According to the Saudi government, Nimr al-Nimr was guilty of the following crimes: 1) He was an agent working for Iran; 2) He was the religious leader that drove the Shia minority opposition to take violent action against the Saudi government; 3) He was a troublemaker in favour of foreign intervention to support the Eastern Province minority; 4) He reacted violently against the police when arrested; 5) He was a terrorist; 6) He intended to ensure the fall of the Saudi government.
Because I never met al-Nimr , in my book on Saudi Arabia (1) I quote what an American diplomat (2) and a US researcher (3) said about him. In their opinion, al-Nimr did not preach violence, but was asking for Saudi Shias’ rights to be respected, many years after the 1993 agreement the Shias had reached with King Fahd and that was supposed to end discrimination, but only achieved minor results. There is now new information available about al-Nimr. A group of human rights activists, Americans for Human Rights and Democracy in Bahrain has published a report on him in the on-line magazine Jadaliyya (4). Another important source of information on him is the well-known European researcher, Toby Matthiesen (5).
The report by the Bahraini human rights group informs that Sheikh al-Nimr did not propose the use of violence in order to gain better conditions or to stop the constant discrimination and harassment that has been going on for decades in the Eastern Province. Al-Nimr repeatedly proposed the roar of the word as being a mightier weapon than bullets. Since 2011 he was a man strongly influenced by the Arab Springs and worked to organize protests in the Eastern Province also in support of the Bahraini Arab Spring. He believed that these Arab uprisings were a historical opportunity to overthrow dictators in the Gulf and in Syria. If he had indeed been working for Iran, he would not have demanded the resignation of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad. As far as al-Nimr’s reaction to his arrest is concerned, the human rights group reports that al-Nimr was shot in the leg when arrested by the police.
Nimr al-Nimr was also accused of calling for foreign intervention in the Eastern Province. He had suggested that the Eastern Province would consider secession if the government did not respect the rights of the Shia community. In his own words, Al-Nimr never asked foreign countries to intervene in the Eastern Province but the Shia do have the right to seek external assistance for self-defence against government aggression. In some circumstances, he compared the situation of Saudi Shias to the situation of Kuwait when the country was provided with assistance following the invasion by Iraq. These statements were negatively received in Saudi Arabia and almost considered a request for Iranian intervention, even by those who tried to distance themselves from anti-Shia propaganda and sectarianism.
Recently, the government and a significant part of the Saudi media have said that Sheikh al-Nimr and al-Qaeda terrorists are one and the same, stating they are two sides of a same coin. This view is particularly clear in an article published in Al-Monitor on January 25th, 2016 and written by a young Saudi researcher Nawaf Obaid (6) who has been working for the Saudi government for many years. He claims that al-Nimr was “closely tied to Hezbollah al-Hijaz, the armed, avowedly Khomeinist group established in Qatif and active in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern province, Kuwait and Bahrain. As the leadership figure in the organization, al-Nimr consistently preached that the Sunni ruling dynasties in these three countries were illegitimate and called for armed struggle against the Saudi government.” Obaid also mentions that in 1996 Hezbollah al-Hijaz carried out a bomb attack against the Khobar Towers (7), an attack that killed 20 US service personnel and injured many others of different nationalities.
In a recent article published by Foreign Policy (8) Toby Matthiesen states that Nimr al-Nimr “has never been part of Hezbollah al-Hijaz, but actually came of age in a rival organization that was expelled from Iran because of differing views over Iran’s official political system, velayat- faqih (or the guardianship of the jurisprudent).” Hezbollah al-Hijaz is known also by the name of Line of Iman (Ansar Khat al-Imam). Their Iman is Khomeini and followers of this school of thought accept the Iranian political system. Today the marja’ (9) of Shia Islam is Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Spiritual Leader of Iran.
The rival organization Al-Nimr belonged to was the Shirazi movement of Shia in the 1970’s when this movement spread to Gulf countries and became very popular among young Shias. This transnational Shia political organization, led by the Iraqi-Iranian cleric Mohammad al-Husaini al-Shirazi, organized an uprising in the Eastern Province in 1979, a few months after the Iranian revolution. This uprising was brutally crushed by Saudi security forces. Large numbers of Saudi Shias, among them al-Nimr, went into exile in Iran and received their political and religious training in Qom, in the hawza, the organization’s religious school.
The Shirazi organization’s hawza was supervised by Mohammad Taqi al-Mudarrasi, nephew of Mohammad al-Shirazi. When the school of Shirazi tendency became unacceptable to the Iranians in the mid-1980s, al-Nimr moved to Damascus and became this centre’s teacher. Because relations with Iran had deteriorated and followers of the Shirazi movement could not go to Iraq due to persecution of Shias implemented by Saddam Hussein’s regime, Damascus became the alternative for the Shirazi religious movement.
In the 1980s various attempts were made between the Saudi government and those representing Saudi Shias to negotiate the return from exile of thousands of Shias and reach an agreement with the Saudi government. It was precisely the Shirazi movement that negotiated with Al Saud and reached an agreement in 1993. There were other Shias in the Eastern Province who never went into exile, the so-called notables of Qatif and Al-Ahsa, two areas in the Eastern Province. The Shia were a majority in Qatif before the massive arrival of Sunnis when the entire Eastern Province came under the rule of the new kingdom.
