Compliance of Saudi Arabian Personal Data Protection Law 2021 to Islamic Principles of Privacy

Abstract

Right to privacy is considered as an important principle for human dignity under Islamic law and other legal system. Various Quranic verses and Hadiths emphasize the importance of right to privacy. From the general principles of the Quranic verses and Hadiths, it is possible to extend to cover various types of privacy that have been discussed under the modern privacy law. Saudi Arabia in 2021 passed a comprehensive legislation on Personal Data Protection to complement the existing privacy legal framework. The main objective of this article is to analyses the Islamic privacy law and the Saudi Personal Data Protection Law 2021 to see the compliance of the Personal Data Protection Law 2021 to Islamic privacy principles. The finding suggests that the Saudi legislature by applying the public interest principle has enacted Personal Data Protection Law 2021 that provides a comprehensive data protection regime, and it follows Islamic Law.