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Saudi Arabia
Shia
Shia are a minority in Saudi Arabia, probably constituting about
5 percent of the total population, their number being estimated
from a low of 200,000 to as many as 400,000. Shia are concentrated
primarily in the Eastern Province, where they constituted perhaps
33 percent of the population, being concentrated in the oases
of Qatif and Al Ahsa. Saudi Shia belong to the sect of the Twelvers,
the same sect to which the Shia of Iran and Bahrain belong. The
Twelvers believe that the leadership of the Muslim community rightfully
belongs to the descendants of Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet,
through Ali's son Husayn (see Early Development of Islam , this
ch.). There were twelve such rightful rulers, known as Imams,
the last of whom, according to the Twelvers, did not die but went
into hiding in the ninth century, to return in the fullness of
time as the messiah (mahdi) to create the just and perfect Muslim
society.
From a theological perspective, relations between the Shia and
the Wahhabi Sunnis are inherently strained because the Wahhabis
consider the rituals of the Shia to be the epitome of shirk
(polytheism; literally "association"), especially the Ashura mourning
celebrations, the passion play reenacting Husayn's death at Karbala,
and popular votive rituals carried out at shrines and graves.
In the late 1920s, the Ikhwan (Abd al Aziz ibn Abd ar Rahman Al
Saud's fighting force of converted Wahhabi beduin Muslims) were
particularly hostile to the Shia and demanded that Abd al Aziz
forcibly convert them. In response, Abd al Aziz sent Wahhabi missionaries
to the Eastern Province, but he did not carry through with attempts
at forced conversion. Government policy has been to allow Shia
their own mosques and to exempt Shia from Hanbali inheritance
practices. Nevertheless, Shia have been forbidden all but the
most modest displays on their principal festivals, which are often
occasions of sectarian strife in the gulf region, with its mixed
Sunni-Shia populations.
Shia came to occupy the lowest rung of the socioeconomic ladder
in the newly formed Saudi state. They were excluded from the upper
levels of the civil bureaucracy and rarely recruited by the military
or the police; none was recruited by the national guard. The discovery
of oil brought them employment, if not much of a share in the
contracting and subcontracting wealth that the petroleum industry
generated. Shia have formed the bulk of the skilled and semiskilled
workers employed by Saudi Aramco. Members of the older generation
of Shia were sufficiently content with their lot as Aramco employees
not to participate in the labor disturbances of the 1950s and
1960s.
In 1979 Shia opposition to the royal family was encouraged by
the example of Ayatollah Sayyid Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini's revolutionary
ideology from Iran and by the Sunni Islamist (sometimes seen as
fundamentalist) groups' attack on the Grand Mosque in Mecca in
November. During the months that followed, conservative ulama
and Ikhwan groups in the Eastern Province, as well as Shia, began
to make their criticisms of government heard. On November 28,
1979, as the Mecca incident continued, the Shia of Qatif and two
other towns in the Eastern Province tried to observe Ashura publicly.
When the national guard intervened, rioting ensued, resulting
in a number of deaths. Two months later, another riot in Al Qatif
by Shia was quelled by the national guard, but more deaths occurred.
Among the criticisms expressed by Shia were the close ties of
the Al Saud with and their dependency on the West, corruption,
and deviance from the sharia. The criticisms were similar to those
levied by Juhaiman al Utaiba in his pamphlets circulated the year
before his seizure of the Grand Mosque. Some Shia were specifically
concerned with the economic disparities between Sunnis and Shia,
particularly since their population is concentrated in the Eastern
Province, which is the source of the oil wealth controlled by
the Sunni Al Saud of Najd. During the riots that occurred in the
Eastern Province in 1979, demands were raised to halt oil supplies
and to redistribute the oil wealth so that the Shia would receive
a more equitable share.
After order was restored, there was a massive influx of government
assistance to the region. Included were many large projects to
upgrade the region's infrastructure. In the late 1970s, the Al
Jubayl project, slated to become one of the region's largest employers,
was headed by a Shia. In 1992, however, there were reports of
repression of Shia political activity in the kingdom. An Amnesty
International report published in 1990 stated that more than 700
political prisoners had been detained without charge or trial
since 1983, and that most of the prisoners were Shia (see Prison
Conditions , ch. 5).
Data as of December 1992
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