With the closure of Prince Sultan Airbase, Saudi Arabia has been left without American air cover since 2003. Little wonder that Iraq looms large in the kingdom’s sights. With a Shia majority and recent moves toward federalism, Iraq looks set to become the new borders of Iran. This, coupled with an alleged nuclear program, horrifies Saudi Arabia. Foriegn Minister Saud al-Faisal rails at American complicity in helping to hand Iraq “over to Iran without reason”.
It is a real fear, borne out by Saudi Arabia’s support for Saddam Hussein against Iran in the nineteen-eighties. The removal of Sunni domination (even if it had been under the auspices of secular Baathism) from Iraqi politics brings the 200-year old quarrel between Salafism and Shi’ism right to Saudi Arabia’s doorstep.
Federalism, and with it the inevitable creation of strong, Shia-dominant outposts across Iraq, only adds to Saudi Arabia’s woes. Faisal therefore warns:
“Iraq’s people have been separated from each other. You talk now about Sunnis as if they were a separate entity from the Shiite.”The lament is commendable and justified, but stands out for being so completely at odds with Saudi Arabia’s official policy toward its own Shia minority. After all, according to Salafist ulema:
1. Shi’ism was allegedly concocted by a Yemeni Jew who went by the moniker, Abdullah bin Saba
2. Praying behind a Shia Imam invalidates prayer
3. Marriage with a Shia is forbidden, even as marriage to Christian or Jewish women is permitted
The separation Faisal talks about was not created by the Americans, but by authorities who rail from pulpits on the ‘evils’ of the Shia religion. Indeed, no Shia intellectual is allowed to teach in Saudi schools because part of the curriculum that is fed to Saudi children includes systematic denouncement of Shi’ism as apostasy. This isn’t even localized. Similar jargon is found in literature produced by the seemingly-innocuous, Riyadh-based World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY). In a slim, handy booklet titled “The Difference Between the Shiites and the Majority of Muslim Scholars“, the influential body repeats the claim that Shi’ism is part of a malignant Jewish conspiracy to destroy Islam.
Saud al-Faisal urges the Shia majority in Iraq to reach out to the Sunnis and assure that they will be “equal citizens”. If by equal, he means the standard that is applied on Saudi Shia, then it’s obvious that Iraqi Sunnis already have it good. Hundreds of suicide bombings deliberately targetting Shia shrines and festivals have not inclined Shia clergy like Grand Ayutullah Ali Husaini Sistani to declare Sunnis as apostates, and hence, licit targets for reprisals. Sunni Muslims, both Arab and Kurdish, are enlisted into a multi-ethnic coalition for government.
In contrast, Shia Muslims in Saudi Arabia face institutionalized discrimination at every turn; in education, employment and even freedom to celebrate their own rituals.
The building of Shia mosques and community centers (husseiniyas) are subject to rigorous and often paranoid scrutiny, and in 1998, several Mutaween (vice police) killed an elderly Shia leader in Hofuf for repeating the call to prayer twice- a traditional Shia practice.
Sunni intransigence in Iraq dip from the same doctrinal pool as the ulema who dismiss Shia Muslims as apostates. The formers ideology is very much
defined by its implacable hatred for Rafidha (a pejorative term for Shia), whom
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of The al-Qaeda Organisation in the Land
of Two Rivers,
described as "the insurmountable obstacle…the most evil of
mankind…the lurking snake, the crafty and malicious scorpion, the spying
enemy, and the penetrating venom." In this, he merely echoes the 14th
century scholar, Ibn Taymiyya, who once asked, rather rhetorically: "Is there
to be found (anyone) more astray than a people who show enmity to the first and
foremost (in faith)…and who ally themselves with the disbelievers and
hypocrites?" [source:
Salafi Publications]
In 2004, bowing under pressure from the US State Department’s listing of Saudi Arabia as a nation committed to suppressing religious freedom, the kingdom’s officials discreetly allowed their Shia subjects to observe Ashura.
It would be unfair to say that matters remain as they are.
Under the new King Abdullah ibn Abdul Aziz, Shia Muslims are slowly being
returned the rights that were once denied them. In June 2005,
with Abdullah’s blessing, Saudi ulema put pen to paper declaring that the Shia, along with Sufis, are
not apostates or deviants, but full Muslims.