Some opposition activists did not accept the agreement and the general amnesty linked to it, and Nimr al-Nimr was one of them. They opposed this agreement because it did not change the subordinate status of Shias. Al-Nimr returned to Saudi Arabia thanks to this amnesty but remained in disagreement and was still part of the majority wing prepared to reach agreements with the Saudi government. The Shirazi religious movement has been the main tendency among the leadership of the Shia in the Eastern Province. Hassan al-Saffar and Tawfiq al-Sayf, two important religious leaders, and Jafar al-Shayeb, now Saudi Shias’ political leader, belong to the Shirazi movement. Nimr al-Nimr had been a member of the movement but opposed its main line.
After the death in 2001 of the founder of the Shirazi global movement, the Grand Ayatollah Mohammad al-Hussaini al-Shirazi , the movement split into two different wings. Mohammad al-Shirazi’s brother , Sadiq, became leader of the official Shirazi movement in Najaf, the principal holy town of Iraqi Shia, while Mohammad Taqi al-Mudarrasi, nephew of Mohammad al-Shirazi, based in Karbala, the other holy Shia town in Iraq, became the leader of the Mudarrasi wing. Al-Nimr who had earlier been close to Mudarrasi, become leader of Saudi wing of the Mudarrasi movement. The old political and religious leadership of the Saudi Shias still supports the Shirazi movement, but it has also became the local representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the best known figure among Iraqi Shias who have never agreed with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s line.
Hezbollah al-Hijaz, the organization that al-Nimr belonged to according to Nawaf Obaid, does exist, but represents a different branch of Saudi Shias. The activists belonging to this organization are followers of the line of the founder of Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
The Saudi analyst intentionally confuses the Shia movements of the Eastern Province because he certainly supports the position assumed by Saudi Arabian government. The kingdom’s government has implemented policies aimed at criminalizing any dissent in society, in particularly among the Shia. And since Saudi Arabia’s leadership is showing signs of paranoia whenever dealing with Iran, it tries by any means to link Shia dissent to Iran, intentionally mixing various schools of thought and complex identities in order to declare that all those who criticize the government are terrorists.
The mass executions in the beginning of January 2016 should be linked to the announcement made by the Saudi government just days before, implementing massive measures to restructure the economy. The state budget deficit amounts to 15% of GDP and in the autumn of 2015, the International Monetary Fund warned that the Saudi state risks disaster without energetic measures to address the national deficit. Numerous cuts in subsidies have been made, the prices of basic commodities such as fuel and water have increased and privatization programmes for education and health services may lead to a substantial break down of social peace in Saudi Arabia. These policies proposed by the government must be added to other serious social problems that have existed for a number of years, such as very high unemployment among the young and serious social and housing problems (10). Adding these existing serious social problems to the announcements of heavy cuts to the welfare system, one can understand why the Saudi government is afraid of serious social unrest in the country. In order to counter these risks the Saudi government needs both terrorism and foreign enemies.
The mass executions of 43 al-Qaeda members was a message sent to domestic Sunni extremism, which has always existed in Saudi Arabia and is now threatening Saudi society with two forms of jihadism. ISIS is present on Saudi territory and is engaged in a struggle with the country’s leadership, while al-Qaeda is greatly reinforcing its presence in the south thanks to the war in Yemen. On the other hand, the government has been feeding fears for several years that Saudi Shia are Iranian agents, but recently the sectarian discourse has been massively used as government propaganda. More mass executions are foreseeable in the near future with 32 people accused of spying for Iran. In this witch-hunt atmosphere in Saudi Arabia it has become necessary to make a real effort to understand who the accused will be in the next scenario of mass executions.
Footnotes
1. Saudi-Arabian toiset kasvot – Rohkeita naisia ja kybernuoria, Like, 2013, Helsinki; in English: Saudi Arabia’s other face – Brave women and cyber youth; this book will be published soon in Italian.
2. John Kincannon in Wikileaks, August 23rd, 2008; Canonical ID: 08RIYADH1283_a
3. Frederic Wehrey, Eastern Promises, Carnegie Middle East Center, 12.2.2013
4. Jadaliyya: Fact Check: The Truth about Shaykh Nimr al-Nimr, 06.01.2016)
5. Toby Matthiesen is a British researcher who has followed developments in the Persian Gulf area for a decade and is a specialist in Gulf sectarianism. His book include Sectarian Gulf, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the Arab Spring that wasn’t, Stanford Briefs, USA, 2013; The Other Saudis, Shiism, Dissent and Sectarianism, Cambridge Middle East Studies, UK, 2014
6. Nawaf Obaid a senior fellow at the King Faysal Center for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh and has been Managing Director for Saudi National Security Assessment project, he has worked for the Saudi Royal Court (2007-2011) and has been special advisor to the Ambassador of Saudi Arabia in United Kingdom (2011-2015).
7. Khobar is a town in the Eastern Province
8. The World’s Most Misunderstood Martyr, Foreign Policy, January 8, 2016
9. marja’, the source of imitation, the highest religious leader of a Shia School of jurisprudence
10. Unemployment among certain sectors of Saudi youth is around 40 %, poverty affects 40 % of the population and the housing problem 60 %. These figures were provided by Saudi ministers interviewed by Karen House, author of the book: On Saudi Arabia, its people, past, religion, fault lines – and future, Alfred A. Knopf, publisher, New York, 2012 ; Another source for the youth unemployment data: John Sfakianakis: Employment Quandary: Youth Struggle to Find Work Raises Urgency for Reforms, Banque Saudi Faransi, 16.2.2011.