Political Islam became a decisive force in the Islamic Republic of Iran, in Afghanistan as resistance to the Soviet occupation, and, as we have seen, in Saudi Arabia with the insurrection at Mecca, all in 1979. Although in the interim Yemeni politics was more driven by distinctly secular political parties and/or personalities, in the decades after 1979 two kinds of fundamentalisms with rival claims to Islamic authenticity gained momentum in the whole Peninsula. In the Sa‘dah region of Yemen near the Saudi border, the movement subsequently known as the Houthis (or, technically, Ansar Allah, meaning “partisans of God”) clashed with Saudi-style Wahhabism, also known as Salafism. Meanwhile along Yemen’s southern coast Salafi-inspired jihadists foreshadowed the movement later called al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Written against the backdrop of al-Qaeda’s spectacular 2001 attacks on the United States and the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the following selections critically analyze the rise of explicitly denominational Islamist politics in the Peninsula. Of particular interest in terms of explaining the sectarian turn of subsequent events are juxtapositions and conflicts between the official Saudi version of Salafi/Sunni Islam, the Shi’a minority in the Kingdom, Zaydi revivalism just south of the Saudi-Yemeni border and Salafi jihadi guerrillas like al-Qaeda.
In 2001, many Americans imagined a kind of Muslim hive-mind, driven by creed; this was and remains, as Khaled Abou El Fadl writes in a brilliant post–September 11, 2001, essay excerpted below, “anachronistic and Orientalist.” By 2015, a new narrative of Sunni vs. Shi’a conveyed a different explanatory paradigm. In the specific context of the Arabian Peninsula, these were both fleetingly useful frames of reference. However, Islam has neither historically nor recently been a monolith. To the contrary there has always been pluralism among various “schools” of both Shi’a and Sunni Islam. Nor, as made clear by this series of dispatches looking at the specific politics of dissent, conflict and Islamism, does the Sunni-Shi’a schism explain contemporary crises. Instead, Shelagh Weir, Iris Glosemeyer, Gwenn Okruhlik, Toby Jones, Toby Matthiesen and I join Abou El Fadl in observing the plurality and politicization of Islamisms in the context of multidimensional struggles over wealth and power. Weir and Glosemeyer recount and analyze the rather obscure origins of the Houthi movement that later became a major fighting force in Yemen’s 2015 war. Okruhlik, Jones and Matthiesen look across the border at political tensions inside the Kingdom that also help explain the Saudi-led campaign against the Houthis.
All these essays suggest that sectarian conflict is the result, rather than the cause, of structural and kinetic violence.
The foundations of Wahhabi theology were put in place by the eighteenth-century evangelist Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab in the Arabian Peninsula. With a puritanical zeal, ‘Abd al-Wahhab sought to rid Islam of corruptions that he believed had crept into the religion. Wahhabism resisted the indeterminacy of the modern age by escaping to a strict literalism in which the text became the sole source of legitimacy. In this context, Wahhabism exhibited extreme hostility to intellectualism, mysticism and any sectarian divisions within Islam. The Wahhabi creed also considered any form of moral thought that was not entirely dependent on the text as a form of self-idolatry, and treated humanistic fields of knowledge, especially philosophy, as “the sciences of the devil.” According to the Wahhabi creed, it was imperative to return to a presumed pristine, simple and straightforward Islam, which could be entirely reclaimed by literal implementation of the commands of the Prophet, and by strict adherence to correct ritual practice. Importantly, Wahhabism rejected any attempt to interpret the divine law from a historical, contextual perspective, and treated the vast majority of Islamic history as a corruption of the true and authentic Islam. The classical jurisprudential tradition was considered at best to be mere sophistry. Wahhabism became very intolerant of the long-established Islamic practice of considering a variety of schools of thought to be equally orthodox. Orthodoxy was narrowly defined, and ‘Abd al-Wahhab himself was fond of creating long lists of beliefs and acts which he considered hypocritical, the adoption or commission of which immediately rendered a Muslim an unbeliever.
In the late eighteenth century, the al-Saud family united with the Wahhabi movement and rebelled against Ottoman rule in Arabia. Egyptian forces quashed this rebellion in 1818. Nevertheless, Wahhabi ideology was resuscitated in the early twentieth century under the leadership of ‘Abd al-‘Aziz ibn Saud who allied himself with the tribes of Najd, in the beginnings of what would become Saudi Arabia. The Wahhabi rebellions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were very bloody because the Wahhabis indiscriminately slaughtered and terrorized Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Mainstream jurists writing at the time, such as the Hanafi ibn ‘Abidin and the Maliki al-Sawi, described the Wahhabis as a fanatic fringe group.
Nevertheless, Wahhabism survived and, in fact, thrived in contemporary Islam for several reasons. By treating Muslim Ottoman rule as a foreign occupying power, Wahhabism set a powerful precedent for notions of Arab self-determination and autonomy. In advocating a return to the pristine and pure origins of Islam, Wahhabism rejected the cumulative weight of historical baggage. This idea was intuitively liberating for Muslim reformers since it meant the rebirth of ijtihad, or the return to de novo examination and determination of legal issues unencumbered by the accretions of precedents and inherited doctrines. Most importantly, the discovery and exploitation of oil provided Saudi Arabia with high liquidity. Especially after 1975, with the sharp rise in oil prices, Saudi Arabia aggressively promoted Wahhabi thought around the Muslim world. Even a cursory examination of predominant ideas and practices reveals the widespread influence of Wahhabi thought on the Muslim world today.
But Wahhabism did not spread in the modern Muslim world under its own banner. Even the term “Wahhabism” is considered derogatory by its adherents, since Wahhabis prefer to see themselves as the representatives of Islamic orthodoxy. To them, Wahhabism is not a school of thought within Islam, but is Islam. The fact that Wahhabism rejected a label gave it a diffuse quality, making many of its doctrines and methodologies eminently transferable. Wahhabi thought exercised its greatest influence not under its own label, but under the rubric of Salafism. In their literature, Wahhabi clerics have consistently described themselves as Salafis, and not Wahhabis.
Salafism is a creed founded in the late nineteenth century by Muslim reformers such as Muhammad ‘Abduh, al-Afghani and Rashid Rida. Salafism appealed to a very basic concept in Islam: Muslims ought to follow the precedent of the Prophet and his companions (al-salaf al-salih). Methodologically, Salafism was nearly identical to Wahhabism except that Wahhabism is far less tolerant of diversity and differences of opinion. The founders of Salafism maintained that on all issues Muslims ought to return to the Qur’an and the sunna (precedent) of the Prophet. In doing so, Muslims ought to reinterpret the original sources in light of modern needs and demands, without being slavishly bound to the interpretations of earlier Muslim generations.
As originally conceived, Salafism was not necessarily anti-intellectual, but like Wahhabism, it did tend to be uninterested in history. By emphasizing a presumed golden age in Islam, the adherents of Salafism idealized the time of the Prophet and his companions, and ignored or demonized the balance of Islamic history. By rejecting juristic precedents and undervaluing tradition, Salafism adopted a form of egalitarianism that deconstructed any notions of established authority within Islam. Effectively, anyone was considered qualified to return to the original sources and speak for the divine will. By liberating Muslims from the tradition of the jurists, Salafism contributed to a real vacuum of authority in contemporary Islam. Importantly, Salafism was founded by Muslim nationalists who were eager to read the values of modernism into the original sources of Islam. Hence, Salafism was not necessarily anti-Western. In fact, its founders strove to project contemporary institutions such as democracy, constitutions or socialism into the foundational texts, and to justify the modern nation-state within Islam.
