MBS, as an outpost of modernity with a long-term vision that an austere and harshly repressive theocracy. Everyone is convinced that rebranding is relevant.
“While this express opening to tourism is possibly perceived as a small gesture by the Saudi regime in favor of religious tolerance, it is probably, at most, an attempt to cosmetically mask its long history and the existing practice of legally imposed religious persecution,” said El, legal and policy director at the New York-based Human Rights Foundation.
El-Hage refers to the U. S. Embassy’s 2022 report on foreign religious freedom in Saudi Arabia and notes that the country conducts raids on “house churches,” bans the display of non-Muslim religious symbols, and persecutes anyone who tries to organize. Devoted activity in personal spaces.
“The situation of women’s rights has deteriorated especially in recent years,” said Ayat Basma of Amnesty International, highlighting the harsh sentences imposed on those calling for a political replacement online, adding a 45-year criminal sentence for a woman; death sentence for a man for online posts; and a 34-year criminal sentence for a doctoral student and mother of two for retweeting messages from dissidents critical of MBS.
Newsweek sent several requests for comment to the Saudi embassy in the United States, but got a response.
MBS told Fox News in September that some laws needed to be replaced and that he hoped a more experienced trial in a new phase of the trial would ensure the man was not executed. But despite the Saudi crown prince’s stated commitment to reform, he himself has been accused through US intelligence of approving the operation in which journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered and dismembered in 2018. MBS denies this allegation.
The political world is very different from what Christian tourists see in Saudi Arabia: a world in which they feel a closeness to biblical landscapes and history that is so easy to locate in places where tourism is more developed.
It travels the Red Sea, separated by Moses according to the Bible. There is the Broken Rock of Horeb, where Moses is said to have miraculously provided water to fleeing Jewish slaves. There is also one of the many sites claimed to be Mount Sinai, where Moses obtained the Ten Commandments.
Laurion says his 12-year-old grandson discovered a cave with petroglyphs. On another trip, he said he discovered thousand-year-old dwellings with Hebrew inscriptions now deciphered through the Museum of the Bible in Washington and that he calculated he took out a tombstone with what appears to be a menorah engraved on it.
“Discovering things without digging is straightforward because the sections we scale in have been closed for centuries,” he said. “When you make those kinds of discoveries, you can’t sleep at night. The artifacts testify to the biblical account. “
One of the first companies to start bringing Americans to Saudi Arabia was Living Passages, founded in Idaho. So far, it has organized 14 trips, for which 350 Americans, mostly Christians, have paid an average of $5,000 each to stop in Saudi Arabia. sacred places, said company founder Rhonda Sand.
“This is an incredibly forbidden position for believers. We’re right there. We touched the 3,500-year-old altars,” Sand said.
Joel Richardson, the writer, preacher and documentary filmmaker who ran Living Passage’s first travel organization in 2019, said, “They are arguably sitting on arguably the most important biblical heritage in the world, outside of Israel. “
In a few years, Christian and Jewish tourism could become Saudi Arabia’s biggest source of income, he proposes; this may simply be ambitious given the country’s huge revenues from oil and fuel or even the profits from the Haj pilgrimage to Mecca, which this year attracted more than 1. 8 million people. Millions of Muslims.
Andrew Jones is the tour organizer. He says the tours are small, but increasing, with Mormons, Mennonites and Messianic Christians.
“This is basically a local popular interest aimed at finding what more and more people seem to be the real exodus-like places,” he said. “They tell me stories of colleagues, friends and family expressing fear and wondering why they wanted to stop in Saudi Arabia and not Disney World. “
Open Doors, which supports persecuted Christians worldwide, ranks Saudi Arabia as the thirteenth worst country in persecution of Christians on its 2023 global watch list, while noting a reduction in violence against Christians.
“Although during the last year no Christians have been arrested or forced to marry, nor Christian homes have been attacked, physical violence against converts remains maximum and several believers have been forced to leave their homes,” he said. In addition to the innovations included, remove anti-Christian content from textbooks, as well as descriptions of Christians and Jews as “infidels” and “enemies of God. “
In another sign of relaxation, Christianity Today reported that last year it was legal to sell Christmas trees and Santa hats. There are about 2 million Christians in Saudi Arabia (mostly foreign staff) compared to more than 32 million Muslims, according to Open Doors.
It is still illegal to distribute Bibles, hikers can carry private Bibles with them. Members of the tour teams also have plenty of opportunities to meet local people.
