Wahhabis – Informed Comment

Saudi Reforms are softening Wahhabi Islam’s Role, but Critics warn the Kingdom will Still Quash Dissent

The Conversation — Wed, 06 Sep 2023 04:04:33 +0000

By Nathan French, Miami University | –

(The Conversation) – The crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, or “MBS,” is bringing a new vision of a “moderate, balanced” Saudi Islam by minimizing the role of Saudi religious institutions once seen as critical to the monarchy.

For decades, Saudi kings provided support to religious scholars and institutions that advocated an austere form of Sunni Islam known as Wahhabism. The kingdom enforced strict codes of morality, placing restrictions on the rights of women and religious minorities, among others.

Under MBS, women have been allowed to drive; co-educational classrooms, movie theaters and all-night concerts in the desert – in which men and women dance together – are a new normal.

Scholars Yasmine Farouk and Nathan J. Brown call the diminishing role of Wahhabi religious scholars within Saudi domestic and international policy nothing short of a “revolution” in Saudi affairs.

Article continues after bonus IC video
Sky News: “Mohammed bin Salman: Controversial Saudi prince to visit the UK”

MBS acknowledges that these reforms risk infuriating certain constituents or could even provoke retaliation. As a scholar who studies interpretations of Islamic law to justify or contest militancy, I’ve followed these reforms closely.

In the past, Saudis who challenged the authority of Wahhabis have provoked unrest. When King Fahd, who ruled between 1982-2005, rejected the advice of his Wahhabi scholars and allowed the U.S. military to station weapons and female service members on Saudi soil, several of them supported a violent insurrection against him.

MBS seems unconcerned with such challenges. In an interview broadcast widely throughout the kingdom, MBS chastised Wahhabi scholars, accusing some of falsifying Islamic doctrines. He then detained a major Wahhabi scholar from whom he once sought counsel, charging him with crimes against the monarchy. MBS defended these actions, claiming, “We are returning to what we were before. A country of moderate Islam that is open to all religions, traditions and people around the globe.”

Negotiating Wahhabism

This proclaimed return of “moderate Islam” echoes the reforms of MBS’s grandfather, King Abdulaziz, founder of the modern Saudi kingdom. This vision rejects policies toward Wahhabi Islam favored by his uncles, King Faisal and King Khalid.

Between 1925 and 1932, Abdulaziz suppressed Wahhabi scholars and militants who had demanded that he uphold their version of “pure Islam” and not open the kingdom to trade and development. He did the opposite and asserted the supremacy of the monarchy.

The booming Saudi oil economy developed by Abdulaziz required his son, King Faisal, who ruled from 1964 to 1975, to reconsider the monarchy’s relationship with Wahhabism. Unlike Abdulaziz, Faisal believed Wahhabis would help him save the kingdom.

Saudis who felt left behind in the emerging Saudi oil economy had found an inspirational symbol of liberation in Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who helped overthrow the Egyptian monarchy in 1952 and implemented plans to redistribute Egyptian wealth.

Faisal encouraged Wahhabi scholars to work with politically driven Islamists to reject the revolutionary politics of Abdel Nasser’s Egypt and craft a new vision of Islam for Saudi youth.

Faisal permitted Wahhabi scholars to reform Saudi educational institutions with their conservative Islamic curriculum. Abroad, Faisal’s scholars presented Wahhabism as an authentic Islamic alternative to the Cold War ideologies of the U.S. and USSR. Wealthy Saudis, these Wahhabi scholars argued, had a religious duty to promote Wahhabism across the globe.

Resisting Wahhabism

Faisal’s reforms met with success. King Khalid, who followed Faisal, continued to favor Wahhabi scholars, particularly while responding to two major challenges in 1979.

A group of Saudi students, who believed Faisal’s and Khalid’s reforms to be illegitimate, seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Islam’s most sacred site, for two weeks in 1979. An attack on the Grand Mosque was viewed as an attack on the monarchy itself, which claims the mantle of “Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques.”

The seizure came to a violent end with combined action by French and Saudi military forces. Afterward, Khalid agreed to elevate religious officials who affirmed the Islamic credentials of the monarchy.

Also in 1979, other Saudi youth traveled to join the resistance against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. One such Saudi who answered the call that year was Osama bin Laden, who would establish al-Qaida in 1988.

Bin Laden’s and al-Qaida’s grievances against the monarchy emerged following King Fahd’s acceptance of an increased deployment of U.S. soldiers to Saudi soil following Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Bin Ladin proclaimed the presence of American infidels in Saudi Arabia to be a defilement of Islamic holy lands, an “affront” to Islamic sensibilities, and demanded the destruction of the monarchy. Al-Qaida launched anti-Saudi insurgent campaigns lasting through 2010.

Not all conservative Islamist leaders called for violence. As historian Madawi Al-Rasheed notes, many Saudi scholars framed themselves as reformers who sought to correct Fahd’s departures from “authentic” Islam and restore Faisal’s vision.