The liberal age of Salafism came to an end in the 1960s. After 1975, Wahhabism was able to rid itself of its extreme intolerance, and proceeded to coopt Salafism until the two became practically indistinguishable. Both theologies imagined a golden age within Islam, entailing a belief in a historical utopia that can be reproduced in contemporary Islam. Both remained uninterested in critical historical inquiry and responded to the challenge of modernity by escaping to the secure haven of the text. Both advocated a form of egalitarianism and anti-elitism to the point that they came to consider intellectualism and rational moral insight to be inaccessible and, thus, corruptions of the purity of the Islamic message. Wahhabism and Salafism were beset with contradictions that made them simultaneously idealistic and pragmatic and infested both creeds (especially in the 1980s and 1990s) with a kind of supremacist thinking that prevails until today.
[…]
Of course, neither Wahhabism nor Salafism is represented by some formal institution. They are theological orientations and not structured schools of thought. Nevertheless, the lapsing and bonding of the theologies of Wahhabism and Salafism produced a contemporary orientation that is anchored in profound feelings of defeat, frustration and alienation, not only from modern institutions of power, but also from the Islamic heritage and tradition. The outcome of the apologist Wahhabi and Salafi legacies is a supremacist puritanism that compensates for feelings of defeat, disempowerment and alienation with a distinct sense of self-righteous arrogance vis-à-vis the nondescript “other”—whether the other is the West, non-believers in general or even Muslims of a different sect and Muslim women. In this sense, it is accurate to describe this widespread modern trend as supremacist, for it sees the world from the perspective of stations of merit and extreme polarization.
In the wake of the September 11 attacks, several commentators posed the question of whether Islam somehow encourages violence and terrorism. Some commentators argued that the Islamic concept of jihad or the notion of the dar al-harb (the abode of war) is to blame for the contemporary violence. These arguments are anachronistic and Orientalist. They project Western categories and historical experiences upon a situation that is very particular and fairly complex. One can easily locate an ethical discourse within the Islamic tradition that is uncompromisingly hostile to acts of terrorism. One can also locate a discourse that is tolerant toward the other, and mindful of the dignity and worth of all human beings. But one must also come to terms with the fact that supremacist puritanism in contemporary Islam is dismissive of all moral norms or ethical values, regardless of the identity of their origins or foundations. The prime and nearly singular concern is power and its symbols. Somehow, all other values are made subservient.
During the past two decades, a proselytizing, reformist, “Islamist” movement—mainly characterized as “Wahhabi”—has gained increasing popularity throughout Yemen. Wahhabism actively opposes both the main Yemeni schools—Zaydi Shi’ism in the north and Shafi’i Sunnism in the south and in the Tihama. It is closely connected with the political party Islah, a coalition of tribal, mercantile and religious interests that pursues a mixed social and political agenda.
Though little is known of Yemeni Wahhabism, it appears to have a particularly strong following in the northern province of Sa‘dah where some of its leading figures are based. Given that this region is in the Zaydi heartlands of northern Yemen, the popularity there of Wahhabism is surprising. Nevertheless Wahhabism has flourished in the mountains of Razih in the west of the province precisely because it has successfully mobilized a hitherto dormant resentment of key tenets of Zaydism. Wahhabism may have been sown, as some suggest, with foreign finance and encouragement, but it only took root because the soil was fertile.
Wahhabism was introduced into the province of Sa‘dah by local men who had converted while studying religion in Saudi Arabia or fighting with the mujahidin in Afghanistan. Upon their return to the Sa‘dah region, they set up lesson circles, religious institutes and Wahhabi mosques.
Beginning in the mid-1980s, the tribally organized communities of Razih became riven by sectarian conflict as a fervent and growing minority of Wahhabi Sunni converts confronted the majority of Zaydi Shi’a. The Wahhabis, as others dub them (or Sunnis as they prefer to be called), gained key positions in state schools, opened religious teaching institutes and established or took over a number of mosques. These activists were mainly young men (shabab) from a wide range of families, including tribal (qabili) and those belonging to a low-status group of so-called “butcher” families. These youths were attracted to Islah (which they equated with Wahhabism) because of its effective social welfare programs, and to Wahhabism because of its opposition to the Zaydi religious elite (sayyid), its direct, unmediated relationship to God, its egalitarianism and what they saw as its clear, logical doctrines. A major factor in their conversion was literacy; these shabab were among the first generation to attend secondary school. They had the skills, therefore, to study the plethora of religious publications flooding Yemen at that time.
In addition to the shabab, a minority of older men—mainly tribal leaders (sheikhs and others)—tacitly supported the Wahhabi-Islah movement in part because their traditional political positions were bolstered by Islah and its powerful leader, Sheikh ‘Abdallah al-Ahmar, and in part because they approved of the anti-sayyid thrust of the movement. The relationship between tribal leaders and prominent sayyids has always been one of intermittent rivalry. Sayyids are, predictably, aligned entirely on the Zaydi side of the conflict and are supported by the national political party, al-Haqq, which was formed primarily to defend Zaydism against the Wahhabi challenge.
Although sayyids have not been revered indiscriminately in Razih, they and their claim to descent from the Prophet Muhammad through his son-in-law ‘Ali have been respected by the majority of people. They maintained their high social standing despite the 1960s civil war which had aimed to eliminate their privileges. The Wahhabis primarily resented not the important official posts certain sayyids had secured under the republican government, but their religious authority and influence, as well as their religious claims to nobility.
The Wahhabis accused the sayyids of blocking access to the “truths” of Sunni doctrine, of propagating superstitious beliefs and practices and of perpetuating social stratification by asserting their divinely sanctioned social superiority. They accused them of reinforcing sayyid exclusivity by refusing to marry their daughters to non-sayyids—a particularly bitter point of contention. Razih, however, is replete with marriage prohibitions and preferences, and no tribe will yet intermarry with “butcher” families—an Achilles’ heel which sayyids were quick to exploit with reciprocal taunts of social prejudice.
Sayyids countered by accusing the Wahhabis of propagating their religion for money and of importing a religious school of thought from Saudi Arabia that was inappropriate for Yemen. Zaydism, they asserted, was an authentically Yemeni school, and they were its prime upholders. Although sayyids had formerly portrayed themselves as immigrant “northerners” (Adnanis) in contrast to other Yemenis, who were indigenous “southerners” (Qahtanis), in this new context they sought to emphasize their Yemeni identity.
The Wahhabi opposition to sayyids and Zaydism also stimulated the emergence of a new generation of Zaydi ulama with non-sayyid tribal status. These charismatic and ambitious young men vigorously championed the Zaydi madhhab [doctrine or denomination] through teaching and religious pamphleteering, and by encouraging Zaydi rituals. In so doing, they predictably found themselves in competition with the sayyids of their own sect.
A striking feature of the sectarian conflict in Razih was the tremendous symbolic and emotional emphasis placed on spiritual and ritual matters, with each side accusing the other of heretical beliefs and practices. The greatest source of daily friction was the prayer ritual. Wahhabis made a point of attending Zaydi mosques and, while the majority of the congregation resolutely adhered to the customary Zaydi prayer stance with arms extended, the Wahhabis provocatively prayed in the Sunni manner, folding their arms during the prayer sequence, and, contrary to the Zaydi practice, chanting “amin” (like the Christian “amen”).
