Does religion have any influence on the government of Israel Saudi Arabia and Iran?

Freedom of religion does not exist. Islam is the official religion, and all citizens must be Muslims. Religious freedom is not recognized or protected under the laws, and basic religious freedoms are denied to all but those who adhere to the state-sanctioned version of Sunni Islam.

Citizens are denied the freedom to choose or change their religion, and many noncitizens, including Muslims, practice their beliefs under severe restrictions. The Government limits the practice of all but the officially sanctioned version of Islam and prohibits the public practice of other religions. During the reporting period, the Government publicly restated its policy that non-Muslims are free to practice their religions at home and in private; however, the Government does not always respect this right in practice.

As custodian of Islam's two holiest sites in Mecca and Medina, the Government considers its legitimacy to rest largely on its interpretation and enforcement of Shari'a. The Basic Law provides that the Qur'an and the Sunna (tradition) of the Prophet Muhammedconstitute the country's Constitution. The Government follows the rigorously conservative and strict interpretation of the Wahhabi branch of the Hanbali school of Islamic jurisprudence and discriminates against other branches of Islam.

During the reporting year, however, the Government for the first time began instructing Saudi judges to base their rulings on all four schools of Islamic jurisprudence, not just the Hanbali school and its Wahhabi branch. Neither the Government nor society in general accepts the concept of separation of religion and state. The Basic Law sets out the system of government, rights of residents and citizens, and powers and duties of the Government.

The judiciary bases its judgments largely on Shari'a, the traditional system of laws derived from the Qur'an and the Sunna. The Government claims that it permits Shi'a Muslims to use their own version of Shari'a to adjudicate cases limited to family law, inheritance, and endowment management. However, there is only one such Shi'a judge serving the country's entire Shi'a population, and he is limited in his ability to apply Shi'a legal tradition in court.

The Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha religious feasts are recognized as the only national holidays. During the reporting year, the Government again permitted the observance of the Shi'a holiday of Ashura in the eastern city of Qatif. Small-scale, public observances of Ashura also occurred in Al-Hasa and Saihat.

Islamic law considers Hindus to be polytheists; identification with polytheism is used to justify discrimination against Hindus in calculating accidental death or injury compensation, unlike Muslims, Christians, or Jews, who are classified as "People of the Book.".