When MBS speaks of a “moderate Islam” he is not just condemning the violence of al-Qaida. He’s abandoning the monarchy’s accommodations of the Wahhabi establishment. He blames some Wahhabi scholars for the violence that the monarchy faced in 1979 and again in the the 1990s and 2000s.

He has worked quickly to erase those accommodations and, like his grandfather, affirm the supremacy of the monarchy.

A ‘moderate Wahhabism’ for Saudi society?

‘Saudi Vision 2030’ aims to bring a complete Saudi political, economic, educational and cultural transformation.

Many of these revolutionary changes occurred amid the 2016 unveiling of “Saudi Vision 2030,” a plan for complete Saudi political, economic, educational and cultural transformation. MBS believes that this will meet the demands of Saudis under the age of 30 – who number more than 60% of the kingdom’s population.

The religious curriculum shaped by King Faisal is gone, replaced with a “Saudi first” education, which removes Ibn abd al-Wahhab, the founder of Wahhabism, from textbooks and emphasizes Saudi patriotism over a Wahhabi Islamic religious identity. Saudi Arabia has announced it will no longer fund mosques and Wahhabi educational institutions in other countries.

Saudi religious police, once tasked with upholding public morality, saw their powers curtailed. They no longer have powers of investigation or arrest. They cannot punish behaviors deemed morally inappropriate.

Critics remain unimpressed, noting that demoting religious officials does not diminish the violence of the Saudi state. Religious police continue their online surveillance of social media. In 2018, Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist, was killed following his calls for a continued voice for Islamist reformers in Saudi Arabia. Al-Rasheed argues that the images of a new Saudi society conceal suppression of Saudi reformers. Some observers note that a growing Saudi “surveillance state,” with capacities to peek into the private lives of Saudis, underwrites these reforms.

As Peter Mandaville, a scholar of international affairs, observes, the “moderate Islam” offered by MBS is complicated. On the one hand, it characterizes a new tolerant Saudi Arabian Islam. Yet, inside the kingdom, Mandaville argues that the “moderate Islam” of MBS demands that Saudi youth – as good Muslims – will submit to the authority of the monarchy over the kingdom’s affairs.

Some observers believe this might not be enough. Mohammad Fadel, a professor of Islamic legal history, argues that the current configuration of the Saudi monarchy is incompatible with “the kind of independent thought the crown prince is calling for in matters of religion.” Saudi society will flourish, he adds, “when Prince Mohammed recognizes the right of Muslims to rule themselves politically.”

With these reforms to Wahhabism, MBS hopes to secure the loyalty of a generation of young Saudis. As Saudi history would indicate, however, such a bargain requires constant renegotiation and renewal.

Nathan French, Associate Professor of Religion, Miami University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Saudi Arabia Executes Two Shia Bahrainis on Terrorism Charges in “Grossly Unfair” Trial

Human Rights Watch — Sat, 03 Jun 2023 04:02:37 +0000

By Leila Saad | –

( Human Rights Watch ) – Two Bahraini Shi’a men have been executed in Saudi Arabia following what Amnesty International described as a “grossly unfair trial” on terrorism-related charges.

Jaafar Sultan and Sadeq Thamer were arrested in May 2015 and held incommunicado for more than three months, according to Amnesty International. The charges were related to allegations of smuggling explosives inside Saudi Arabia and participating in protests in Bahrain.

The two Bahrainis were tried and sentenced to death in Saudi’s notorious Specialized Criminal Court in October 2021 following protest-related charges that fall within the Saudi counterterrorism law.

Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, as well as other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, continue to use overbroad provisions contained within terrorism laws to suppress dissent and target religious minorities.

Counterterrorism laws in the GCC typically include broad, vague charges and definitions of terrorism used as catch-all provisions to punish peaceful dissidents, political activists, and human rights defenders.

Article continues after bonus IC video
Middle East Eye: “Father of Bahraini man executed by Saudi Arabia pleads for return of his body”

Saudi Arabia’s Shi’a Muslim minority has long suffered systemic discrimination and been targeted by state-funded hate speech. On March 12, 2022, Saudi Arabian authorities executed 81 men, 41 of whom are said to belong to the Shi’a Muslim minority, under its counterterrorism law, despite promises to curtail executions.

Bahrain’s Shi’a majority also suffers from discrimination. Bahraini authorities have systematically targeted Shia clerics and have violently arrested numerous human rights defenders with Shia backgrounds, including Abdulhadi al-Khawaja in April 2011, who they sentenced to life in prison in a mass trial under Bahrain’s terrorism law.

Overly broad terrorism charges have also been exploited by other Gulf states. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) sentenced Khalaf Abdul Rahman al-Romaithi to 15 years in prison on terrorism charges following a grossly unfair trial known as the “UAE94” mass trials of 94 critics of the Emirati government. Al-Romaithi was recently extradited from Jordan to the UAE.

Human Rights Watch has documented longstanding violations of due process and fair trial rights in Saudi Arabia’s criminal justice system, making it unlikely that Sultan and Thamer received a fair trial leading up to their execution. Human Rights Watch opposes the death penalty in all countries and under all circumstances as a cruel and inhumane punishment.