In 1991, a major Zaydi reaction to the Wahhabi challenge occurred during a public ceremony to mark the anniversary of ‘Id al-Ghadir, when Shi’i Muslims believe the Prophet designated ‘Ali as his successor. The loud speeches, general clamor and celebratory gunfire of this ceremony, which attracted men from all over Razih, dramatically and defiantly flaunted Zaydi numbers and enthusiasm in the face of the leading Wahhabi activist of Razih, who lived near the ceremonial ground.
The Zaydi-Wahhabi rivalry intensified. Wahhabis attempted to take over the major mosque of Razih, which had become the center for Zaydi activists. The Wahhabis imported skilled preachers from elsewhere in Yemen to deliver Friday sermons, tried to install their own mosque officials and assertively prayed in the Sunni mode—all strenuously opposed by the Zaydis. In one incident, tussles took place over the microphone and when the Wahhabis aggressively intoned “amin,” the Zaydi congregation defiantly bellowed “kadhdhabin” (liars) in response!
As the ‘Id al-Ghadir of 1992 approached, the Wahhabis waged a fierce campaign against Zaydi celebrations, threatening violence, and there were armed standoffs in the main mosque. This tense situation reached a bloody climax with the murder of the son of the leading Wahhabi on the eve of ‘Id al-Ghadir—a shockingly dishonorable crime by tribal standards, because it was disproportionate to the provocation.
Two years later, the leading Wahhabi on policing duties with the local governor, having pursued his investigation and satisfied himself on the identity of his son’s assassin, returned to Razih and shot dead an obscure sayyid. Thus he avenged his son’s anonymous and secretive murder openly and honorably. Eventually, this was deemed a revenge killing in accordance with shari’a and the matter was closed.
After this incident the conflict subsided. Both sides felt things had gone too far and wanted to avoid provoking further government intervention. Local conflicts were also overshadowed by the 1994 war between north and south Yemen, and a deterioration in the Yemeni economy. As people concentrated on economic survival, religious differences were de-emphasized and Wahhabis and Zaydis concentrated on promoting their respective madhhabs through religious schools and institutes.
The dramatic and confrontational aspects of this “clash of fundamentalisms” subsided because those divided by religious conflict are linked by economic interests among networks of close neighborhoods and marriage. Leading sayyids have marriage links with leading Wahhabi families which predate this conflict. The social status of sayyids, however, may be vulnerable unless they modify their conduct and precepts, particularly their adherence to the principle of descent-based social primacy. In an early sign of such a compromise a female sayyid (sharifa) recently married a tribesman—predictably a wealthy merchant. The significance of this first small breach in the bastion of sayyid exclusivity did not go unnoticed. Crowds of men converged from all over Razih to celebrate, singing the following song:
Oh sayyids, you tricked us
With your turbans, remedies and charms
Whenever we proposed marriage, you said
“With a sharifa, a sayyid’s daughter? It’s not allowed.”
God only knows whose book you studied!
One of the leads investigators are following into the October 12 Aden harbor bombing of the USS Cole is an obscure network known (or perhaps formerly known) as the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army. Terrorism experts are familiar with this group’s past missions, including attacks on Yemeni socialists prior to the 1993 parliamentary elections, the kidnapping of 16 Western tourists in Abyan on December 28, 1998—four of whom died in a botched rescue mission by the Yemeni government—and other bomb attacks in and around Aden over the past several years. But few can tell us anything about the political context in which this group operates. Suspects in the case are Yemeni and/or Saudi dissidents targeting their own governments as well as British and US interests in the Arabian Peninsula.
Once, in its days as a Crown Colony, Aden was among the world’s busiest ports and a major United Kingdom naval base. Though traffic is moribund despite recent investments, today Aden stands astride one of the three major “choke points” for the westward flow of the Persian Gulf, the Bab al-Mandab. All ships bound for the Persian Gulf from the Red Sea pass through the Gulf of Aden, within sight of Aden harbor and the minor port of Zinzabar, capital of Abyan. When Marxist revolutionaries drove the British from Aden and the South Arabian protectorates in late 1967, Abyan’s sultan and major landowners were dispossessed and went into exile in Saudi Arabia, England or elsewhere. The simultaneous closure of the Suez Canal and the Aden naval base left Aden with few customers. The revolutionary government of South Yemen, later named the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, made it onto the US State Department list of state sponsors of terror for harboring Palestinian groups in the 1970s and for its close ties with the Soviet Union. PDRY exiles and migrant workers in Saudi Arabia were among the Arab volunteers for the much-romanticized anti-communist Afghan jihad. Like other mujahidin, they received military and religious training in Pakistan for the guerrilla war against the Soviet Union in the early 1980s. And like other mujahidin from North Yemen and many other Arab and Muslim countries, those from Aden-Abyan returned to their homelands in the late 1980s as “converts” to “salafi” (puritan or fundamentalist) or “Wahhabi” (Saudi) versions of Islam.
In 1990, North Yemen and the PDRY unified their two systems, both unstable and poor, and declared democracy. This is how the PDRY got off the State Department terrorist list—it ceased to exist as a state. The remnants of the PDRY army and the ruling Yemeni Socialist Party were defeated in a civil war in 1994 that left the army commanded by former North Yemeni president ‘Ali ‘Abdallah Salih in virtual occupation of what had been the PDRY. (Salih’s regime likes to use the analogy of Northern Yankees versus Southern rebels.) The people of Aden, Abyan and other communities in the southern half of Yemen bristle under the watchful eye of security forces who are less efficient but not more benevolent than those of the PDRY. The dissident current variously described as “Afghani Arab” for its militant elements and “salafi” or “Wahhabi” for its contrasts with indigenous Yemeni religious traditions supported Salih’s war against the Socialists. A few prominent spokespersons, notably Tariq al-Fadhli, self-identified tribesman, heir to the Abyan sultanate, and crusader for Islam, made alliances with Yemen’s ruling party, the GPC. Other self-styled mujahidin are now in opposition to the Yemeni and Saudi governments. This movement is not limited to the southern part of Yemen but extends as far north as the Saudi border, where Wahhabis have clashed with local religious authorities.
The neo-Islamist current is hardly the only dissident element in Yemeni politics. Many people are protesting deteriorating economic conditions and the arbitrary powers of security forces. The week before the latest bomb blast in Aden, authorities were again arresting demonstrators affiliated with Popular Committees in Dalaa, inland and north of the Aden-Abyan corridor. There is a lively Yemeni pro-democracy movement. In Sana‘a, Aden and other cities, jurists and intellectuals were criticizing a package of constitutional amendments proposed by the ruling party that would enlarge presidential powers while reducing the authority of the elected parliament. Ten years of a sagging economy and frustrated hopes for democratization had demoralized many Yemenis, in the north as well as the south.
Two previously unknown presumed offshoots of the Islamic Army—calling themselves the Islamic Deterrence Forces and Muhammad’s Army—both claimed to have attacked the US destroyer with a dinghy or “fiberglass boat” packed with explosives. Of course, all these groups “have ties,” via the Afghan-jihad network, to Osama bin Laden—whether or not he is the central “mastermind” of their activities. The network also seems linked to the circles of an imam at the Finsbury Park mosque in north London who until recently praised Yemen as the only Arabian country that had not bowed to Western military force. This connection might explain the bomb thrown at the British embassy in Sana‘a, the Yemeni capital, the day after the Cole incident. The perpetrators of the 1998 kidnapping, and perhaps the harbor and embassy attacks, included citizens of Yemen, other Arab countries and Great Britain.
