Saudi Arabia: About The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia - Part 2
From ExecutivePlanet.com
Entrance requirements and religion
Entering the Kingdom
Nationals of all countries outside the Gulf Co-operation Council require visas, which [apart from pilgrimage visas] must be sponsored. Traditionally, the sponsor had to apply to the Saudi Foreign Ministry, who would then contact the traveller through the Saudi Embassy of his nationality [not his country of residence, if different]. At the time of writing, procedure is being changed to allow the traveller to apply through the embassy. Any Saudi national can sponsor a visa and the visitor can change sponsors if dissatisfied, although such a change usually entails a return to his home country. It is wise, therefore, to select a sponsor who is well connected but easily available. By this standard, lawyers [there is no difference between barristers and solicitors in the Kingdom] make particularly good sponsors. Before the visitor can depart the Kingdom, his sponsor must arrange an exit permit as well as whatever extensions may have been required in the interim. In order to control pilgrimage numbers, only non-Muslims are eligible for business visas between Ramadhan and the Hajj. Muslims must travel on pilgrimage visas during those months. Remember that the months specified in a visa are lunar months of 29/30 days each according to the Hijri [Islamic] calendar.
Religion
Islam governs everything in the Kingdom. Pork, intoxicants and pornography are forbidden. Non-Muslims are barred from Mecca and Medina, and generally unwelcome as visitors to mosques elsewhere. There is no civil code of law and Shari'ah [Islamic law] requires that the murderer or drug dealer be beheaded, the adulterer stoned, the fornicator flogged and the habitual thief have his right hand amputated--albeit never on the basis of circumstantial evidence for any of these offences. Blood money for accidental killing [e.g. in a road accident] is also legally enforceable. The result is a generally peaceful, well-ordered society.
Public morality is the responsibility of the Mutawa. Often referred to as the religious police, this is a misnomer because they have the power only to report, not to arrest.
As police often patrol with them, however, a report can promptly be converted into an arrest. Their main day-to-day function is not to harass foreigners but merely to ensure that shops close at prayer times. Exact prayer times vary with the season, but the five daily prayers are as follows: Fajr [between dawn and sunrise], Dhuhr [about half an hour after mid-day], Asr [mid-afternoon], Maghrib [immediately after sunset] and Isha' [from an hour and a half after sunset]. The dawn to dusk fast in Ramadhan is also legally enforced and those violating it in public are subject to imprisonment and deportation. As the Hijri calendar is lunar, Ramadhan [as well as all other months] advances an average eleven days per year against the Gregorian calendar. There are only two annual bank holidays in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, one immediately following Ramadhan and the other immediately after the Hajj. Each is officially one day but, for practical purposes extends to three.
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