Source: The Washington Times
Wire Service: AFP
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20050326-111002-8593r.htm
On March 27, 2005 Agence France-Presse reported, "Saudi religious police have destroyed a clandestine makeshift Hindu temple in an old district of Riyadh and deported three worshippers found there, a newspaper reported yesterday. Members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, or religious police, on Thursday stumbled across a room converted into a temple while raiding a number of apartments suspected of being used to manufacture alcohol and distribute pornographic videos, pan-Arab Al-Hayat said. 'They were surprised to find that one room had been converted into a Hindu temple,' the newspaper said. A caretaker who was found in the worshiping area ignored the religious police orders to stop performing his religious rituals, the paper added. He was deported along with two other men who arrived on the scene to worship. All forms of non-Muslim worship are banned in ultraconservative Saudi Arabia, which is home to Islam's holiest shrines."