Via Human Rights Watch

Why Most Muslims Celebrate Mawlid, the Prophet Muhammad’s Birthday, despite Wahhabi Disapproval

The Conversation — Fri, 07 Oct 2022 04:08:11 +0000

By Deina Abdelkader, UMass Lowell | –

(The Conversation) – Most Muslims celebrate the birth of the Prophet Muhammad on the 12th day of the third month of the Islamic calendar, Rabi’ al-awaal – which starts on the evening of Oct. 7 in 2022. Muslims view the celebration, called Mawlid al-Nabi or simply the Mawlid, like many other Islamic celebrations: as a sign of respect and adoration of Muhammad, whom they believe to be God’s messenger.

According to Muslim tradition, Muhammad was a righteous man born around A.D. 570, whom God designated as his final prophet. He learned God’s message by heart and recited it. Later on, the verses were written down to preserve the text – what is now the Quran.

Most countries with majority Muslim populations, from Pakistan to Malaysia to Sudan, commemorate the prophet’s birthday each year. The most colorful celebrations are carried out in Egypt, with Sufi dhikr poetry commemorating the prophet, and games, toys and colorful sweets given to kids.

Article continues after bonus IC video
MEMO: “Muslims observe ‘Mawlid Al-Nabi’ which celebrates the birth of Prophet Muhammad”

Yet not all Muslims will mark the holiday. In a few countries, like Saudi Arabia, it’s just like any other day. The focus of my research is how Muslim societies relate to their faith, including their sense of social justice and their expectations of governments. While most Muslim countries encourage commemorating the Mawlid, the opposite is true in communities shaped by the ultra-conservative Wahhabi school of Islam, whose global influence has rapidly expanded in recent decades.

Wahhabi disapproval

The Wahhabi movement was started in 1744 by Muhamed Ibn Abdel Wahab, a religious scholar and reformer in what is today Saudi Arabia. Muhamed Ibn Saud, a political leader considered the founder of the Saud dynasty, legitimized his authority by seeking Ibn Abdel Wahab’s religious opinions. Ibn Saud was eager to wrest more power from the Ottoman Empire, which controlled much of the peninsula at the time.

Since then, Wahhabism has spread across the Muslim world in countries such as Yemen, the post-Soviet states, Tunisia and Egypt – especially after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which spurred Iran’s rise as a regional power and prompted Saudi Arabia to try and compete.

An austere school of Islam, Wahhabism often encourages the literal interpretation of the Quran and is especially suspicious of any practices they see as idolatry. For example, Saudi authorities have clamped down on worship at saints’ tombs and razed some holy sites entirely. In extreme cases, Salafis – a related school of Islam – have claimed that the relics and statues of ancient Egypt should be destroyed. In Saudi Arabia, the religious police, called mutaween, guard the prophet’s burial grounds in Medina during pilgrimage seasons to prevent visitors from touching it or praying close to it.

Conservatives frown upon adoration of the prophet. Wahhabi puritans consider the Mawlid heretical, citing a saying of the prophet, called a hadith: Every heresy is a misguidance, and every misguidance will end in hell. The word for “heresy” here, “bid’ah,” is often used to condemn Muslim practices seen as innovations, like celebrating the prophet’s birthday.

Celebrating with awe

Critics of Wahhabism argue that it compromises people’s relationship with God by cutting off instinctual human behavior, like wanting to honor a prophet.

As opposed to the literal and conservative focus on the oneness of God, which Wahabis emphasize, most Muslims observe the prophet’s birthday as a sign of love, respect and awe.

The Mawlid is celebrated in many ways and forms in the Muslim world, whether it is quietly observed by fasting and reading the Quran, or by kids dressing up in bright colors and getting a tiny horse or a doll made out of sugar. The practices vary, but the one thing they articulate are the admirable qualities of the prophet and how dear he is to his followers.

Deina Abdelkader, Associate Professor of Political Science, UMass Lowell

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Ultimate Hypocrisy: Saudi Crown Prince touts Religious Tolerance in NYC

Juan Cole — Thu, 29 Mar 2018 08:00:27 +0000

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s charm offensive in New York allegedly involved meeting Oprah Winfrey, which may be the only canny thing I’ve ever heard of him doing. He also had some religious leaders over to his condominium in NYC to stress the importance of religious tolerance.

MbS may be sincere, but here is an area where he has to put his money where his mouth is.

Saudi Arabia is not religiously tolerant. It is religiously intolerant in ways that contradict Islam and give the religion a bad name. Muslim-majority countries such as Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt have lots of churches and Christmas festivities.

Saudi Arabia has none?

Saudi Arabia has none.

You can’t even blame the Wahhabi or Unitarian strain of Islam favored by Riyadh for this problem, though its traditional texts are not innocent in it.

Neighboring Wahhabi Qatar has a clause in its constitution guaranteeing freedom of religion.