The name “Aden-Abyan Islamic Army” therefore connotes an appeal to the right wing composed of deposed aristocrats, mujahidin and religious ultra-conservatives, but also to some extent echoes the frustrations of Yemenis from Aden, Abyan and elsewhere in the former South, including liberals and socialists as well as social conservatives. While the term “Islamic Army” implies an Afghan-jihad strategy, it also has a populist ring to it, as would the notion of a “Christian army” among the American religious right. The organization itself is probably a loose guerrilla network of a few dozen men, Yemenis and non-Yemenis. Zayn al-Abidin abu Bakr al-Mihdar, the Yemeni founder of the Islamic Army and purported leader of the 15–20 kidnappers of British tourists in the Christmas season of 1998, was executed. After having initially denied the existence of any such force as the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army, the Yemeni government claimed to have wiped it out.
After Yemen’s failure to back the Saudi-US alliance against Iraq in the 1990–91 Gulf war severely strained US-Yemeni relations, the Salih administration, anxious to improve its image in the West, access to international finance, and foreign visits to its still underutilized but potentially world-class port, welcomed the US Navy to Aden with open arms. Sana‘a has also taken other steps to meet US conditions for closer economic and military relations. Since 1995, Yemen has accepted the bitter austerity package recommended by the IMF. In the summer of 2000 the government signed an agreement with Saudi Arabia on their mutual border, presumably to ease tensions with the Kingdom. Geographically remote from the conflict in Israel and the Occupied Territories, Salih supports the Palestinians’ current struggle but overall is seen as “moderate on the peace process.” Recently Yemen began issuing tourist visas to Israeli Jews. The European Union and its member states, especially Germany and the Netherlands, support the government with economic development assistance.
President ‘Ali ‘Abdallah Salih came to power in 1978 after the mysterious assassinations of two predecessors, and recently won over 96 percent of the vote in the first national referendum to elect a president. Their own reports of arbitrary arrest, prison torture and harassment of journalists and university faculty notwithstanding, Western observers have been rather positively impressed by Yemen’s democratic transition, as evidenced by two rounds of parliamentary elections.
Anxious to show its cooperation with scores of FBI investigators sifting through marine debris and interviewing possible eyewitnesses, Yemen’s national security forces have rounded up “hundreds” of suspects and manned extra army checkpoints at Aden’s intersections and highways. Reports of heightened security that may reassure Americans and Britons concerned for the safety of compatriots in Yemen are bad news for the local population, however. In the past few years, the Yemeni government has detained dozens of reporters, scholars and political activists from across the political spectrum, the majority of them unarmed civilian critics who have called attention to corruption and arbitrary use of force. Already the number of those arrested following the double bombing of the Cole and the British embassy may well exceed the number of those affiliated with groups suspected of perpetrating the attacks. Hasty action to round up suspects in the Cole attack may well serve as a pretext to crack down on peaceful campaigners for democracy in Yemen.
The weeks following September 11 brought to the surface the tense under-currents in the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia. In the aftermath of the horrific attacks in New York and Washington, word spread that many of the hijackers were from Asir, the mountainous southwest province of Saudi Arabia, and were linked to Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, a man who has vowed to overthrow the Saudi royal family, the al-Saud. But the two allies have postured awkwardly over the extent of Saudi Arabia’s commitment to the US-led “war on terrorism.” The United States resents the Kingdom’s reluctance to cooperate fully with investigations of the September 11 attacks and previous incidents, as well as its reluctance to allow use of airbases on its soil for operations over Afghanistan. Among other things, Saudi Arabia resents US reluctance to weigh in on the side of Palestinians in their struggle against Israeli occupation.
More important to understanding the muted Saudi support for the war are internal pressures. The September 11 hijackings followed a long line of attacks tracing backward to the USS Cole, Kenya and Tanzania, Riyadh and Khobar, Somalia and Beirut. These attacks do not represent a war between religions. Rather, religion is a means for voicing explicitly political grievances, as is the case with Saudi dissenters and their sympathizers in the broader population. Internally, the grievances concern authoritarianism and repression, maldistribution and inequity, and the absence of representation in the political system. The external grievances are about US bases on Saudi soil, US support for Israel, US-led sanctions on Iraq and US backing for repressive regimes in the region, particularly Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria and Jordan. A strong partnership with the United States in the current crisis would only fuel further domestic opposition, something which had finally begun to lessen in the period before the attacks. Due to the widespread resonance of these grievances, the royal family fears the domestic repercussions of aligning themselves with the United States.
But portrayals of internal politics as contests between US-allied “moderates” and puritanical “Wahhabis” are grossly oversimplified. So too is a menu that offers two stark choices: an absolute monarchy tilting toward the West or a revolutionary Islamist regime hostile to the West. Internal contests and choices are more complex than that. They stem from three profound political crises to which the ruling family must respond: a convergence of dissent on core grievances, a multiplicity of clergies and socioeconomic distress.
Resentment of abuse of state authority has long simmered just beneath the surface in Saudi Arabia, but the regime has historically been criticized only in private. Rarely did criticism erupt into public confrontation. In 1979, Juhaiman al-Otaibi forcibly took control of the sacred mosque in Mecca in an effort to topple the ruling family. He did not garner much popular support because he chose a holy venue rather than a palace, but the incident exposed the vulnerability of the regime. It led to greater surveillance over the population, more power granted to the mutawwain—a sort of police of public virtue—new constraints on mobility and expression, and simultaneous promises of reform.
During the 1980s, an Islamic education system fostered a new generation of sheikhs, professors and students. An Islamic resurgence swept the country, but it was not directed against the regime. Several nonviolent Islamist groups took root during this time. The resurgence was also propagated by the newly returned “Arab Afghan” mujahidin. About 12,000 young men from Saudi Arabia went to Afghanistan; perhaps 5,000 were properly trained and saw combat.
The 1990s were a difficult decade in Saudi Arabia. Festering anger suddenly exploded with the Gulf war of 1990–91. The stationing of US troops in the country transformed what was an inchoate resurgence of Islamic identity into an organized opposition movement. Political criticism was now public—much of it written, signed and documented in petitions presented to King Fahd. The petitions called for, among other things, an independent consultative council, an independent judiciary, fair sharing of oil wealth and restrictions on corrupt officials. Friday sermons became an occasion for political criticism, and several prominent sheikhs were jailed. Demonstrations—largely unheard of under this authoritarian regime—erupted to demand their release, the most significant occurring in Buraydah, the very heartland of the ruling family’s support.
A convergence of dissent cutting across cleavages of region, gender, class, school of Islam, ethnicity, ideology and rural-urban settings began to sound calls for redistribution of wealth, procedural social justice and regime accountability, in essence, the rule of law. People are weary of ad hoc and arbitrary personal rule. Because of this convergence, the state can no longer resort to its time-honored strategy of playing one group against another. Private businessmen and public bureaucrats, industrialists and mom-and-pop shop owners, Sunnis and Shi’as, men and women share core grievances.
