Excerpted from a long, informative article in Jerusalem Post. Link is via Zogbyblog, which has lots of other good stuff, too...
The latest sign of [the Shiites'] determination came this past Saturday, when they published a petition signed by almost 500 business, cultural and social leaders of the community. Addressed to the crown prince, the petition calls on the government to create a national committee to propose "urgent measures" to remove all discrimination against Shi'ites and other religious minorities.
The petition refers to the "historic changes in the region" presumably meaning the war to liberate Iraq and urges the authorities to "adapt to new circumstances."
| Or let the circumstances adapt the world around them... |
Concentrated in the oil-rich province of al-Sharkiyah, Saudi Shi'ites form a good part of the kingdom's urban middle class. They are also strongly present in the liberal professions and the private business sector. And, yet, when it comes to public positions, Saudi Shi'ites shine with their absence. Of the top 400 government positions, only one undersecretary of state is held by a Shi'ite. Of the 120 members of the all-appointed Saudi parliament (al-Majlis al-Shura), only two are Shi'ites.
| I'm surprised there are that many... |
Worse still, the official theological organs of the state, exclusively held by clerics from the Hanbali Sunni school of Islam, publicly castigate Shi'ites as non-Muslims. Courts, controlled by the Hanbali clerics, do not admit testimony by Shi'ites. The same clerics have banned marriages between Hanbali Sunnis and Shi'ites, and declared all Shi'ite marriages as illegal.
| Hanbali is yet another name for wahhabi. The treatment of the Shias sounds rather like the way the Paks treat the Ahmadiyah sect, only without as many random killings... |
The Shiites counter by insisting that the Hanbalis, often wrongly known as Wahhabis, do not represent the overwhelming majority that they claim. "Saudi Arabia is a far richer mosaic of religious beliefs than many people imagine," says a Jeddah scholar on condition of anonymity. Apart from duodecimains (twelvers), who share the same beliefs as Iranian and Iraqi Shi'ites, there are Ismaili (sevener) Shi'ites a majority in the Najran area and Zaydi Shi'ites of Yemeni origin all over the kingdom.
| I'm aware of some of the differences between the Ismailis and the Iranian flavor of Shiism. I don't know anything about the Yemeni version, except that it exists... |
But even the Sunni majority, some 70% of the population, is not monolithic. Hanafi and Shafei Sunnis are probably a majority in the Red Sea provinces of the kingdom. The situation has become more complicated because many heterodox individuals, and at times whole villages and towns, practice taqiyah or dissimulation to escape persecution and discrimination by the majority.
| Kind of like Arabian Moriscos... |
Saudi state policy towards the Shi'ites has varied between benevolent neglect and active repression. The late king Faisal ibn Abdel-Aziz removed many restrictions against the Shi'ites in the 1960s and enabled them to benefit from state educational and health services. In the 1980s agitators dispatched from Iran tried to mobilize Saudi Shi'ites in support of a Khomeinist version of their faith. They failed.
| Bad move on their part... |
But their presence gave the hard-line Hanbali clerics a pretext for seeking new restrictions on Shi'ites. Some Saudi Shi'ites fled into exile, mostly to Iran and Britain. In 1987, however, King Fahd ibn Abdel-Aziz persuaded most of the exiles to return home in exchange for reforms in favor of the Shi'ites. With the rise of militant Hanbalism, one version of which is represented by the fugitive terrorist Osama bin Laden, Shi'ites, including Ismailis and Zaydis, have emerged as the strongest supporters of the royal family.
| Given the alternative, a wise move, lacking anything better... |
The rationale for their support is that if the al-Saudi dynasty is toppled, its place would be taken by fanatics like bin Laden, who publicly state that Shi'ites must either convert to Hanbalism, leave the country or face death.
| Kind of the heart of the wahhabi philosophy: "Do what we say or we'll kill you." |
Some radical bin Ladenists have used the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq as a pretext for fomenting violence against the Shi'ites. They claim that the Taliban regime in Kabul collapsed because Afghan Shi'ites, the Hazara and the Badakhshani, cooperated with the American "forces of invasion." They also blame the quick fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in Baghdad on Shi'ites, a majority of the Iraqi population.
| I notice they don't dwell on the ineptitude of the forces facing us in either case... |
Some hard-line preachers told mosque congregations that the ultimate aim of the Shi'ites is "to destroy Muslim Arab states in the interest of the US, Israel and Iran." Such is the hatred of the Hanbali clerics for Shi'ites that they have issued an edict that humanitarian aid collected for Iraq should not be distributed among Iraqi Shi'ites. "Let the Shi'ites of Iraq be fed by their masters: America, Iran and Israel," thundered one radical Sunni preacher, Sheikh Utba Ibn Marwan, in a Riyadh mosque last week. |