Saudi Arabia does not.

Qatar has licensed churches for its Filipino guest workers.

Saudi Arabia has not.

I was wandering around the back alleys of Dubai one time and came upon a small Hindu temple. There are hundreds of thousands of Hindus in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. You’d be more likely to find a unicorn in Saudi Arabia than a Hindu temple. But note that nearby Hindu-majority India has a huge Muslim minority and mosques all over the place.

MbS’s hypocrisy is not a new thing in Saudi policy. Under the last king, Riyadh established a King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz International Centre for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue in Vienna, Austria. That’s great and from all accounts the center has done good work.

But if MbS wants to be taken seriously on religious tolerance, he has to bring the principle home from Vienna. He has already slashed the power of the bigoted religious police who controlled public behavior on Saudi streets. Sometimes they have been more interested in enforcing gender segregation than in allowing firefighters to get to the scene of a conflagration, putting women at risk or even becoming responsible for their deaths. The old Saudi religious police would not like religious tolerance.

Not only members of other religions but other Muslims, including Shiites (15% of the Saudi population), non-Wahhabi Sunnis, and Sufis have often felt persecution. Some observers think that Saudi Arabia is only 40% Wahhabi, but it is that sect that sets state policy.

So MbS would be better not to open his mouth on the subject until Christmas can be celebrated at a church in Riyadh. As it is at churches throughout the Muslim world. And as Muslim Eids are commemorated at mosques throughout the Christian world.

Ironically enough, the Qur’an, the scripture revered by Muslims, has poignant passages about Jesus’s nativity longer than the accounts in the New Testament. But the people of Jesus can’t commemorate that nativity publicly in MbS’s Muslim country.

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Bonus video:

Al Jazeera English from last summer: “US criticises Saudi Arabia and Bahrain for lack of religious freedom”

Lebanon PM Hariri Resigns in fear for Life, Slamming Iran

contributors — Sun, 05 Nov 2017 07:30:38 +0000

Middle East Monitor | – –

Lebanon’s prime minister Saad al-Hariri resigned on Saturday, citing an assassination plot against him and accusing Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah of sowing strife in the Arab world.

His resignation thrusts Lebanon back into the frontline of Saudi-Iranian regional rivalry and seems likely to exacerbate sectarian tensions between Lebanese Sunni and Shia Muslims.

It also shatters a coalition government formed last year after years of political deadlock, and which was seen as representing a victory for Shia Hezbollah and Iran.

Hariri, who is closely allied with Saudi Arabia, alleged in a televised broadcast that Hezbollah was “directing weapons” at Yemenis, Syrians and Lebanese and said the Arab world would “cut off the hands that wickedly extend to it”.

Hariri’s coalition, which took office last year, grouped nearly all of Lebanon’s main political parties, including the Future Movement and Hezbollah.

“We are living in a climate similar to the atmosphere that prevailed before the assassination of (his father the late prime minister) martyr Rafik al-Hariri. I have sensed what is being plotted covertly to target my life,” Hariri said.

Rafik al-Hariri was killed in a 2005 Beirut waterfront bomb attack that also killed 21 other people, shaking the country and pushing his son Saad into politics.

In a statement read from an undisclosed location, Hariri said Hezbollah and Iran had brought Lebanon into the “eye of a storm” of international sanctions.

President Michel Aoun’s office said Hariri had called him from “outside Lebanon” to inform him of his resignation.

Hariri flew to Saudi Arabia on Friday after a meeting in Beirut with Ali Akbar Velayati, the top adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Afterwards, Velayati described Hariri’s coalition as “a victory” and “great success”.

A UN-backed tribunal charged five Hezbollah members over Rafik al-Hariri’s killing. Their trial in absentia at the Hague began in January 2014 and Hezbollah and the Syrian government, have both denied any involvement in the killing.

In his statement, Hariri said Iran was “losing in its interference in the affairs of the Arab world”, adding that Lebanon would “rise as it had done in the past”.

Hariri became premier late last year after a political deal that also brought Aoun, a Hezbollah ally, to office as president.

Hezbollah’s close ties to Iran and its support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his war with rebels trying to overthrow him have been a major source of strife in neighbouring tiny Lebanon for years.

Hariri said:

Over previous decades, Hezbollah was able to impose a reality in Lebanon with the power of its weapons, which it claims is the (anti-Israel) resistance’s weapons, which are aimed at the chests of our Syrian and Yemeni brothers, not to mention the Lebanese.

He said the Lebanese people were suffering from Hezbollah’s interventions, both internally and at the level of their relationships with other Arab countries.

Hariri has visited Saudi Arabia, a political foe of Iran and Hezbollah, twice in the past week, meeting Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and other senior officials.

