Blasphemy No Longer: Celebrating Christmas in Saudi Arabia

This previous Christmas in Riyadh was unrecognizable to anybody who knew the town 5 years in the past. Hitherto, brazenly celebrating non-Muslim holidays had been considered blasphemy. Now the non secular police, who had beforehand arrested shopkeepers for promoting pink roses on St. Valentine’s Day, had been nowhere to be seen. As a substitute, Christmas timber, lights, decorations, and Santa costumes had been brazenly on sale for the primary time.

In a metropolis the place the Ministry of Well being had frequently knowledgeable hospitals to not allow any Christmas shows, retailers had been arrayed with snowmen and reindeer whereas high-end cafes like Bateel bought dates in star-shaped bins embellished in pink and inexperienced. Eating places now supplied Christmas dinners, whereas secular carols had been heard in procuring malls, the place all music hade as soon as been banned. There have been no nativity scenes in public squares and never everybody authorized of those modifications, however they had been however a exceptional step in the direction of non secular tolerance.

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman and his son Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman initiated these modifications on their now initiative as a part of the social and financial revolution they’re trying to guide. They’re urgently attempting to diversify the Saudi economic system away from oil and create new, well-paid jobs. They perceive that success would require each growing alternatives for ladies and selling non secular tolerance.

Because of aggressive affirmative motion packages, Saudi Arabia’s feminine labor power participation price has almost doubled since their Imaginative and prescient 2030 plan was introduced in 2016. Selling non secular tolerance has likewise turn into a vital a part of their effort to draw international funding and lure gifted international executives from extra tolerant locations—even Dubai.

They’ve subsequently eliminated illiberal passages from faculty textbooks, decreased the quantity of spiritual research in school rooms, partially adopted the Gregorian calendar and moved in the direction of a Western weekend. All of their modifications, nevertheless, from permitting girls to drive or sit the place they select in a restaurant to celebrating Christmas and New 12 months, have been firmly opposed by conservative parts in a nonetheless deeply non secular society.

These religiously conservative Saudis even take into account it incorrect to have fun the prophet Mohammad’s birthday as he was a person, not a god. Some nonetheless regard it as inappropriate to greet a Christian on the street. One can solely think about what they consider celebrating Christmas or sending Christmas greetings. To make certain they’re a minority.

Now we have lengthy obtained Christmas greetings from Saudis, however this conservative minority is dedicated, organized and doubtlessly violent. The king should take care of them in phrases they may perceive and settle for. Thus, it’s not shocking that the president of the Muslim World League and former Saudi Minister of Justice Mohammad al-Issa was chosen to explain these modifications to the Saudi public when it comes to Islamic non secular legislation.

Al-Issa is a acknowledged apostle of average Islam who has condemned Holocaust deniers and attended commemorations for the liberation of Auschwitz. Final month he went on tv to clarify the brand new acceptance of Christmas. He identified that no Muslim scripture condemns Christmas and that within the absence of a transparent prohibition, the authorized default is acceptance.

As an analogy, he defined that accepting a Christian marriage as legitimate doesn’t imply one accepts Christianity or rejects Islamic marriages. It means you respect that completely different communities have completely different customs. He went on to deal with the idea of public curiosity, noting that in an more and more interdependent world it’s in Saudi Arabia’s personal curiosity to advertise coexistence, concord, and non secular tolerance. Lastly, for many who nonetheless didn’t get the purpose, he requested how do you suppose Muslim minorities shall be handled in international lands if we prohibit their faith right here?

Actively selling a extra tolerant model of Islam within the Muslim Holy Land is a major change for Saudi society. Saudi leaders are taking a danger in adopting this coverage. They’ve already very publicly met with international delegations of Christian and Jewish clerics whereas quietly permitting clergymen and rabbis to go about their enterprise in Riyadh. From a international coverage perspective, they’ve publicly accepted and privately authorized the Abraham Accords below which a lot of their neighbors have opened diplomatic relations with Israel.

Now they’ve legalized Christmas celebrations.

All of this contrasts sharply with occasions in Afghanistan the place, after investing a lot blood and treasure, we should now watch because the Taliban shut girls out of employment and training. Nor does it resemble Iran the place girls are nonetheless arrested for not protecting their head and protesters are shot by the a whole bunch.

Saudi leaders are selling reform for their very own causes. We want not approve of every thing they do relating to human rights or international affairs to acknowledge that in some areas they’re shifting in the fitting path. It will be onerous to argue that this 12 months’s Christmas in Riyadh was not a trigger for celebration.

David H. Rundell is a former chief of mission on the American Embassy in Saudi Arabia and the creator of Imaginative and prescient or Mirage, Saudi Arabia on the Crossroads. Ambassador Michael Gfoeller is a former political advisor to the U.S. Central Command and a member of the Council on Overseas Relations.

The views expressed on this article are the writers’ personal.