As King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia made his first visit to Britain in 20 year, on October 29th, the British government and monarchy gave him a very warm welcome including a personal reception by both the Queen and Prime Minister. However he was greeted by a sea of protestors from the public, whose reasons for being opposed to his visit were sharply different from one another.

At one extreme of the protestor spectrum there were radical Muslims protesting against him, calling him an “enemy of Islam” and a “puppet of the West”. Such radicals feel that the Saudi King is both too religiously moderate and spineless in his dealings with the West. Seeing as it is the Saudi regime which controls the two holy cities of Islam – Mecca and Medina – this is very bad news, in the eyes of these protestors.

On the other hand, human rights protestors were also out demonstrating for almost the opposite reasons. They point to the extreme laws which govern Saudi Arabia that significantly discriminate against non-Muslims and women, the routine use of torture as an instrument of state policy and the financial support that the regime gives to those who attempt to spread the most radical forms of Islam abroad, both in non-Muslim countries as well as in Muslim countries which traditionally followed more moderate versions of Islam.

A recent investigation by a UK based think-tank, Policy Exchange, found extremist material advocating action such as murdering gays available at a quarter of mosques. Most of it was sourced from none other than Saudi Arabia.

Human rights protestors, as well as the Liberal Democrat party, said that the warm welcome given to the Saudi monarch showed a very inconsistent attitude towards foreign policy. Whereas some other dictators such as Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe would never receive a such a welcome out of principle for the human rights situation of that country, for the Saudi King who is presiding over a regime which has an appalling human rights track record to receive the highest red carpet treatment is a contradiction.

Hindus in Saudi Arabia

Having had a friend of my family who went to Saudi Arabia to work as a doctor, I have had first hand accounts of how difficult life is for the several thousand Hindus who live in Saudi Arabia. Not only were him and his family not allowed to openly practice Hinduism, they were not allowed to have gatherings of greater than five people. Doing so would risk a crackdown from the police, and inevitable prosecution.

Even more shockingly however, and perhaps a crucially decisive piece of evidence in forming one’s opinion of the Saudi regime is a look at its system of compensation, which was reported soe time back in the Wall Street Journal.
In Saudi Arabia, there is the concept of blood money. If a person has been killed or caused to die by another, amongst other punishment the perpetrator has to pay blood money or compensation, as follows:

100,000 riyals if the victim is a Muslim man
50,000 riyals if a Muslim woman
50,000 riyals if a Christian man
25,000 riyals if a Christian woman
6,666 riyals if a Hindu man
3,333 riyals if a Hindu woman

So there we have it, a Muslim man’s life is worth 33 times that of a Hindu woman’s. Although I haven’t yet decided where I want to spend my summer holiday next year, I certainly know of one country which I as a Hindu woman have firmly ruled out of my holiday wish list!

Imagine how much uproar and indignation there would be if such discriminatory systems were to exist in the other countries, such as the democracies in Europe or Asia. However it appears that no Western government cares to query such issues with Saudi Arabia for fear of disrupting their oil supplies.