Country

Saudi Arabia

Also Known As Saudi

Asia

Saudi Arabia contains Mecca and Medina, Islam's two holiest cities, and hosts the Hajj pilgrimage, which draws Muslims from around the world each year to sites tied directly to the life of Muhammad. The state follows a strict Sunni Hanbali and Salafi religious establishment, sometimes called Wahhabism after the eighteenth century reformer Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab, and public worship by non-Muslims is prohibited, with the Shia minority concentrated in the Eastern Province reporting longstanding restrictions on its own practice. Non-Muslim entry to Mecca and Medina is forbidden entirely. The atlas records Saudi Arabia primarily for its centrality to Islamic pilgrimage and law rather than for religious diversity, which the state itself does not permit to develop openly.

Facts

Law and State

Establishment Status

Established 3

Sunni Islam of the Hanbali school (in its Wahhabi/Salafi form) is named the state religion under the 1992 Basic Law of Governance, Article 1; unlike a state church model this is the state's own constitutional identity rather than a privileged institution alongside a secular legal order, so the category understates the arrangement more than it overstates it.

State Funding Mechanism

Saudi Arabia funds mosque life through its Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Dawah and Guidance, which pays imams and muezzins from the state budget across the kingdom's mosques, terming the payment a disbursement from the Beit Maal Al-Muslimeen, the treasury of the Muslims, rather than an ordinary civil salary. Custodianship of the Grand Mosque and the Prophet's Mosque now sits with an independent supervisory body created in 2023, and the General Authority for Awqaf separately invested more than 2.5 billion Saudi riyals in development projects in 2024, funding religious and charitable infrastructure outside the ministry's own budget line. 4

Apostasy or Blasphemy Law

Saudi Arabia has no single codified penal statute for apostasy; it is treated as a hudud offense under uncodified Hanbali fiqh as applied by the courts, traditionally carrying the death penalty, though U.S. State Department reporting records no confirmed state execution for apostasy alone in recent years. Blasphemy and insulting Islam, the monarchy or the state are separately criminalized, including under the 2014 Law on Combating Terrorism Crimes and Financing (which has been used to prosecute speech offenses) and under general Sharia-based criminal practice, with penalties ranging from lengthy imprisonment and flogging to, in the most severe interpretations, death. 3

Registration or Recognition Regime

The Basic Law of Governance contains no legal recognition or protection of freedom of religion; the country's official religion is Islam, and the Quran and Sunna serve as the constitution. The law prohibits public non-Islamic worship, the public display of non-Islamic religious symbols and proselytizing by a non-Muslim, and it forbids all non-Muslim houses of worship, so there is no mechanism by which a non-Muslim religious group could register or be recognized. The United States has designated Saudi Arabia a Country of Particular Concern under the International Religious Freedom Act every year since 2004. 3

Ban or Official Watchlist

The Secretary of State designated Saudi Arabia a Country of Particular Concern on 29 December 2023, one of twelve states named in that round, under the International Religious Freedom Act for having engaged in or tolerated particularly severe violations of religious freedom. 3

Concordat Basis

Saudi Arabia has no concordat with the Holy See and no diplomatic relations with it at all. Article 1 of the Basic Law of Governance, promulgated by Royal Decree No. A/90 on 1 March 1992, declares the Kingdom's religion Islam and names the Quran and the Sunna of the Prophet its constitution, functioning as the country's written constitutional framework in place of a separate charter. 5

Demographics

Religious Composition

About 93% Sunni Muslim and 5-6% Shia Muslim (concentrated in the Eastern Province); non-Muslim public worship is not permitted (Pew Research Center, Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020). 1

Geography

Latitude

23.9 degrees north 2

Approximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a country's extent has no single center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a survey measurement.

Longitude

45.1 degrees east 2

Approximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a country's extent has no single center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a survey measurement.