This is an important gesture when one considers the historical roots of the muwahiddun movement that controls much of the civil, social and religious discourse in Saudi Arabia.
It would be foolhardy to underestimate the reversal of state and theological policy in the kingdom. In an article titled "The
King Who Would Be Reformer", Stephen Schwartz points to the actions
taken by Abdullah and sees in them hope for the eventual overthrow of
doctrines of hate.
The process is slow only because these doctrines have had a long
gestation period. Patience is key, but with the very real possibility of King
Abdullah dying (he’s in his eighties, after all), time is quite literally running out.
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Your ignorance of the source of the Shi’a movement is astounding, and your choice of words – and references – ironic. You speak of hate against the Shi’a – yet ignore the fact that Shi’ism in and of itself is a cult that thrives on hate. Without the – very un-Islamic (to be kind) – absolute and burning hate it has fostered for those the very Prophet of Islam, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, loved, Shi’ism is nothing. This hate is the oxygen of the Shi’a cult, an oxygen without which its flame of hate cannot burn.
You speak of Saudi wariness of the Shi’a – yet fail spectacularly to mention (more so purposefully neglect) – the fact that the Shi’a routinely stand before the graves of the Sahabah and CURSE them from large, thick books. You fail to remember the fact that the only group to ever invade and hold the Haram hostage have been the Shi’a.
The Shi’a in Saudi Arabia are by and large defined by desecration of the very sites and personalities Islam holds dear. And yet you have the audacity to claim that the Shi’a are somehow part and parcel of Islam?
You speak of the persecution of the Shi’a and act as if their persecution of the Sunnis non-existent. In fact you say this outright by claiming that what the Sunni face in Iraq is nothing compared to what the Shi’a do in Saudi Arabia.
Tell me, do Shi’a families fear state death squads that rampage the streets unchecked by police, that massacre entire families? Ask Amnesty International. Do they face routine jailing, torture and murder foe the simple reason of their faith, as do the Sunni in Iraq? Ask Human Rights Watch. And leave alone Iraq – why is it you insist on neglecting the long ongoing persecution and physical state-sponsored intimidation of the Sunni population of Iran?
You parrot the lie of the US media of the supposed ‘Sunni’ domination of Iraq under Saddam, ignoring that Saddam’s most powerful minister was Christian, ignoring that Sunni ulamaa’ were routinely persecuted under him, madaaris and centers of learning closed forever, Sunni rebellions against Saddam’s secularist Ba’ath oppression cruelly crushed and burned. Yet you ignore the Alawi’Shi’a domination of Syria, whose Muslims are by and large are Sunni and live under the oppression of a – Ba’athist – Shi’ite maniac?
Perhaps worst of all, you actually quote the *United States* in a report that righteously lists nations that actively promote religious persecution – you actually give credibility to the absolute worst marauder of human rights in recent times, the *United States*.
But you style yourself a defender of what you see as an oppressed Shi’ite community; it is perhaps a good thing then that you are exposed as nothing but a blatant hypocrite when you utterly ignore Shi’ite persecution of the Sunni. Such a blatantly morally bankrupt blind eye is sickening.
And before you write this off with your narrow worldview as the rant of a ‘Salafi’, know that this writer is anything but. I support, embrace and fight for the traditional Islam as embodied by the likes of, in this day, Shaikh Hamza Yusuf, Mufti Muhammad ibn Adam al Kawthari, Abdul Hakim Murad and the like.
I oppose Salafism and its twisted arrogance with all my heart.
But to actually be so blatantly biased in favour of such a historically violent and hateful cult on your part exposes your own ramblings on ‘traditional Islam’ as nothing but a farce.
You are fraught with the desire to appear palatable to the very people who want Islam to be made their limbless, gutless cue dog, and Muslims their expandable waste.
Thank you id-republix for your well written post. You gave a good argument, although I don’t agree totally with what you say about Salafism.
I would say that sadly, many people in the west claiming to be salafi are actually forming an extremist cult of their own in some ways.
But, salafism, correctly understood is nothing bad, rather it is all good, as it means adherence to the way of the predecessors (salaf). By predecessors what is meant is the Prophet Salla Allahu alaihi wa sallam and his virtuous companions and those who followed their path till the last day.
That is the straight path and I ask Allah to guide me and all Muslims to this straight path.
Salla Allahu wa sallam alaa nabiyyinaa Muhammad.
was salaamu aliakum