The Saudi leader King Abdullah faces accusations of hypocrisy from a leading human rights organisation over a Saudi-sponsored two-day United Nations conference in New York to promote interfaith dialogue and religious tolerance, which began today.
The conference, reportedly part of the Saudi monarch's efforts to improve the international image of Islam in a Kingdom which has been linked to religious extremism following the September 11 attacks in 2001, will attract world leaders including the US president George Bush and the UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
Human Rights Watch accused the Saudi Monarch of double standards in a statement yesterday and called on world leaders to use the conference to pressure King Abdullah to end systematic discrimination against religious minorities in Saudi Arabia. Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch said:
"There is no religious freedom in Saudi Arabia, yet the kingdom asks the world to listen to its message of religious tolerance...The dialogue should be about where religious intolerance runs deepest, and that includes Saudi Arabia."
The human rights organisation also highlighted the restrictions on public and private worship placed on Saudi citizens and foreign residents as well as the systematic discrimination by Saudi authorities against its own Muslim Ismaili Shia minority communities.
"Saudi Arabia should practice at home what it preaches abroad," Whitson added.
It is also interesting that the Final Declaration of the Muslim Vatican forum dated 7 November affirmed the equality of men and women that up to now has not been a tenet of Islam.
http://212.77.1.245/news_services/press/vis/dinamiche/e0_en.htm
The address by Benedict on November 6 stressed the love of God is linked with love of all races.
" For Christians, the love of God is inseparably bound to the love of our brothers and sisters, of all men and women, without distinction of race and culture. As Saint John writes: “Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen” (1 Jn 4:20)."
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2008/november/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20081106_cath-islamic-leaders_en.html
Shimon Peres praised King Abdullah at the conference if I'm not mistaken?
The link that I posted above on the Muslim Vatican declaration seems to have been a current (which changes) rather than a specific site.
Here is the link to the declaration.
http://212.77.1.245/news_services/bulletin/news/22869.php?index=22869&po_date=06.11.2008&lang=en