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This year, KSA publicized the Penal Law for Crimes of Terrorism. The new regulation included terrorism provisions used to criminalize and to charge virtually any Saudi citizen or association  that would criticize the Saudi system or Islam. Article one in the latter provisions recited “Atheism and Questioning the Islamic Sharia” as terrorist threats.

“Calling for atheist thought in any form, or calling into question the fundamentals of the Islamic religion on which this country is based.”

Declaring atheism as a crime, by the Saudi leaders, matches perfectly the political/religious system of KSA.  However, why did KSA wait until now to take these precautions? Is atheism really threatening  the kingdom?

Although, the Middle East director at Human Rights Watch Joe Stork in an interview to the Chicago Sun-Times, described atheism in Saudi Arabia as a “kind of a non-issue”, the traces of nonbelievers or doubter are spotted.  

In 2012, the Saudi authorities jailed Hamza Kashgari, a Saudi poet and journalist, for two years without trial after sending three tweets containing unconventional thoughts about Prophet Mohamad.

Similar thing happened with the founder of “Free Saudi Liberals" a website that discussed religion in the KSA, Raif Badawi was sentenced to 10 years jail, 1000 lashes and a fine of 1 million riyals ($266,600).


Fahad Alfahad, Saudi human rights activists, declared to the Global Post: “I know at least six atheists who confirmed that to me. Six or seven years ago, I would not even have heard one person say that. Not even a best friend would confess that to me.”

Despite all these effort to suppress people and rule them by the unquestionable religious power, some people fight and express their free thoughts believing that a day will come when the power of mind conquers the power of religion.
I cannot see how faith could be forced over people by law. Threating people, jailing them, and hurting them physically and psychologically would not protect the kingdom forever. Declaring a low against atheism is a clear confession of its existence and of its capacity to threaten the system.
You can forbid people from talking but you cannot control their ideas.

A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. Ideas have endurance without death.
John F. Kennedy
Rihab