The incremental response of King Fahd to popular dissent has satisfied no one. In 1992, he appointed a non-legislative consultative council and gave more power to provincial governments, where other family members ruled. These “reforms” disappointed some and angered others. They had the effect of consolidating the ruling family’s centrality to political life, rather than broadening meaningful participation.
The al-Saud rule in an uneasy symbiosis with the clergy. This relationship dates back to the 1744 alliance between Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab and Muhammad ibn Saud, a sort of merger of religious legitimacy and military might. The descendants of al-Wahhab still dominate the official religious institutions of the state. The official clergy regularly issue fatwas (religious judicial opinions) that justify the policies of the al-Saud in Islamic vocabulary, even when those policies are deplored by the people. For example, they issued a fatwa to justify the presence of US troops during the 1990–91 Gulf war.
Islam remains a double-edged sword for the al-Saud. It grants them legitimacy as protectors of the faith, yet it constrains their behavior to that which is compatible with religious law. When members of the family deviate from that straight path, they are open to criticism since the regime’s “right to rule” rests largely on the alliance with the al-Wahhab family. Today, the “alliance” between the regime and official clergy is much contested by dissidents because the parties no longer serve as “checks” on each other.
In the wake of the Gulf war, the state-appointed clergy has been supplemented by a popular alternative clergy that is articulate and vocal. The divide between official Islamic authorities and popular Islamic leaders is great. A dissident explained, “The old clergy believe that the ruler is the vice-regent of God on earth. Advice can only be given in private and in confidence. The new clergy reject the idea of vice-regency. Rather, it is the duty of the clergy to criticize the ruler and work for change.” The alternative clergy wrote fatwas during the Gulf war that contested the fatwa of the official clergy and provided reasons to prohibit the stationing of US troops on Saudi Arabian soil. The alternative fatwas drew wider public support than did the official fatwa.
History now repeats itself as competing clergy make their opinions known. Sheikh al-Shuaibi and others have disseminated new fatwas that extend the idea of jihad from fighting foreign infidels to fighting domestic regimes that are perceived to be unjust. Al-Shuaibi’s serious elaboration of the idea could be interpreted to target the al-Saud regime.
Islamism taps into an already distressed social and economic environment. King Fahd has been incapacitated since his stroke in 1995 and the family wrecked by succession struggles. Since the heyday of the oil boom, per capita income has plummeted by over two-thirds. The birth rate is a very high 3–3.5 percent. The majority of the population is under 15. These young adults will register their demands for education, jobs and housing at the same time. But the Kingdom’s once fabulous infrastructure, constructed during the boom, is now crumbling, particularly schools and hospitals. Unemployment among recent male college graduates is around 30 percent, likely higher. Yet Saudi Arabia remains utterly dependent on foreign workers, who constitute perhaps 90 percent of the private sector and 70 percent of the public-sector labor force. Social norms mitigate against the participation of local women in many economic activities. Since the Gulf war, there are reports of new social problems such as guns, drugs and crime. All this provides a fertile field for dissent.
Contentious voices also resonate because the exclusionary structure of governance does not reflect the diversity of the population. Contrary to popular images, Saudi Arabia is not a homogeneous country in ethnicity, religion or ideology. The variety of Muslim practices include Wahhabi orthodoxy, mainstream Sunni calls for reform of the state, minority Shi’a communities, Sufi practices throughout the Hijaz and, most importantly, a Sunni Salafi opposition movement. The Salafi movement opposes the dependence of the official clergy upon the ruling family, and their authoritarian rule. Radicals among them call for jihad today. Reformists prefer to wait until the time and the causes are right.
The Islamist movement—both Shi’a and Sunni—is represented externally by several reformist organizations in London and the United States. Other radical externally based groups like al-Qaeda advocate violence as an appropriate means to achieve their ends. While there is condemnation of the September 11 atrocities inside Saudi Arabia, the grievances articulated by the external Islamist movement do resonate powerfully among most parts of society.
More important than any external organization are the loose underground networks of study groups in Saudi Arabia that can be activated at the appropriate moment. When several sheikhs were imprisoned for their sermons of opposition, popular discontent ran high. In the time since the sheikhs were released from jail in 1999, the Islamist movement has become much quieter. Crown Prince Abdullah did begin to respond to internal and external grievances—he released the sheikhs, limited the business interests of princes, limited the free use of telephone, planes and water by royalty, allowed a freer press and publicly objected to US Middle East policy—but perhaps too slowly for some.
Other factors deepen the ruling family’s conspicuous silence on the US-led “war on terrorism.” Several high-ranking members of the ruling family and individuals from prominent families in the private sector have maintained close ties to Bin Laden. Indeed, the United States has been aware for several years of the transfer of funds from Saudi Arabia to al-Qaeda. Intra-familial rivalry also inhibits an unwavering stance. Though Crown Prince Abdallah effectively administers the country as the king’s health fails, his succession is still contested by other powerful princes.
Saudi Arabia must, by virtue of its position as guardian of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina and host of the annual pilgrimage, contribute to Islamic charities. This leadership role mandates that the al-Saud, on behalf of the country, fund organizations throughout the international Muslim community. The Muslim duty of alms-giving suggests taking care of the less fortunate—it is an obligation of faith, not a choice. When the United States asked that the regime freeze all Islamic charities, the request put the al-Saud in an untenable position. It may have been acceptable to freeze the assets of Bin Laden’s private companies and investments, but a freeze on Islamic charity was unthinkable for this regime whose legitimacy is so intimately tied to Islam. Like George W. Bush, the al-Saud must respond to their domestic constituency first and foremost.
The al-Saud have long based their rule on conquest, cooptation through the distribution of oil revenues, and Wahhabism. These historic sources of legitimacy are less compelling today because coercion has fostered popular resentment, oil revenues have shrunk dramatically and Wahhabism has never reflected the diverse reality of Saudi Arabia. Now, Saudi Arabians are looking for more inclusive and representative governance. People want freedom of expression and freedom of assembly. They want to participate in the development of their country, particularly in meeting the needs of education, health, employment and infrastructure for a booming population. Saudi Arabians do not want to waste precious national resources on arms purchases from the United States, deals over which they have no control.
The depth of royal coercion has meant that no alternative voices have been allowed to flourish. Today, there is not a viable alternative to the ruling family that could unite the disparate parts of the country, perhaps enhancing Bin Laden’s pull artificially. But what many Saudi Arabians are talking about constitutes neither full democracy nor absolute monarchy. Rather, it is a voice in governance, and the rule of law. The challenge before Crown Prince Abdallah is to promote domestic reform that incorporates the diversity of the population. His strong nationalist voice can be used to counter the power of the radical movement. The wide middle ground between a revolutionary Bin Laden and an authoritarian ruling family cries out for cultivation.
Clashes between the followers of a Zaydi Shi’i religious figure and security forces left hundreds of people dead in a remote area in northern Yemen in the summer of 2004.
The precipitating incident was obscure, perhaps unimportant. It is hardly worth mentioning these days when worshippers in Arab countries leave the mosque reciting anti-American and anti-Israeli slogans. The Israeli government’s violent reaction to Palestinian attacks, the war in Iraq—widely understood as an imperialist invasion—or the pictures from Abu Ghraib only confirm for many Arabs the impression that Israel and the United States are joined in an all-out assault on the Islamic and, in particular, the Arab world. Thanks to the modern media, even in Yemen the “felt proximity” of events bears no relation to their actual geographic location. As in other Arab countries, and even though the US has never been involved in armed conflict with Yemen, many Yemenis see themselves confronted by an overwhelming American-Israeli force. Demonstrations against what is seen as aggression in Afghanistan, the West Bank and Gaza, and Iraq are part of daily political life, even if Yemen has problems enough of its own.
