III. Underlying Discrimination

Eastern Province Shia have accused the government for three decades of discriminating against them in two basic ways. First, they claim that the government is denying them religious and cultural space that they allow to Sunnis. Second, many Shia claim that the government discriminates against them in education, the administration of justice, and in employment.

The events since February 2009 discussed in the following chapters highlight the severe restrictions on freedom of religion for Saudi Shia. But the pattern of repression has a longer recent history. Government offices ban Shia religious observations and policemen prevent Shia from enjoying the same rights of worship as Sunnis do. Having banned `Ashura' processions since taking control of what is now the Eastern Province in 1913, Saudi authorities since 2005 have allowed larger processions in Qatif, though none has been allowed in Ahsa'. The authorities recently built a large Sunni mosque in overwhelmingly Shia Qatif, while continuing to greatly restrict permits for Shia to build or renovate mosques (refusal extends to projects that would not be seeking financial support from the state, something that Sunni mosque projects frequently enjoy).[22]

The recent history of discrimination against the Shia includes the way in which official figures portray and treat them as persons of dubious faith, and hence, as second class citizens. The former grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, Shaikh Abd al-Aziz bin Baz, in 1993 declared the Shia Ramadhan festival of Qarqi'un a heretical "innovation."[23] The force of such religious pronouncements, and their consequences for denying Shia their religious freedom, can be seen in the actions by a local education official in the Eastern Province: Ahmad Bil-Ghanaim, the director of education in Ahsa', in September 2007 issued a directive to all schools to ban all Qarqi'un festivities.[24]

Pronouncements against the Shia as unbelievers contribute to what are regular restrictions the state imposes on their freedom to worship in spaces shared with Sunni worshipers, such as Mekka and Medina. For example, on August 5, 2007, Sayed AlQazwini, an American Shia, was praying in the Grand Mosque in Mekka when a member of the "religious police ... was attacking the belief system of the Shia, stating that they are considered infidels ... that the Shia worship the dead [and] stones and rocks," he told the Al-Khoei foundation, a Shia institution named after a revered Iranian Shia scholar who lived in Iraq. The religious policeman told AlQazwini that "[y]ou are all cowards and we will purify the holy mosque from the Shia" before arresting him, AlQazwini said.[25] In November 2005 the religious police briefly arrested an 82-year-old Saudi Ismaili man in Medina for carrying an Ismaili prayer book.[26] In 2001, the religious police arrested Turki al-Turki, a Saudi Shia from Tarut in the Eastern Province, as he exited the mosque of the Prophet Muhammad in Medina, later charging him with insulting the companions of the Prophet. A Sunni judge in Qatif later convicted al-Turki of that charge, handing down a suspended sentence of 350 lashes and eight months in prison. In October 2006, as Shia-Sunni tension rose, the Ministry of Education suspended al-Turki, a teacher, from his work, and police arrested him in February 2007 to enforce the sentence.[27] The Saudi Shia news website Rasid reported on March 5, 2009, that members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (CPVPV, commonly referred to as the religious police) had obstructed Shia in their religious worship in Medina.[28]

Shia are not allowed to teach religion or history in schools.[29] Among the episodes of discrimination and harassment against Shia students reported to Human Rights Watch, in 2006 Sunni teachers in schools in Ahsa' called Shia students "unbelievers" on several occasions (students recorded such episodes on their cellphones);[30] in April that year a Shia student in Riyadh alleged that religious policemen arrested her following an argument she had about differences in Sunni and Shia Islam with a fellow Sunni student;[31] and in March 2008 an Ismaili in Riyadh recounted how a Sunni teacher had called his daughter an unbeliever and expelled her from his class.[32] In another egregious incident that was officially documented, a school in Ahsa' on June 4, 2007, expelled for one year 15-year-old Khadija al-Sa'id for "trivializing any part of God's word or any Islamic ritual," for having made allegedly insulting remarks about the Prophet Muhammad.[33]

