QATIF, Saudi Arabia — The best kept secret of the Arabian Peninsula, Saudi Arabia’s dissidents have been kept under a tight lid by the House of Saud’s absolute theocratic rule. To the untrained eye, the kingdom seems like an oasis of political calm and stability amid the furious torrent which has been the Arab Spring.
While 2011 saw the entire political and institutional makeup of the Middle East spin off its axis, throwing the old regional order out of balance, Saudi Arabia has swam against the tide, determined to maintain within its grasp the geopolitical fate of a very unruly Middle East and North Africa. Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Iraq and even Syria — the kingdom has had a say and a hand in every revolution and conflict in the region since 2011, with Saudi officials bent on playing political developments to the tune of their own interests.
But as the Saudi government has stayed focused on defending its regional interests, dissent has been simmering within its borders under the impetus of one particularly charismatic man – Sheik Nimr Baqir al-Nimr.
Although the long-suffering Saudi Shiite cleric has been withering away in one of Al Saud’s political jails for the past two years, awaiting his death by crucifixion at the hands of a regime which suffers no opposition to its rule, Nimr’s very fate has become intertwined with that of the House of Al Saud.
Nimr is a man of religion, but it is his political message and the universality of this discourse which have struck a powerful chord across the kingdom. By advocating for social justice, equality and political self-determination, he’s managed to bring both the Shiite and Sunni communities together under a single umbrella.
“Very much the flagship of Saudi Arabia’s democratic aspirations, Sheik al-Nimr has come to embody an entire people’s yearning for change,” Abdullah al-Shami, a Bahraini political commentator, told MintPress News.
“His courage and refusal to bow before Al Saud in view of incredible pressure and, let’s admit it, violence, has empowered the Saudi people to the extent they believe now that the regime could be overthrown,” he said, later adding, “What began as Saudi Shia’s crusade against religious repression has now morphed into a democratic movement with revolutionary undertones.”
Wael Ahmad, a political expert on the Gulf Cooperation Council based on Dubai, echoed al-Shami’s sentiments, emphasizing to MintPress that Nimr’s pursuit of national cohesion, the universal appeal of his rhetoric and his campaigning for democratic reforms and social justice create a cause for concern among the regime.
Yet Saudi Arabia’s spat with the sheik runs deeper than religion or politics. In fact, it concerns access to the kingdom’s natural resources and control over the Persian Gulf. Home to billions of dollars in oil resources, Qatif, a municipality in Eastern Province, represents such a geostrategic interest that Al Saud would never consider losing control over it, especially not to its regional nemesis Iran.
The seeds of change and a story that “just does not add up”
Cleric, scholar, human rights activist and politician, Nimr has been vocal in his criticism of Saudi Arabia’s absolute monarchy and Wahhabi dogma for well over a decade, unafraid to challenge the authorities or call for a more inclusive sociopolitical system in which all Saudis of all faiths would enjoy equal rights and responsibilities without the fear of religious repression. Very much perceived in the global human rights community as a positive force for change in a society dominated by repression and plagued by arbitrary rule, Nimr’s fate is a popular topic among those looking at the Middle East.
In an interview with MintPress earlier this month, prominent human rights defender Maryam al-Khawaja explained how Nimr’s arrest, detention and subsequent death sentence “encapsulate everything that is wrong with the Saudi regime.”
She said the seeds of change Nimr planted in Saudi Arabia would flourish throughout the region. “Sheik al-Nimr’s fight is not just Saudi Arabia’s fight, it is all our fight,” she said, adding, “Al Saud’s shadow has kept the Arabian Peninsula in a constant state of fear and repression for far too long for people to stand it any longer.”
Nimr’s long battle against the Saudi regime hit its peak in July 2012, when Saudi security forces shot and arrested him in plain sight of his supporters at the very heart of Shiite Saudi Arabia’s dominion of Qatif.
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As Saudis woke up to the images of a white-bearded man covered in blood being dragged out of a car by a group of threatening officers, outrage and disbelief grew. If Al Saud has seldom been known for restraint when it comes to cracking down on what the regime perceives as dissent, never before had a prominent cleric been so viciously brutalized in public.
Saudi authorities held the cleric for eight months before bringing charges against him, even though the Interior Ministry had previously labelled him an “instigator of discord and rioting” upon his arrest.