Nevertheless, the Yemeni police found it necessary, on June 18, 2004, to arrest and temporarily detain demonstrators in front of the Sana‘a Grand Mosque—reportedly 640 followers of the Zaydi cleric Hussein Badr al-Din al-Houthi.
Two days later, when the governor of Sa‘dah, a northern province bordering on Saudi Arabia, attempted to travel into the Marran region (district of Haydan, about 60 kilometers southwest of Sa‘dah city), local inhabitants denied him entry. How exactly a local quarrel with the governor, a military appointee, escalated to this point is unclear, though there is precedent for disagreement between the central authority and the population in some parts of the governorate. There were reports that tribesmen from the Marran mountains fired upon police at a military checkpoint, and that the men (probably also tribesmen) blocking the governor’s passage were followers of al-Houthi. The governor, rather than letting the matter rest, returned with military reinforcements.
As of mid-August, this local conflict had cost at least 500 lives. Two thousand families are said to have fled the area, while arrests have taken place not only in Sa‘dah governorate, but also in ‘Amran, Hajjah and Sana‘a governorate as well as in the capital Sana‘a. At least three attempts to mediate the crisis have failed—officially due to al-Houthi’s refusal to surrender, though mediators complain that the military resumed fighting during the negotiations—and al-Houthi and his followers have been surrounded in their refuge by thousands of soldiers. Reports that al-Houthi had fled either to neighboring Saudi Arabia or to another part of Yemen were unconfirmed.
In spite of the abundance of weapons in Yemen, it has been years since a dispute between the central government and regional, or tribal, powers has assumed these dimensions. There has been no military conflict between the state security forces and a Zaydi cleric and his followers since the 1960s. So, what is the problem?
One can only speculate about the cause of the troubles between al-Houthi—once a local government official in Sa‘dah and, from 1993 to 1997, a member of the Yemeni parliament—and the governor Brig. Gen. Yahya al-’Amri. Nor is it known what took the governor to the Marran region in the first place. It is possible that al-Houthi faced arrest for inciting demonstrations not only in the capital city of Sana‘a, but also in the governorate of Sa‘dah, or that the governor simply wanted to talk to al-Houthi about a recent problem between members of a local tribe and the government. Al-Houthi seems to be attached to and protected by members of the Khawlan Sa‘dah tribe whose attitudes toward the government he might influence.
Al-Houthi’s leadership is based on his status as a sayyid, or a member of the religious elite claiming descent from the Prophet, of the Zaydi school that predominates in northern Yemen. But whereas Sa‘dah was historically a stronghold of Zaydi doctrine, lately salafi (puritan) preachers who received their training and financial support from neighboring Saudi Arabia have gained quite a following in the region. Violent conflict has even broken out at times between representatives of the two religious tendencies. The local Zaydiyya, adherents of a form of Shi’i Islam that is close to Sunnism, share the belief of the Twelver Shi’a that the imam, or leader of the religious community, should be drawn from the elite sayyid families. Zaydis differ from Twelvers in that the Zaydi imam (the last one died in exile in 1996) is a worldly figure, educated, healthy and battle-tested, and always subject to being replaced by a more competent rival. In contrast, the Sunni salafis—the ideological archenemy of the Shi’a—lay great stress on the principle of equality among Muslims, gaining as new members ordinary Zaydis who are resentful of the special status of the sayyids. In the 1990s, salafi preachers vilified Zaydi traditions as elitist in an appeal to the tribal and artisan communities in Sa‘dah and elsewhere.
Why the challenge to the government precisely from a Zaydi cleric? First, Arab discontent over Israel and the United States is not restricted to puritan Sunnis. The Iraqi Muqtada al-Sadr, a representative of the Twelver Shi’ism that predominates in the Persian Gulf region, is one signal example. It is possible that Hussein al-Houthi feels inspired by al-Sadr. The latter’s resistance to the American occupation attracts attention in the Yemeni highlands not only because of satellite news broadcasts but also because in recent decades many exiled Iraqis have found a new home in Yemen, and many thousands of Yemenis studied in Iraq. Al-Houthi reportedly maintains contact with several Shi’i Iraqis who are located in Sa‘dah.
The more interesting question is why the Yemeni government would react so strongly, now, to propaganda from a preacher long an outspoken critic of the US. President ‘Ali ‘Abdallah Salih maintains that al-Houthi has long been underestimated. Other prominent Yemenis dismiss him as unimportant. The extent of the protest by al-Houthi’s followers and the fact that they blocked entry to the governor could have forced the president’s hand. For years now, the Yemeni government has faced the same dilemma as other Arab governments: The United States expects cooperation in the hunt for suspected terrorists—and has the means to exert pressure—while the population views this cooperation as proof of the inability or unwillingness of their governments to lessen US influence in the region. The Yemeni press kept a wary eye on the behavior of the outgoing American ambassador, Edmund Hull, whose influence allegedly far exceeded the powers of his office. If the government does not intervene in anti-American demonstrations, the Salih regime loses credit with the US government. If it does intervene, it loses legitimacy in the eyes of the population.
Al-Houthi’s following has multiplied since the onset of the fighting. People now speak of thousands of supporters, but it is likely that a view of the massive military presence as an overreaction has drawn more tribesmen into the conflict because they feel the government is encroaching on tribal sovereignties and violating the rules of tribal warfare (which, for example, forbid fighting during negotiations). According to other reports, local tribes are supporting the security forces. The conditions are set for further conflict even after the fighting ends between tribesmen who supported different camps—a situation that evokes memories of the civil war in North Yemen in the 1960s.
The case of al-Houthi probably also promised the opportunity for the government to set an example to establish a monopoly on violence in one of the tribal governorates, while exploiting the conflict as a demonstration of its commitment to the war on terrorism. Parallels to past events like the clashes between the security forces and the ‘Abida tribe in the governorate of Marib in 2001 are palpable. This time, however, the government underestimated the difficulties it would face in the difficult mountainous terrain of Marran.
One important factor in the conflict is specific to Yemen. Hussein al-Houthi is a Zaydi sayyid, that is, someone technically qualified to lay claim to the imamate and to establish a Zaydi state. Zaydi states existed for more than a thousand years in North Yemen, until the last one was replaced in 1962 by a republic. A scenario in which al-Houthi would declare himself imam awakens memories of the civil war between followers of the last imam and supporters of the republic, which ended only in 1970. Since that time the Zaydi sayyids have maintained a low political profile, even though, with the exception of members of the family of the last imam who fled to Saudi Arabia (and later moved to Great Britain), no one was excluded from the reconciliation achieved in 1970. Only after the unification of the two Yemeni states in 1990 introduced a multiparty system was a political party formed, the Hizb al-Haqq (Party of Truth), to represent the sayyids, whose largest constituency is in Sa‘dah governorate. But this party’s platform explicitly renounced the reintroduction of the imamate—one of the major pillars of Zaydi doctrine—and some observers see the party foundation as an act of Zaydi self-defense against the salafi currents organized in Yemen’s biggest opposition party, al-Tajammu’ al-Yamani lil-Islah (Yemeni Congregation for Reform). Al-Houthi himself was a member of Hizb al-Haqq for the period in which he held a seat in Parliament. Since the end of the 1990s, the former parliamentarian has been increasingly vehement in his statements against US policy, and as early as 1997 he founded a youth organization, the shabab al-mu’minin (Believing Youth), which officials now characterize as militant.
