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With 400 smuggled Bibles "sitting on the dining room table," he believed his life to be in serious danger. "That was a crime equal to rape, murder, armed robbery, and in Saudi Arabia you get the same punishment," he said - the death penalty.

Nalliah said he had prayed earnestly and, in what he could only describe as a miracle, the men left without entering his home.

'Contraband'

Claims of Bible desecration in Saudi Arabia have been made by others.

"One Christian recently reported that his personal Bible was put into a shredder once he entered customs," the late Nagi Kheir, spokesman for the American Coptic Association and a veteran campaigner for religious freedom in the Middle East, wrote in an article several years ago.

"Some Christians have reported that upon entering Saudi Arabia they have had their personal Bibles taken from them and placed into a paper shredder," the U.S.-based organization International Christian Concern said in a 2001 report.

In its most recent report on religious freedom around the world, the State Department made no reference to Bible destruction, but said they were considered contraband.

"Customs officials routinely open mail and shipments to search for contraband, including ... non-Muslim materials, such as Bibles and religious videotapes," it said. "Such materials are subject to confiscation, although rules appear to be applied arbitrarily."

In a 2003 report on Saudi Arabia, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent watchdog set up under the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act, said: "Customs officials regularly confiscate Bibles and other religious material when Christian foreign workers arrive at the airport from their home countries initially or return from a vacation."

Inquiries about the legality of Bibles and about the shredder claims, sent to the Saudi Embassy in Washington and the Saudi Information Ministry in Riyadh, were not answered by press time.

Koran vs. Bible

After Nalliah left Saudi Arabia in 1997, he went to the U.S. and took part in the lobbying effort on Capitol Hill in support of what eventually became the International Religious Freedom Act, signed into law the following year.

He heads an evangelical ministry in Australia, where late last year he and a colleague became the first people to be found guilty under a controversial state religious hatred law, after Muslims accused them of vilifying Islam during a post-9/11 seminar for Christians.

Nalliah said this week it did not surprise him that Muslims have reacted strongly to the claims that U.S. interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay base, where terrorism suspects are held, had thrown a Koran into the toilet.

While Bible scholars say the Bible is written by men who were inspired by God, Muslims believe the Koran is "the copy of an original that is sitting in heaven, and has been sent down [by revelation to Mohammed]."

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