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Via Middle East Monitor

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

Lebanese PM Hariri resigns, stresses ‘Iran’s hands will be cut off’

Top 7 ways Saudi could learn from Qatar about Moderate Islam

Juan Cole — Wed, 25 Oct 2017 08:44:04 +0000

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –

Saudi Crown prince Mohammad Bin Salman has announced that he wants to take his kingdom toward a more moderate Islam. The state religion of Saudi Arabia is what outsiders call Wahhabism, a puritanical and strident interpretation of the religion. Only about 40% of Saudis are thought to belong to it, but it governs everyone’s life in Saudi Arabia. At its fringes it has bled over into extremism, though most ordinary Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia could not be so characterized (in fact opinion polls show the Saudi public to be much more liberal than the Wahhabi establishment).

Aware that the kingdom suffers from bad publicity, and with the end of the oil bonanza just over the horizon, the young prince wants to do some PR for “moderation.” He has already cut down on the power of the religious police, who used to make everyone’s life miserable by going about on the lookout for infractions against puritanism. And allowing women to drive was probably his idea, as well. Reforms in Saudi Arabia are important because its oil money creates Salafis throughout the Muslim world, whom I view as Sunni wannabe Wahhabis.

Luckily for the prince, he has a good role model for the reform of Wahhabism, in Qatar. Qatar is the only other Wahhabi country, and no doubt it has its faults, but it is substantially better on many issues than Saudi Arabia. Of course, he’s having a tiff with Qatar and may not be in a mood to hear that they’re doing something right. But they are. Here are some examples:

1. Qatar’s Al Jazeera English television channel has a left of center editorial line (admittedly it differs somewhat from the Arabic channel of that name in this regard) and a journalistic philosophy that all sides of an issue should be heard. Al Jazeera has been excellent on climate change issues, and on reporting on the Global South, on problems of the poor and workers. In contrast, Al Arabiya, which is Saudi-owned but based in Dubai, has gone to the dark side and recently did a hateful fake news report trying to implicate Iran in 9/11. The prince could commission a progressive television station to prepare people for the end of oil and the need to actually make political compromises instead of just buying dissidents off or lashing them– and to educate Saudis to the realities of the outside world.

2. Qatar has licensed churches and allows resident Christians to worship in them. Saudi Arabia bans churches. In contrast, the Qur’an upholds freedom of worship and condemned the Christians and Jews of its own day who attacked synagogues and churches, respectively:

The Cow, 2:113-14: “The Jews say, ‘The Christians have nothing to stand on;’ and the Christians say, ‘The Jews have nothing to stand on’–even though they both recite the Bible . . . Who is more of a despot than one who forbids the mention of God’s name in the houses of God, and strives to tear them down? They should not have entered them save in fearful reverence. Their lot in this world is disgrace, and in the next they face severe torment.”

So I don’t think the scripture would approve of disallowing churches in the birthplace of Islam.

Here’s a teen music talent show in a church in Qatar, which would violate all kinds of current Saudi law:

Church Of God In Qatar – Teens Group CGPF TALENT SHOW- GROUP SONG

3. Qatar has promised to allow independent trade unions and collective bargaining. Qatar has a way to go but at least it made the pledge. Saudi Arabia completely bans workers unions.

4. Qatari women have a 51% participation in the labor force, among the highest in the world, with full educational opportunities. Saudi women as of today still cannot so much as drive to work, and even with the proposed change in law are hemmed in by requirements of male guardianship.

5. Qatar has correct relations with Shiite Iran. This relationship stands despite Qatar’s having supported Syrian revolutionaries, putting it on the opposite side from Iran, which sided with Bashar al-Assad’s torturing one-party state. Riyadh at the moment, however, is trying to whip up anti Iranian feeling in the region.

6. Qatar declined to get much involved in the disastrous Yemen war, which is mainly a local struggle that Saudi interference has exacerbated.

7. The primary English Wahhabi translation of the Qur’an published in Riyadh, that of Muhammad Muhsin Khan and Muhammad Taqi-ud-Din al-Hilali, tampers with the meaning of the Qur’anic text. In the Opening, the first chapter, it says roughly “Guide us to the straight path, the path of those on whom you have bestowed bounties, not that of those with whom you are angry, nor of those gone astray.” The Wahhabi translation identifies those gone astray as Jews and Christians. The Qur’an says that in the Gospel and the Pentateuch there is guidance and light and praises Jews and Christians for believing in God and the last day. “Those gone astray” are the pagans who expelled the Muslims from Mecca, as in 4:167. Putting out hatred for members of other religions as the meaning of the Qur’an is blasphemy against the holy book and turns into bombs in Europe. The prince might want to look into that.

Saudi Arabia: Official Hate Speech Targets Minorities

Juan Cole — Wed, 27 Sep 2017 04:11:29 +0000

Human Rights Watch | – –

Incitement Leads to Discrimination Against Shia, Other Groups

(Beirut) – Some Saudi state clerics and institutions incite hatred and discrimination against religious minorities, including the country’s Shia Muslim minority, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

The 62-page report, “‘They Are Not Our Brothers’: Hate Speech by Saudi Officials,” documents that Saudi Arabia has permitted government-appointed religious scholars and clerics to refer to religious minorities in derogatory terms or demonize them in official documents and religious rulings that influence government decision-making. In recent years, government clerics and others have used the internet and social media to demonize and incite hatred against Shia Muslims and others who do not conform to their views.

