AT LEAST by their own lenient standards, Western governments issued a blunt rebuke to the Saudi authorities over the execution of a cleric who was revered among the Shia minority in the kingdom’s eastern region. Both America and the European Union said the death sentence was not only a violation of free speech and due process; it was also likely to fuel sectarian (ie Sunni-Shia) tension across the region.
The latter prediction came true almost immediately. Tensions flared between Saudi Arabia and Iran, respectively the standard-bearers of Sunni and Shia Islam in their most hard-line and theocratic forms. The two countries are already at loggerheads over the civil wars of Syria and Yemen, where they support opposing sides. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, declared that the Sunni kingdom would face divine revenge for putting to death a peaceful cleric. Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, one of 47 people whose execution was announced at the weekend, had neither invited people to [an] armed movement nor was involved in covert plots, the ayatollah thundered. Demonstrators attacked Saudi Arabia’s embassy in Tehran on Saturday evening, setting the building ablaze before police pushed them back.
There were also demonstrations in the Saudi city of Qatif, a Shia stronghold (see picture); in Lebanon, homeland of the Shia militia Hizbullah; in Bahrain, where a Shia majority lives resentfully under a Sunni-dominated regime; in Iraq, where a Shia-led government is battling the Sunni jihadists of Islamic State; and in Pakistan, where a Shia minority has suffered deadly bomb attacks by Sunni extremists.
Vali Nasr, an American international-affairs professor, former diplomat and authority on Shia Islam, suggested that in carrying out the sentence, the Saudi authorities were knowingly sending a harsh sectarian signal to all comers. Sectarian narrative helps Saudi rulers at tough times: rally Sunnis at home and in region against Shia challenge, he tweeted.
Among activists from the Gulf region, some of the more thoughtful responses insisted that the sheikh saw himself as a campaigner for human rights, not as a lobbyist for any sectarian cause; it was therefore wrong to respond in sectarian terms. It was pointed out that the sheikh himself had never confined his criticism to his own Sunni overlords; he also had critical words for the non-Sunni rulers of Syria, who are aligned with the Shia camp. The sheikhs own family issued a statement which insisted that he was a man of peace.
He rejected sectarianism for more than four decades. We…condemn and denounce this unjust sentence. We consider it a method of executing wisdom and moderation…it was a stab in the back which sought to assassinate [his] peaceful methodology…as he condemned and rejected the use of weapons and violence.
Meanwhile Maryam al-Khawaja, a courageous human-rights campaigner from Bahrain, implored people not to fall into the trap of tit-for-tat sectarianism. Fighting for justice, rights and freedom? If you are sectarian, you’ve already lost. Regimes best weapon is sectarianism and you’re the ammunition, she tweeted. She did not say which regimes she had in mind, but the word was clearly in the plural. Unfortunately, though, already-simmering sectarian tensions are a very handy weaponand there is plenty of human ammunition willing to be used.
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