Religious freedom in Mauritania

The official name of the country of Mauritania is The Islamic Republic of Mauritania. It is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwestern Africa and is the eleventh largest country in Africa.
Mauritania is nearly 100% Muslim, with most inhabitants adhering to the Sunni denomination. The Sufi orders, the Tijaniyah and the Qadiriyyah, have great influence not only in the country, but in Morocco, Algeria, Senegal and other neighborhood countries as well. There are extreme restrictions on freedom of religion and belief in Mauritania; it is one of thirteen countries in the world which punishes atheism by death.
== Sunni Islam Maliki School ==
Sunni Islam Maliki School: The people of Mauritania are nearly all adherents of Sunni Islam of Maliki school of jurisprudence, influenced with Sufism. The publication of religious materials that are not Islamic is restricted. Religious education is considered mandatory, but only makes up a small portion of the public school curriculum.
According to the Pew Research Center, 2013 report on religious freedom, although social conflict caused by religious hostilities is ranked Low in Mauritania, the amount of government restriction on the practice of religion is ranked High. Mauritania is the twelfth most religiously restrictive country in the world, ranked between Indonesia and Pakistan.
== Article 306 ==
On 28 April 2018, the government of the African Nation of Mauritania, in an effort to make the national law more closely in line with Sharia Law, passed Article 306, which not only criminalized apostasy from the state religion of Islam, but that makes the death penalty mandatory for anyone convicted of “blasphemous speech” and acts deemed “sacrilegious.”
Human rights experts from the UN, the African Commission of Human and People's Rights (ACHPR), and more than 20 NGOs have called upon the government of Mauritania to review and rescind Article 306 of the Criminal Code.
== Modern-day slavery ==
Another major tradition that significantly restricts freedom of religion in Mauritania is the ongoing practice of slavery.
Mauritania became the last country to abolish slavery in 1981. An Amnesty International report reveals that 43 thousand people, around 1% of the population, are still enslaved.
 
In January 2018, The African Union reprimanded Mauritania for failing to take action against widespread slavery within its borders and ordered the government to give financial compensation to two child slaves who were failed by its legal system.
The landmark ruling is the first time the AU has spoken out against the pervasive practice of hereditary slavery in Mauritania, which activists believe affects many thousands of people.
== Case of Cheikh Ould Mohamed ==
A young Mauritanian blogger whose death penalty for blasphemy was downgraded to a two-year sentence that ended in November is still in detention, four years after his arrest.
Cheikh Ould Mohamed Ould Mkheitir was given a two-year term on November 9 after he repented for charges of insulting the Prophet Muhammad in a blog post, and should have left jail because he had already served four years in jail.
He had originally been sentenced to death on December 24, 2014.
==External links==
*Religion in Mauritania on Wikipedia
Category:Religious freedom
Category:Religion in Africa
Category:Sharia
Category:Africa
Category:Christianity in Africa
Category:Radical Islam