September 26, 2017 Report

“They Are Not Our Brothers”

Hate Speech by Saudi Officials

“Saudi Arabia has relentlessly promoted a reform narrative in recent years, yet it allows government-affiliated clerics and textbooks to openly demonize religious minorities such as Shia,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “This hate speech prolongs the systematic discrimination against the Shia minority and – at its worst – is employed by violent groups who attack them.”

Human Rights Watch found that the incitement, along with anti-Shia bias in the criminal justice system and the Education Ministry’s religion curriculum, is instrumental in enforcing discrimination against Saudi Shia citizens. Human Rights Watch recently documented derogatory references to other religious affiliations, including Judaism, Christianity, and Sufi Islam in the country’s religious education curriculum.

Government clerics, all of whom are Sunni, often refer to Shia as rafidha or rawafidh (rejectionists) and stigmatize their beliefs and practices. They have also condemned mixing and intermarriage. One member of Saudi Arabia’s Council of Senior Religious Scholars, the country’s highest religious body, responded in a public meeting to a question about Shia Muslims by stating that “they are not our brothers … rather they are brothers of Satan…”.

Such hate speech may have fatal consequences when armed groups such as the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, or Al-Qaeda use it to justify targeting Shia civilians. Since mid-2015, ISIS has attacked six Shia mosques and religious buildings in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province and Najran, killing more than 40 people. ISIS news releases claiming these attacks stated that the attackers were targeting “edifices of shirk,”(polytheism), and rafidha, terms used in Saudi religious education textbooks to target Shia.

Saudi Arabia’s former grand mufti, Abdulaziz Bin Baz, who died in 1999, condemned Shia in numerous religious rulings. Bin Baz’s body of fatwas and writings remain publicly available on the website of Saudi Arabia’s Permanent Committee for Islamic Research and Issuing Fatwas.

Some clerics use language that suggests Shia are part of a conspiracy against the state, a domestic fifth column for Iran, and disloyal by nature. The government also allows other clerics with enormous social media followings – some in the millions – and media outlets to stigmatize Shia with impunity.

Anti-Shia bias extends to the Saudi judicial system, which is controlled by the religious establishment and often subjects Shia to discriminatory treatment or arbitrarily criminalizes Shia religious practices. In 2015, for example, a Saudi court sentenced a Shia citizen to two months in jail and 60 lashes for hosting private Shia group prayers in his father’s home. In 2014, a Saudi Arabia court convicted a Sunni man of “sitting with Shia.”

The Saudi Ministry of Education religion curriculum al-tawhid, or (monotheism) which is taught at the primary, middle, and secondary education levels, uses veiled language to stigmatize Shia religious practices as shirk or ghulah (exaggeration). Saudi religious education textbooks direct these critiques to the Shia and Sufi practice of visiting graves and religious shrines and tawassul (intercession), to call on the prophet or his family members as intermediaries to God. The textbooks state that these practices, which both Sunni and Shia citizens understand as Shia, are grounds for removal from Islam, punished by being sent to hell for eternity.

International human rights law requires governments to prohibit “[a]ny advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence.” Implementation of this prohibition has been uneven and sometimes used as a pretext to restrict lawful speech or target minority groups. Any steps to counter hate speech should be carried out within overall guarantees of freedom of expression.

To address this problem, experts in recent years have proposed a test to establish whether any particular speech can be lawfully limited. Under this formula, the speech Human Rights Watch documented by Saudi religious scholars sometimes rises to the level of hate speech or incitement to hatred or discrimination. Other statements don’t cross that threshold, but authorities should publicly repudiate and counteract it. Given the influence and reach of these scholars, their statements advance a system of discrimination against Shia citizens.

Saudi authorities should order an immediate halt to hate speech by state-affiliated clerics and government agencies.

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has repeatedly classified Saudi Arabia as a “country of particular concern” – its harshest designation for countries that violate religious freedom. The 1998 International Religious Freedom Act allows the president to issue a waiver if it would “further the purposes” of the act or if “the important national interest of the United States requires the exercise of such waiver authority.” US presidents have issued such waivers for Saudi Arabia since 2006.

The US government should rescind the waiver and work with Saudi authorities to end incitement to hatred or discrimination against Shia and Sufi citizens, as well as other religions. The US should also press for removal of all criticism and stigmatization of Shia and Sufi religious practices, as well as practices of other religions, from the Saudi religion education curriculum.

“Despite Saudi Arabia’s poor record on religious freedom, the US has shielded Saudi Arabia from possible sanctions under US law,” Whitson said. “The US government should apply its own laws to hold its Saudi ally accountable.”