“Fracasó. No anything negative happened,” Sand said of the 14 trips. “These are just rumors and insinuations that the Saudis are hostile to Christians. “
Richardson said early reports about Christian sparked local complaints on social media about a “Zionist” invasion of the Holy Land, but other Saudis told the plaintiffs to shut up.
“There are other people who don’t need change, but most are hospitable and fun,” she said. “I’m in love with the country. The desert, the hundreds of kilometers of virgin beaches with amazing diving. . . And Bedouins are like Texans: they love fast cars, four-wheelers, hunting and camping, and they’re some of the funniest people you’ll ever meet. “
Jason Bivins, a professor of faith and philosophy at North Carolina State University, said the Christians who suddenly arrived in Saudi Arabia are overwhelmingly conservative evangelicals and that their positive view of the country reflects how reactionary it was before MBS came to power.
But Everett Piper, president emeritus of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, a personal Christian university, compares American Christians traveling to Saudi Arabia to those visiting the former Soviet Union under communism, and says it can be a productive endeavor, even if it’s harmful or controversial. .
“The key is to compromise who we are. We can be kind to our visitors and at the same time be transparent about the hope that lives in them,” he said.
MBS began courting American Christians in late 2018 when he invited an organization of a dozen of them led by Joel Rosenberg, the best-selling evangelical of several fiction and nonfiction books about the region, to stop at his home at the Royal Palace.
“No Christian leader had been allowed into the palace for three hundred years,” Rosenberg told Newsweek. “Arab leaders must argue that they are not the leaders who were there on September 11. “
The assembly took a position about a month after Khashoggi’s killing, and a member of the organization asked MBS: “Did you order this?It’s so ugly. It derails everything you need to do,” Rosenberg recalls. He said MBS called the killing a “heinous crime” and vowed to arrest those involved, but also claimed the killers likely thought they were carrying out a homicide he would support, given Khashoggi’s allegation against him. MBS told Fox that arrests had been made after the killing, without elaborating.
MBS had also told visitors of his horror at the Sept. 11 attacks, which occurred when he was a teenager, said another delegation member who knew him.
Despite rumors that a Christian church could be allowed to be set up in MBS’s futuristic $500 billion NEOM city, the Saudi leader said his other friends wouldn’t settle for that just yet, Rosenberg said. He added that MBS had hired academics to examine the ancient Islamic city. restriction that no other faith deserves to be allowed in the Arabian Peninsula to see how it deserves to be applied.
“He is looking to locate an audience that will heed his argument that he is fundamentally transforming Saudi Arabia. They’re proud of their record on reform and don’t think the media will shake them,” Rosenberg said.
Diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and the United States have at times been tense. President Donald Trump reportedly had cordial relations with MBS, but during the election campaign, President Joe Biden said the country deserved to be a “pariah” for Khashoggi’s murder. Rising gas costs pushed up inflation last year, but Biden met with MBS at an assembly that angered human rights activists.
And while liberal reforms are possible in Saudi Arabia (not only when it comes to faith, but also allowing women to drive, for example), MBS’s political grip is not loosening. Freedom House’s 2022 Global Freedom Index ranks it tied with Afghanistan in terms of politics. Freedom, among the lowest countries in the world.
In May 2022, Thomas Schirmacher of the World Evangelical Alliance participated in an interfaith collection in Riyadh organized through the Saudi-sponsored Muslim World League. He told Newsweek that MBS’s reforms are “real and visible,” but have been reduced to “small steps. “
Not all American evangelicals see the progression of tourism in Saudi Arabia.
James Spencer, president of the D. L. Evangelical CenterMoody, Massachusetts, cites a U. S. State Department report. UU. de 2022 according to which the country engages in “systematic, continuous and egregious violations of freedom”.
“While it is conceivable to oppose supporting a number of places with tourism money, Christians contemplating visiting a highly questionable site in a country that continues to persecute the Church deserve to do so with their eyes wide open,” he said.
Tommie Collie, from North Carolina, is undaunted. He also participated in one of the first and says the most moving experience was seeing the Red Sea, as his favorite biblical tale as a child was the parting of the waters of Moses.
“Yes, it bothers me, evil exists, but I don’t mind spending my money there. Actually, it was for the smart. When I travel, my purpose is to show the love and compassion of Christ,” Colie told Newsweek. I have traveled to about 25 countries in my lifetime, knowing that atrocities exist all over the world. There are smart and bad things in each and every country. If I didn’t travel because of the bad things that exist, I couldn’t go anywhere. “