Kuwait: Sharia law is against the building of churches

On December 15, Walid Al-Tabtabai, Kuwaiti deputy of the Salafist (fundamentalist) movement, scolded the Kuwaiti government for having dedicated property for the construction of Christian religious buildings in Islamic lands. The authorization to build non-Muslim places of worship is “illegal according to Islamic law”, which only concedes the practice of non-Muslim rites, he declared.

The emirate has, apparently, eight churches, of which four are in houses, for less than 200 Kuwaiti Christians, and around 350,000 foreign Christians, workers coming from India, the Philippines, Egypt, Lebanon and Western countries. Kuwait was the first Arab country of the Gulf region to establish diplomatic relations with the Vatican. Mounged El-Hachem, a Lebanese Maronite Archbishop, was named last August 27 Apostolic Nuncio to Kuwait, Bahrain, Yemen and Qatar, and Apostolic Delegate to the Arabian Peninsula.