Via Human Rights Watch

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

Human Rights Watch: “Saudi Arabia: Official Hate Speech Targets Minorities”

The top 4 Challenges facing the Arab World

contributors — Thu, 15 Jun 2017 05:46:56 +0000

By Tarek Osman | (Project Syndicate) | – –

LONDON – Fifty years after the Six Days War, the Middle East remains a region in seemingly perpetual crisis. So it is no surprise that, when addressing the region, politicians, diplomats, and the donor and humanitarian community typically focus on the here and now. Yet, if we are ever to break the modern Middle East’s cycle of crises, we must not lose sight of the future. And, already, four trends are brewing a new set of problems for the coming decade.

The first trend affects the Levant. The post-Ottoman order that emerged a century ago – an order based on secular Arab nationalism – has already crumbled. The two states that gave weight to this system, Iraq and Syria, have lost their central authority, and will remain politically fragmented and socially polarized for at least a generation.
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In Lebanon, sectarianism remains the defining characteristic of politics. Jordan has reached its refugee-saturation point, and continued inflows are placing limited resources under ever-greater pressure. As for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there is no new initiative or circumstance on the political horizon that could break the deadlock.

The Middle East is certain to face the continued movement of large numbers of people, first to the region’s calmer areas and, in many cases, beyond – primarily to Europe. The region is also likely to face intensifying contests over national identities as well, and perhaps even the redrawing of borders – processes that will trigger further confrontations.

The second major trend affects North Africa. The region’s most populous states – Algeria, Egypt, and Morocco – will maintain the social and political orders that have become entrenched over the last six decades of their post-colonial history. The ruling structures in these countries enjoy broad popular consent, as well as support from influential institutions, such as labor and farmers’ unions. They also have effective levers of coercion that serve as backstops for relative stability.

But none of this guarantees smooth sailing for these governments. On the contrary, they are poised to confront a massive youth bulge, with more than 100 million people under the age of 30 entering the domestic job market in North Africa between now and 2025. And the vast majority of these young people, products of failed educational systems, will be wholly unqualified for most jobs offering a chance of social mobility.

The sectors best equipped to absorb these young Arabs are tourism, construction, and agriculture. But a flourishing tourism sector is not in the cards – not least because of the resurgence of militant Islamism, which will leave North Africa exposed to the risk of terror attacks for years to come.

Moreover, a declining share of the European food market and diminished investments in real estate undermine the capacity of agriculture and construction to absorb young workers. The likely consequences of North Africa’s youth bulge are thus renewed social unrest and potentially sizeable migration flows to Europe.

The Gulf used to provide a regional safety valve. For more than a half-century, Gulf countries absorbed millions of workers, primarily from their Arab neighbors’ lower middle classes. The Gulf was also the main source of investment capital, not to mention tens of billions of dollars in remittances, to the rest of the region. And many Arab countries viewed it as the lender of last resort.

But – and herein lies the third key trend – the Gulf economies are now undergoing an upgrade, ascending various industrial value chains. This reduces their dependence on low-skill foreign workers. In the coming years, the Gulf countries can be expected to import fewer workers from the rest of the Arab world, and to export less capital to it.

The Gulf might even become increasingly destabilized. Several Gulf powers and Iran are engaged in a partly sectarian proxy war in Yemen – one that will not end anytime soon. And now, several Sunni powers are forcefully trying to compel one of their own, Qatar, to abandon a regional strategy it has pursued for decades. The pressures being generated across the Arabian Peninsula could produce further political shocks.

That is all the more likely, given mounting domestic pressure for reform from a technologically savvy and globally engaged young citizenry. Reforming centuries-old social and political structures will be as difficult as it is necessary.

The fourth trend affects the entire Arab world, as well as Iran and Turkey: the social role of religion is becoming increasingly contested. The wars and crises of the last six years have reversed much of the progress that political Islam had made in the decade before the so-called Arab Spring uprisings erupted in 2011. With radicalism becoming increasingly entrenched, on the one hand, and young Muslims putting forward enlightened understandings of their religion, on the other, a battle for the soul of Islam is raging.

The problems implied by these four trends will be impossible for leaders, inside or outside the Arab world, to address all at once, especially at a time of rising populism and nativism across the West. But action can and should be taken. The key is to focus on socioeconomic issues, rather than geopolitics.

The West must not succumb to illusions about redrawing borders or shaping new countries; such efforts will yield only disaster. One highly promising option would be to create a full-on Marshall Plan for the Arab world. But, in this era of austerity, many Western countries lack the resources, much less public support, for such an effort – most of the Arab world today couldn’t make the most of it in any case.
The Year Ahead 2017 Cover Image

What leaders – both within and outside the region – can do is pursue large-scale and intelligent investments in primary and secondary education, small and medium-size businesses (which form the backbone of Arab economies), and renewable energy sources (which could underpin the upgrading of regional value chains).

Pursuing this agenda won’t stem the dissolution of the modern Arab state in the Levant. It won’t generate workable social contracts in North Africa. And it certainly won’t reconcile the sacred with the secular. But, by attempting to address young people’s socioeconomic frustrations, it can mitigate many of the longer-term consequences of these trends.