The fear that al-Houthi could upset the peace between Zaydis and the other denominations in Yemen—the majority of Yemenis are Shafi’i Sunnis—and threaten the republic by proclaiming himself imam at least contributed to the hard line taken by the government. This can be seen from statements made in the Yemeni and Arab press, accusing al-Houthi of virtually everything that is politically incorrect in Yemen. At times it has been said that he declared himself imam, and he is supposed to have raised his own flag in place of the flag of the Yemeni republic. In another variant, it was the flag of Hizballah—though it is highly questionable whether anyone in Lebanon had ever even heard of al-Houthi and started to build an alliance with his following before the fighting started. He is supposed to have forcibly confiscated the alms tax—an open challenge to the government. A government official even went so far as to maintain that al-Houthi is supported by the roughly 1,000 Jews living in the governorate of Sa‘dah, whom the official accuses of working for the collapse of the Yemeni republic—an extremely dangerous transfer of regional conspiracy theories to Yemeni domestic politics. Most Yemeni Jews emigrated in 1948–51 with the founding of Israel, leaving rather few families who have since refused many offers of relocation. In its August 2, 2004, edition, the Yemen Times even suggested a link between al-Houthi and a number of al-Qaeda suspects recently on trial, merely because one of them expressed his sympathy for al-Houthi’s case—an interesting twist given the animosity between salafis and supporters of Hizb al-Haqq in Sa‘dah. This colorful but by no means complete bunch of allegations—most of which were denounced by al-Houthi before his phone lines were cut—indicates how desperately the Yemeni government is trying to justify its line of action domestically and internationally and to prove its commitment to the “war on terrorism” (which one might interpret as a rent-seeking strategy).
In fact, al-Houthi’s motivation is simultaneously local and utterly international. In a letter to the Yemeni president, whom he deferentially addressed as “His Excellency, President of the Republic, Brother ’Ali ’Abdallah Salih,” al-Houthi declared his sense of duty to defend Islam and the community of Muslims against Israel and the US.
Unwritten but between the lines was the message that this defense is properly the task of Arab governments, including the one in Yemen. The local conflict in Sa‘dah is therefore neither more nor less than the local expression of the crisis of legitimacy confronting Arab governments that are involved in the war on terrorism and whose situation since the transfer of power in Iraq has not improved in the slightest. To be foreseen are further local conflicts—not only in Yemen—sparked by events in other countries in the region. Globalization has reached the most remote areas in the Middle East.
Shi’is in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have watched Iraq’s political transformation with a combination of horror and optimism. Iraq’s slide toward civil war, the carnage wrought by militant violence and the targeted slaughter of thousands of Iraqi Shi’is by Sunni insurgents have sown fears among Shi’a in the Kingdom that they might be the next to suffer bloodshed. Their worries are not unwarranted. They live in a sea of sectarian hostility, where the Sunni government and its clerical backers have long made clear their antipathy for the Muslim minority sect.
The violence in Iraq has led Saudi Arabian Shi’is to distance themselves from the war and the US role in bringing Iraqi Shi’is to power. Even so, the new political dynamic there has fed a growing opportunism, feelings set in motion by both domestic and regional events. Many now believe that with the recent accession of King Abdallah, who is widely viewed as sympathetic to Shi’is, and with the balance of power shifting in the region, resolution of long-standing Shi’a grievances may finally be achievable. Shi’is demand inclusion in formal politics, the right to observe religious rituals and the right to move their struggle against the extreme anti-Shi’ism that permeates society and is condoned by the state into the public sphere.
As many as two million Shi’is live in Saudi Arabia, where they make up between 10–15 percent of the population. Although some live in the cities of Mecca, Medina and Riyadh, the majority of Shi’is are concentrated in the two oases of Qatif and al-Hasa in the Kingdom’s Eastern Province, a region that is also home to most of Saudi Arabia’s massive oil reserves. Most Saudi Arabian Shi’is are from the “Twelver” branch that claims the majority of the world’s Shi’a; they believe that the last successor to the Prophet Muhammad as religio-political leader of Muslims was the twelfth imam who went into occultation in the ninth century. A smaller community of around 100,000 Isma’ilis, who observe an offshoot of Shi’ism that traces imamic descent from the seventh imam, makes its home in Najran near the southern border with Yemen.
The Shi’is’ sense of vulnerability is easy to understand. Although sectarian violence has only been episodic in the twentieth century, leading religious scholars in the Kingdom have denounced Shi’a as apostates, and since the founding of Saudi Arabia in 1932 have periodically called for their extermination. Historically, Saudi leaders have done little to tone down anti-Shi’a rhetoric and at times have manipulated the sentiment that fuels it. Until the end of the twentieth century, the Kingdom’s rulers preferred publicly to ignore the Shi’is’ existence. The nationalist narrative popularized in recent years in various media, including the press, national television, historical texts and most visibly a series of exhibits displayed at an annual Riyadh fair called the Janadiriyya, spotlights the “heroic” efforts of the Kingdom’s founder, ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, in bringing together warring tribes. It scarcely mentions the Shi’a. But recent events have made this erasure untenable.
With Iraq possibly disintegrating along sectarian lines and hundreds and perhaps thousands of Saudi Arabian Sunnis taking part in the anti-occupation and anti-Shi’a insurgency, many in Saudi Arabia fear that the spread of sectarian violence is just a matter of time. Remarkably, the Shi’is’ anticipation that they will eventually be targeted by their fellow countrymen and the widely held belief that Saudi rulers have abetted, if not actually supported, sectarian violence have not altered the Shi’is’ pursuit of rapprochement and cooperation with the state.
[…]
Even after Ayatollah Khomeini’s death and an improvement in Saudi-Iranian relations, the production of anti-Shi’a material continued apace. In the early 1990s, Nasir al-’Umar, a particularly vicious Sunni cleric, wrote a treatise called “The Rafida in the Land of Tawhid.” Rafida, or rawafid, is a pejorative term meaning “rejectionists,” a reference to how radical Sunnis consider the Shi’a to be outside Islam. Religious edicts (fatwas) issued by other well-known clerics, including several by Abdallah bin Abd al-Rahman al-Jibrin—then a member of the Higher Council of Ulama—condoned and even mandated the killing of Shi’is. As late as 2002, a leading Saudi Arabia–based charity, the International Islamic Relief Organization, circulated a pamphlet entitled One Hundred Questions and Answers on Charitable Work in the Eastern Province that contained passages slandering the Shi’a as apostates and called for efforts to “get rid of their evil.”
The Iraq war has stoked sectarian ill will. Internet discussion forums popularized by Saudi Arabian visitors are full of vitriolic denunciations of Shi’is inside the Kingdom and out. At least one website supportive of Sunni jihadis reported a widely believed rumor that militants planned to kill the Shi’a cleric Hasan al-Saffar during ‘Ashura in 2004. Similar threats may have been leveled at Shi’a communities in Bahrain and Kuwait in 2005.