Shia face discrimination in the judiciary, too, ranging from denial of access to justice to arbitrary arrests and discriminatory verdicts. In February 2006 a judge in Khobar told a Shia worker whose Sunni boss had asked him to be a witness to his child's wedding that he refused to accept him as a witness because of his Shia creed.[34] In June 2009 a Sunni judge in Qatif sentenced a Shia man to three months in prison and 400 lashes for cursing God, based on allegations made by the man's Sunni coworker; the judge used disparaging language about the Shia while sentencing this man.[35] Shia to whom Human Rights Watch has spoken over the past four years almost universally allege (and many Sunnis aware of the situation of Shia agree) that false claims against Shia based on religiously motivated charges, such as cursing God, the Prophet, or his companions, are a staple of discriminatory acts against Shia.[36]

Saudi authorities at the Jordanian-Saudi border in Quraiyat in late 2008 detained Wafiqat al-Hazza', a Shia woman from Ahsa', as she was returning from Syria, for having a Shia prayer book in her possession. A court later sentenced her to six months for witchcraft and sorcery, but even her trial (the date of which is not clear) only took place after the intervention of the Saudi Human Rights Commission which started a judicial review of her case. She was released on June 23, 2009.[37]

Discrimination against Shia in the administration of justice is not limited to individual cases, but is built into the justice system. There are no Shia judges except for seven judges serving three Shia courts-two first instance courts in Qatif and Ahsa', and an appeals court, also in Qatif. However, their jurisdiction is limited to personal status, inheritance, and endowments cases. In August 2005 a new royal decree significantly curtailed the already limited jurisdiction of the two Shia first instance courts, giving Sunni courts the authority to supervise the Shia courts and take up cases pending there.[38] When, in September 2007, fears by the judges in the Shia courts that Sunni courts would use this provision to take over cases previously under Shia court jurisdiction on issues such as land inheritance became a reality, the Shia judges announced their intention to resign should amendments not be introduced. Following a brief period of suspension of work, they resumed their work without achieving any concessions.[39] In other provisions of the new decree, only the regular Sunni courts would have jurisdiction over cases involving a dispute between two parties,[40] and if one of the parties even in a non-disputed case was not a Shia, the Sunni courts would automatically have jurisdiction.[41]

State discrimination against the Shia stems from the official Wahhabi creed and is manifest in the state's religiously infused education system, state sponsorship of official religious worship, and a judiciary which draws its legitimacy from Sunni Wahhabism. It is this umbrella of religiously legitimized or religion-infused state institutions under which prominent Islamic thinkers and clerics, often state officials, continue to propagate incitement to hostility against the Shia. The Saudi government tolerates such speech, sometimes even by silencing its critics:[42] the government arrested Shia cleric Shaikh Tawfiq al-'Amir on June 22, 2008, after he spoke out in a sermon he gave in Hofuf on June 11 against a May 30 statement signed by 22 prominent Saudi Wahhabi clerics, including Abdullah bin Jibrin, Abd al-Rahman al-Barrak, and Nasir al-'Umar, in which they called the "Shia sect an evil among the sects of the Islamic nation, and the greatest enemy and deceivers of the Sunni people."[43] Of the 22 signatories, 11 are current government officials and 6 are former government officials.[44] Early in 2008 another hardline cleric, Abd al-Rahman al-Sa'd, prohibited selling real estate to Shia in a fatwa, because "therein lies assistance to the [Shia] in bringing out their corrupt religion and their bad creed."[45] There was no official response to these well-publicized incidents.[46]

King Abdullah's large delegation to the interfaith gathering in New York in November 2008, which he had initiated, reportedly contained no Saudi Shia.[47] In February 2009 King Abdullah reshuffled the Council of Senior Religious Scholars, the most authoritative voice on interpreting state religious and judicial doctrine, appointing for the first time scholars versed in traditions other than the Hanbali school of jurisprudence adhered to by Wahhabi Sunnis. However, he appointed no Shia of the Ja'fari school followed by Shia in the Eastern Province or of any other Shia schools, dashing the hopes of Shia for greater inclusion in religio-juridical affairs of the country.[48]

State practices of discrimination and exclusion toward Shia have created a sentiment of unequal citizenship. Few if any Shia manage to enroll in military training colleges or serve in the army, although Prince Khalid bin Sultan, deputy minister of defense, in June 2009 promised the Shia that there were no official obstacles to their enrollment.[49] There are no Shia ministers or high-ranking diplomats. Whether the barriers are overtly from the side of the government, or reflect a lack of Shia candidates because of their low expectations of getting government employment, or both, is unclear.