So, there are churches — ancient and not-so-ancient (sorry, blog entry in Arabic) — in Saudi Arabia. This should come as no surprise to anyone. That there are no Jews or Christians in Saudi Arabia is a story Saudis have told to Americans since the early 1950s, one in which Americans (even as they built and furnished churches in Aramco compounds) foolishly believed. Of course, it isn’t true, and it never was. Even in the early 1950s, it was acknowledged that there were Christian and Jewish Saudis (I suspect a great many “Yemeni” Jews who migrated to Israel were in fact from the Saudi side of that international frontier), and there probably are to this very day.
Saudis would do well to embrace this fact, just as they would do well to embrace the reality of the millions of Christians living, working and worshiping (yes, they do that too) in their midst.
12:35 pm on November 9, 2008