Government type (class)

Absolute monarchy 2

Government

Capital

Riyadh 2

Government Type

absolute monarchy 2

Sovereignty Status

Sovereign UN member state 2

Established Year

1932 2

23 September 1932 (unification of the kingdom)

Status

Legal Status

State religion is Sunni Islam of the Hanbali/Wahhabi tradition; no legal provision for public non-Muslim worship; the monarch has held the title Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques since 1986. 3

Classification

State Funding of Religion

Official State Religion 6

Location

Learn More

Religion and History in Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia is almost entirely Muslim, with Pew Research placing the figure near 93 percent Sunni and about 5 to 6 percent Shia, the latter concentrated in the Eastern Province around Qatif and al-Ahsa; the kingdom's state doctrine follows the Hanbali legal school as interpreted through the Wahhabi reform movement founded by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab in the eighteenth century, whose 1744 alliance with the Al Saud family shaped the kingdom's religious and political foundation.

Mecca and Medina, Islam's two holiest cities, sit within Saudi territory; Mecca's Kaaba is the focal point of the five daily prayers and the annual Hajj pilgrimage, obligatory once in a lifetime for able Muslims, while Medina holds the Prophet's Mosque and tomb. Non-Muslim public worship has historically been prohibited, and the country has no churches, synagogues or temples open to public non-Muslim practice, though foreign workers, who make up a large share of the population and include Christian, Hindu and Buddhist communities from South and Southeast Asia, may practice privately. Custodianship of the two holy mosques has been a title claimed by the Saudi monarch since 1986, replacing an earlier royal style in official religious contexts.

Guardianship of Mecca, Medina and the Hajj

The Saudi monarch holds the formal title Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, adopted by King Fahd in 1986, reflecting the kingdom's role in administering the Hajj, which the Saudi Ministry of Hajj and Umrah organizes annually for several million pilgrims from across the Muslim world, allocating national quotas by country population; the 2015 Mina stampede, one of the deadliest Hajj disasters in modern history, killed over two thousand pilgrims by independent counts and prompted safety reforms to crowd management and infrastructure. Religious authority in the kingdom rests partly with the Council of Senior Scholars, a state-appointed Wahhabi clerical body whose rulings carry significant legal and social weight, though Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's reforms since 2017 have curtailed the religious police's public enforcement powers and permitted cinemas, mixed-gender events and women driving, changes framed domestically as a return to a more moderate pre-1979 social order rather than religious liberalization as such.

The 1979 seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by armed millenarian rebels, ended after a two-week siege with French and Pakistani special forces assistance, is widely credited with pushing the kingdom toward stricter religious enforcement for decades afterward, a policy only substantially reversed in the recent reform period.

Saudi Arabia

1 entry

Public Access

General Authority for the Care and Management of the Grand Mosque and the Prophet's Mosque

Saudi Arabia

Connections

Ancient and Historical Regions

Arabia

Arabia corresponds broadly to modern Saudi Arabia and its neighbours on the peninsula.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

Hejaz

Source GeoNames: GeoNames search results for Hejaz

Mecca

Source GeoNames: GeoNames search results for Mecca

Western Asia

Source United Nations Statistics Division: UN M49 Standard country or area codes for statistical use: geographic regions

Associated With

Fahd of Saudi Arabia

His 1992 Basic Law states that the constitution of the kingdom is the Quran and the practice of the Prophet.

Source The Wahhabi Mission and Saudi ArabiaDavid Commins

Grand Mufti

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Islam

State religion; about 93% Sunni and 5 to 6% Shia, home to Mecca and Medina.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center

KAICIID Annual Report 2024, Financial Update

This source names Saudi Arabia directly: "headquartered in Lisbon and founded by Saudi Arabia and Austria with the Holy See as a founding observer, publishes its 2024 annual report on its own site alongside prior years."

Source KAICIID Annual Report 2024, Financial Update

KAICIID Dialogue Centre (Wikipedia)

This source names Saudi Arabia directly: "on KAICIID's 2012 founding by Austria, Saudi Arabia and Spain, its Holy See founding observer status, its 2022 move to Lisbon and its religion-representative Board of Directors."

Source KAICIID Dialogue Centre (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

Malik ibn Anas

He lived and taught in Medina, and took the settled practice of the city as a source of law.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Musaylima

Of the Banu Hanifa in al-Yamama, in the centre of the Arabian peninsula.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

The Wahhabi Demolition of Hejaz Shrines

The state whose founding king authorized the demolitions after consolidating control of the Hejaz.

Source Jannat al-Baqi (Wikipedia)

Zayd ibn Thabit

A Medinan of the Khazraj who served the Prophet as a scribe.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)