Keen to justify their position, officials claimed at the time that Nimr resisted arrest by ramming into a security forces vehicle, which prompted officers to respond with force. Reports also claimed the sheik had been seen waving a firearm at police. His brother, Baqir al-Nimr, has consistently rejected such allegations.
In comments reported by Al Monitor in 2013, Baqir al-Nimr said:
“The ministry should not be spreading such hearsay. Its place, position and responsibility require neutrality and fairness. Sheik Nimr was alone in his car, and everyone knows that he does not carry or use a weapon. He has always called for peace and nonviolence. For these reasons, the ministry’s account just does not add up.”
Charged with “disturbing the country’s security,” Sheik Nimr has been sentenced to death by crucifixion. This sentence was confirmed by the judiciary earlier this month after an appeal was registered to overturn the court’s decision.
Could backlash mean the end of Al Saud?
What began as a taunt to the Saudi regime upon the June 2012 death of Saudi Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, has since transformed into a call for the deposition of King Abdullah, and thus, the fall the monarchy on account of Al Saud’s systematic sectarian profiling and targeting of the Shiite community.
“Interestingly enough, the arrest of Sheik Nimr came as relations between Al Saud and Qatif’s Shia had somewhat improved,” said Marwan Abdullah, a human rights activist based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Talking to MintPress, Abdullah added that Nimr’s traction within Saudi Arabia and the relevance of his criticism toward the regime had unnerved Al Saud royals and eventually provoked them.
“Al Saud understood the sheik as a threat to be eliminated. He had become too much of a liability,” Abdullah said, noting, “The thing is, I don’t think anyone in the government anticipated the torrent of anger this one man’s arrest and sentencing would unleash.”
The notion that Saudi Arabia would be the next domino to fall to the Arab Spring was expressed quite explicitly in Al Monitor as early as July 2012. A reported, titled “Has the ‘Arab Spring’ Finally Arrived in Saudi Arabia?,” noted: “With the re-eruption and expansion of protests in Qatif, in eastern Saudi Arabia, Saudis are now asserting that the ‘Spring’ has arrived.”
While this idea has proven to have been overblown, the kingdom has never quite recovered from the media storm ignited by Nimr’s arrest and trial.
If anything, Al Saud royals have found themselves in the midst of a human rights storm, named and shamed by some of the world’s most prominent human rights organizations. In a damaging report released earlier this month, Deputy Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Program Said Boumedouha stressed:
“The shocking death sentence against Sheik al-Nimr followed by the arrest of his brother in court today illustrate the lengths Saudi Arabia will go to in their quest to stop Shia activists from defending their rights. Sheik al-Nimr must be released and Saudi Arabia must end its systematic discrimination and harassment of the Shi’a community.”
Sectarian discourse and regional fault lines
Speaking on Saudi Arabia’s ill sentiment toward Shiite Islam, Maryam al-Khawaja commented to MintPress that it was actually Al Saud’s sectarian discourse that had driven the region to self-destruct to the extent that communities have justified murder and torture by wrapping their narrative under the cloak of religion, losing sight of their own cultural and national identity.
The very ideology of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, rooted in Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi paradigm, has drawn from the kingdom’s religious animosity toward Shiite Islam to drive its cleansing campaign across Syria and Iraq.
If Saudi officials had never thought to rein in their religious antipathy, their determination to exact revenge on Nimr could very well land the kingdom in murky political waters, especially in the context of its growing tensions with and hostility toward Iran.
In an outburst before his congregation this month, prominent Iranian cleric Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Movahhedi Kermani said, “We warn Saudi Arabia … that this government will pay a heavy price for a [possible] execution of a Shia cleric.”
Similar threats of reprisal have been echoed by officials in Iraq, Bahrain, Yemen and Iran.
Nasser Nobari, Iran’s former ambassador to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, encapsulated such foreboding on Monday, when he told Iran’s government-owned Tasnim News Agency, “Al Saud’s decision about Sheik al-Nimr will determine their fate. If they make a correct, wise and peaceful decision, they will live longer, but should they make an unwise decision, I think they will survive for a very short time, namely a couple of years.”
Regardless of what Saudi Arabia ultimately decides, it is likely that Nimr’s name will continue to weigh heavy on the kingdom, a symbol the monarchy may never be able to erase.