Tarek Osman is the author of Islamism: What It Means for the Middle East and the World and Egypt on the Brink.

Licensed from Project Syndicate

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Execution-Crazy Saudi Gov’t railroads 14 Shiite Dissidents with unfair Death Penalty

contributors — Sun, 11 Jun 2017 04:23:38 +0000

Human Rights Watch | – –

(Beirut) – Saudi Arabia should immediately quash the death sentences of 14 members of the Shia community for protest-related crimes, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said today. The Court of Appeal of the notorious Specialized Criminal Court upheld the sentences in May 2017, after they were handed down a year ago on June 1, 2016, following a grossly unfair trial of 24 Saudi Shia citizens. The Specialized Criminal Court is Saudi Arabia’s counterterrorism tribunal.

“The rise in death sentences against Saudi Arabian Shia is alarming and suggests that the authorities are using the death penalty to settle scores and crush dissent under the guise of combating ‘terrorism’ and maintaining national security,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.

On May 25, 2017, the families of three of the defendants learned in a phone call that the Court of Appeal of the Specialized Criminal Court had upheld the death sentences against their relatives. The family members of another two defendants subsequently called the court, on May 28, and were informed that the sentences for their relatives and for the whole group of 14 had been upheld on appeal. The exact date of the appeal court’s decision is unknown.

Court documents show that all defendants, including the 14 sentenced to death, were held in pretrial detention for more than two years before their trial began. During that time, most were in solitary confinement, and Saudi Arabian authorities denied them access to their families and lawyers while they interrogated them.

Since 2013, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have recorded a worrying increase in death sentences against political dissidents in Saudi Arabia, including the Shia Muslim minority. The organizations are aware of at least 38 members of Saudi Arabia’s Shia community – who make up 10 to 15 percent of the population – currently sentenced to death. Saudi Arabian authorities accused these individuals of activities deemed a risk to national security and sentenced them to death after deeply flawed legal proceedings at the Specialized Criminal Court.

“The sham court proceedings that led to death sentences for 38 Shia men and boys brazenly flout international fair trial standards,” said Lynn Maalouf, director of research at Amnesty International in the Middle East. “The sentences should immediately be quashed.”

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch obtained the text of and analyzed 10 court judgments – involving 38 individuals – handed down by the Specialized Criminal Court between 2013 and 2016. Most were against men and children accused of protest-related crimes following mass demonstrations in 2011 and 2012, in Eastern Province towns where Shia Muslims form the majority.

In nearly all the trial judgments analyzed, defendants retracted their “confessions,” saying they were coerced in circumstances that in some cases amounted to torture, including beatings and prolonged solitary confinement. The court rejected all torture allegations without investigating the claims. Some defendants asked the judges to request video footage from the prison that they said would show them being tortured. Others asked the court to summon interrogators as witnesses to describe how the “confessions” were obtained. In all cases judges ignored these requests.

The judges admitted the “confessions” as evidence, and then convicted the detainees almost solely based on these “confessions.”

“Death sentences based on coerced ‘confessions’ violate international human rights law and are a repugnant yet all-too-common outcome in security-related cases in Saudi Arabia,” Maalouf said. “These death penalty trials fail to meet even the most basic requirements for due process.”

On January 2, 2016, Saudi Arabia carried out a mass execution of 47 men for “terrorism offenses.” Among those executed were Ali Sa’eed al-Ribh, whose trial judgment indicates that he was under 18 at the time of some of the crimes for which he was sentenced to death. As a state party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Saudi Arabia is legally obliged to ensure that no one under 18 at the time of a crime is sentenced to death or to life in prison without the possibility of release.

Those currently on death row include four Saudi Arabian nationals who were found guilty of offenses committed when they were teenagers – Ali al-Nimr, Dawoud al-Marhoun, Abdullah al-Zaher, and Abdulkareem Al-Hawaj.

The January 2, 2016 executions also included a prominent Shia Muslim cleric, Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr, the uncle of Ali al-Nimr. Sheikh al-Nimr was a vocal critic of the government, and was convicted following a grossly unfair trial.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch oppose the death penalty in all cases without exception. The death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment and unique in its finality. It is inevitably and universally plagued with arbitrariness, prejudice, and error.

Pending full abolition of the death penalty, the Saudi Arabian authorities should immediately establish an official moratorium on executions, and remove any death penalty provisions that are in breach of international human rights law, such as provisions for its use against juvenile offenders and those suffering from mental disabilities, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said.

Saudi Arabia is one of the world’s most prolific executioners and has put to death more than 400 people since the beginning of 2014, most for murder, drug-related crimes, and terrorism.

In addition to conducting unfair trials, Saudi Arabia has executed alleged child offenders and nonviolent offenders, including for drug-related crimes and “crimes” such as sorcery, in violation of international law which restricts the use of the death penalty to the “most serious crimes” – generally defined to include only intentional killing. Since the beginning of 2014, Saudi Arabia has executed at least 147 people for nonviolent drug crimes.

Human Rights Watch

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