Most troubling to Saudi Arabians is the appearance of cooperation between the United States and the new Shi’i power brokers in Iraq. Nasir al-’Umar launched a simultaneous direct assault on Iraqi Shi’is and the United States when he denounced the “strong relationship between America and the rafida” and argued that they were both the enemies of Muslims everywhere. The appearance of coordination between the United States and Iraqi Shi’is to marginalize and oppress Iraqi Sunnis has produced widespread anger. During the November 2004 US-led siege of Falluja, popular websites published images of Iraqi Shi’i national guardsmen carrying pictures of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani alongside photographs of US tanks with rosaries dangling from their barrels, providing symbolic power to arguments about the forces aligning against Sunni Muslims. Speculation that the United States and Shi’is are actively working to alter the sectarian shape of the region has been further fueled by the widespread belief that Iran, the bogeyman from the 1980s, is actively promoting the establishment of what, in December 2004, Jordanian king Abdallah II called a “crescent” of Shi’i-dominated polities stretching from Iran to Lebanon “that will be very destabilizing for the Gulf countries and for the whole region.”
In addition to popular outrage about the sectarian transformation of Iraq, fears that Iran intends to use its influence in Iraq to ignite a wider conflict are evident within the royal family. On September 20, 2005, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister Saud al-Faisal worried aloud at the Council of Foreign Relations that “if you allow…for a civil war to happen between the Shi’a and the Sunnis, Iraq is finished forever. It will be dismembered. It will not only be dismembered, it will cause so many conflicts in the region that it will bring the whole region into a turmoil that will be hard to resolve.” The foreign minister seemed most upset by the prospect that the United States was “handing the whole country over to Iran without reason.” In apparent disbelief, he said, “It seems out of this world that you do this. We fought a war to keep Iran from occupying Iraq after Iraq was driven out of Kuwait.” King Abdallah was more circumspect in comments he made to an American television news program, but he hardly put the issue to rest. “Iran is a friendly country,” he said. “Iran is a Muslim country. We hope that Iran will not become an obstacle to peace and security in Iraq. This is what we hope for and this is what we believe the Iraqi people hope for.”
[…]
Saudi Arabian Shi’i political leaders are well aware of how fragile the current political moment might be. To be sure, the Iraq war has unleashed a wave of foreign pressure on Saudi rulers to reform and affirmed Saudi Arabian Shi’is in their conviction that they, like the Shi’a of Iraq, deserve more political opportunity. But more importantly, and perhaps tragically in the end, the war has set back the Kingdom’s Shi’a in their titanic struggle to delink themselves from the politics of sectarianism set in motion by Iran’s Islamic Revolution and to assert a sense of loyalty that transcends sectarian difference. Saudi Arabian Shi’is are caught in a delicate balancing act, forced to constantly renew and demonstrate their loyalty to a state that has historically displayed overwhelming animus toward them, while outmaneuvering charges that they are preternaturally bonded with their co-religionists elsewhere in the region. The rise of the Shi’is in Iraq, and more importantly the role that the Iraq war has played in re-politicizing sectarianism in the region more generally, has made their task considerably more difficult.
Deep in the morass of YouTube lies a disturbing video clip recorded in late February at the cemetery of al-Baqi’ and on surrounding streets in Medina, Saudi Arabia. An initial caption promises images of “desecration of graves.” Al-Baqi’, located next to the mosque of the Prophet Muhammad in the second holiest city of Islam, is believed to be the final resting place of four men revered by Shi’i Muslims as imams or successors to the Prophet: Hasan ibn ‘Ali, ‘Ali ibn Husayn, Muhammad ibn ‘Ali and Ja’afar ibn Muhammad. The Prophet’s wives, as well as many of his relatives and close associates, are also said to be buried here, making the ground hallowed for Sunni Muslims as well.
The clip opens with footage of young boys, Shi’i pilgrims mostly from the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, chanting a religious invocation. “O God!” they call out. “Bless Muhammad, peace be upon him, and the House of Muhammad!” The first clause of this prayer is common to Sunni and Shi’i Muslims, but the second—referring to the Prophet’s family—encapsulates the key difference between the two main branches of Islam. The Shi’a believe that the succession to Muhammad as religio-political leader of the Muslim community runs through his bloodline, in specific through his cousin and son-in-law ‘Ali and ‘Ali’s son Husayn. This belief is a direct challenge to the juridical authority of the Sunni clergy and, Sunni rulers often fear, political authority as well. The Wahhabi clergy and the Saudi state therefore deem the second clause of the boys’ prayer “un-Islamic,” if not downright heretical. They have the same attitude toward the Shi’i act of veneration whereby pilgrims collect soil from around the graves of important religious figures, as the boys proceed to do in the video. In fact, the (Sunni) religious police attached to the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice usually intervene to forestall such acts, but in the clip the boys are allowed to approach a stone marker and gather dirt. Then, as a subsequent caption boasts, “After they had wreaked havoc upon the grave, the security forces removed them.”
The government version of events, advanced in openly hate-filled fashion by the video clip, asserts that the pilgrims “trampled upon” the graves of the Prophet’s wives and companions. The clip claims that this alleged offense, as well as the pilgrims’ other “Zoroastrian rituals” and insults to the Prophet’s companions, led security forces to disperse them and provoked local Sunni worshippers into clashing with their Shi’i countrymen. As triumphal music plays, the videographers brag that a “lion-hearted” local youth stabbed “one of those who rejects true Islam” and joke that only the “merciful” presence of security forces protected the “grandchildren of Khosraw” from further harm. These imprecations—that Shi’is are practitioners of pre-Islamic faiths, apostates, followers of ancient Persian emperors—are old standbys of anti-Shi’i prejudice in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. The second commenter at the YouTube site fumes: “Every apostate Zoroastrian should be expelled from Muslim lands.” Another clip even calls the Shi’i boys “little devils.”
The Shi’i pilgrims’ version of events is quite different. They had arrived in Medina on February 20 to mark the anniversary of the death of Muhammad, which in 2009 fell on February 24. On the same day, Shi’is commemorate the passing of Hasan, the second imam. Pilgrims said that the religious police videotaped the women among them, affronting their piety and modesty. When a group of men, some of them husbands of the taped women, asked the police to destroy or hand over the tapes, clashes broke out. Armed policemen confronted hundreds of protesters chanting slogans in reverence of Husayn. In the following days, the religious police arrested and injured dozens. According to Shi’i reports, many pilgrims gathered on the evening of February 23 to commemorate the death of Muhammad but were not let into the cemetery. They moved to the square between the cemetery and the mosque of the Prophet. There, they say, they were attacked by Sunnis exiting the mosque and by the religious police.
Comments made after the Medina clashes by Prince Nayif, the interior minister who was named deputy crown prince in March, are highly suggestive about whose version of events is closer to the truth: “Citizens have both rights and duties; their activities should not contradict the doctrine followed by the umma. This is the doctrine of Sunnis and our righteous forefathers. There are citizens who follow other schools of thought and the intelligent among them must respect this doctrine.” In other words, the Shi’i citizens of Saudi Arabia should not express their religious beliefs in public out of deference to Sunni sensibilities, which the prince casually equates to those of the world Muslim community as a whole. Throughout the Kingdom’s history, indeed, the Shi’a, who make up 10 percent of the total population, have been subject to discrimination at the hands of the state. The Medina disturbances are part of a pattern of rising Shi’i militancy in response to that discrimination around the country, and particularly in the oil-rich Eastern Province, where Shi’a form a slight majority. Parts of the Saudi regime, at least, seem to have an interest in escalating the confrontation.