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Senators Ask State Department to Add Saudi Arabia to U.S. List of Religiously Intolerant Nations

(Magic City Morning Star-Maine) U.S. Senators Charles Schumer and Susan Collins Monday urged the State Department to add Saudi Arabia to the U.S. list of religiously intolerant nations, a classification that could bring economic sanctions. The State Department's 2003 Annual Report on International Religious Freedom said that freedom of religion "does not exist" in Saudi Arabia. Schumer said, "We know that Saudi-funded madrassas promote religious intolerance and violence in schools. We know that Saudi Arabia brutally prohibits the public expression of religion that is not the Wahhabi interpretation of Islam. And we know that Saudi efforts to export militant ideology inflame anti-Western sentiments throughout the world." The Schumer-Collins resolution calls on Saudi Arabia to cease its support of religious ideologies that promote hatred, intolerance, violence, and other abuses of internationally recognized human rights, and urges the U.S. to promote religious freedom in Saudi Arabia.
2004-08-11 00:00:00
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