Religious diversity in Saudi Arabia and US Speech or Presentation

Religious diversity in Saudi Arabia and US - Speech or Presentation Example Saudi Arabia offers lesser freedom of religion to the residents as compared to the USA. The practice in Saudi Arabia is that all shops are closed during the times of prayers, so as to discourage the people from engaging themselves in other businesses while the call for prayer is made through Azan in the mosques. While scheduling business-related matters in Saudi Arabia, non-Muslims have to play special attention towards this matter because their Muslim partners would not be available at these particular times at least for the duration of Salat in the mosques. On the other hand, in the USA, all shops remain open irrespective of the time of prayers in any religion, be it Islam or Christianity or any other religion. Government may impose restrictions but they are for other kinds of reasons like saving power, and are not grounded in any religion. Another factor that elaborates lesser freedom of religion in Saudi Arabia than the USA is the fact that there are no churches in Saudi Arabia w hereas in the USA, there are churches, mosques, synagogues, and Temples to entertain the religious needs of all of the communities that make part of the American society including the Christians, Muslims, Jews, and Hindus etc. Presently, Saudi Arabia does not have any official churches with a Christian denomination. Lack of official churches makes it very difficult for the Christians to conduct religious meetings and acts. The Christian community living in Saudi Arabia conducts private meetings for the religious affairs. The usual practice for the foreign Christians living in Saudi Arabia is that church meetings are arranged in one of the embassies. Christians can attend those meetings after registration and proving their foreign nationality. Sometimes, church meetings are also conducted at private assemblies arranged in the gyms of the schools. Many Christians conduct religious services at one another’s residences. Although Muslims make a sizeable portion of the American soc iety, yet the Americans have many suspicions, doubts, and confusions about the religion Islam. These confusions, in part, are grounded in the fact that the way of life taught by Islam to its followers is very much different from the traditional American lifestyle. The non-Muslim Americans find a lot of restrictions in Islam upon things that make part of their everyday life of many of them. Such things include but are not limited to consuming alcohol, eating pork, socializing with the opposite gender without significant physical boundaries and physical interaction with them, the girlfriend-boyfriend culture, same sex marriages, and cohabitation. When a non-Muslim American observes that everybody but practicing Muslims consumes alcohol freely in parties, visits night-clubs, and has a girlfriend or a boyfriend, he/she thinks of the practicing Muslims as people out of this world. Some may think good of them while others may have negative perceptions about the Muslims, but one thing that is a common observation among a vast majority of the non-Muslim American community is that Muslims in general and the practicing Muslims in particular have a very different lifestyle from theirs, and the source of this difference is Islam. Apart from this observation, another factor