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VIII. Discrimination

Discrimination in Education and Employment

In a May 2006 letter to King Abdullah, Ismaili leaders wrote that in addition to the forced relocation of government employees following the Holiday Inn events, for the people of Najran the “marginalization of local capacity [is] letting their interests lie fallow.”¹⁷⁶

Some Ismailis have had successful careers. Human Rights Watch spoke to a retired colonel, a high official in a government ministry, several successful lawyers working outside Najran, and several managers of profitable businesses. But the high government official in particular described how his religious identity had blocked his advancement. When he had applied for an open professorship in his field some 15 years ago at a leading Saudi university, the university told him they had to wait out the academic year before it would be able to offer him the position, which it then never did. When he inquired, he said, a high-ranking Saudi prince informed him that his appointment “was turned down for security reasons.” A few years later, he started work in the ministry. He said that he is the only senior Ismaili employee there, but also the only one of 300 employees who has not received a promotion over the past 10 years. He told Human Rights Watch that people “come to me [at work] and say, ‘They talk behind your back and say you are Shia and not to be trusted.’”¹⁷⁷

Education

The kind of  experience of exclusion in the Sunni education system that Ismaili educationalist Fatima Al Tisan described in her 2006 statement to the Center for National Dialogue that got her fired from her job (see Chapter VII) has been a frequent Ismaili complaint. In a written statement from around 2002 later posted on the internet, one Ismaili commented, “The people of Najran have been deprived for 15 years from attending colleges, institutes, and military training centers.”¹⁷⁸ An Ismaili told Human Rights Watch, “There’s no Ismaili in the army or air force college. Because Najran is on the border and has a single religious authority, they are afraid.” He said his brother wanted to go to the Prince Nayef Security College, but was refused although he got outstanding grades.¹⁷⁹ Another Ismaili told Human Rights Watch that more than 100 Ismailis had gone to Jordan to study aviation science, a field they were blocked from studying in Saudi Arabia.¹⁸⁰

Al Tisan’s statement to the Center for National Dialogue also encompassed how job discrimination betrayed the hopes of of Ismaili schoolchildren for a successful career because the jobs in Najran went to non-Ismailis. She spoke of the “feeling, even as small children, that teachers treat those of different religious schools of thought differently … and when we held certificates as aspiring graduates eager on serving the country someone would come to prohibit us … and we were changed by those described as intransigent and racist who were hunting for official positions and practicing their oppressive policy against us.”¹⁸¹

Employment

Public sector and security sector jobs

In Najran, as elsewhere in the kingdom, the government is a major employer. In 2005 Najran’s governor, Prince Mish’al, told a journalist,

I want you to see for example the heads of the administrations and of the employees we have in the governorate. Eighty per cent of them are from among our brothers the Ismailis … and there is a high number from them in the armed forces and in the national guard and in the police. They do not face any restrictions in any employment.¹⁸²

Prince Mish’al’s characterizations may have been true of an earlier time, but Ismaili accounts speak of a very different situation under his administration. Ismailis claim that there is consistent discrimination against them in the government’s employment policy, extending to entire sectors.

This appears to be especially the case in the governmental security apparatus. While there are Ismailis in all branches of the military, few reach the senior ranks that are restricted to those who graduate from the military colleges. Informal, but nevertheless real, restrictions apply on the seniority of position that Ismailis can attain. One retired Ismaili colonel related how his decision to retire came after being repeatedly passed over for promotions and feeling that his ethnic and religious origin prevented his advancement.¹⁸³ An Ismaili with personal knowledge of the matter told Human Rights Watch that an air force general (name withheld) hid his Ismaili identity while serving, and did not raise suspicion because his name is not easily identified as Ismaili.¹⁸⁴ Another Ismaili confirmed that qualified Ismailis only exceptionally raise to higher ranks in the armed services.¹⁸⁵

As of 2006 only five Ismailis were reported to be working in the local mabahith office.¹⁸⁶ One local Ismaili recalled three names of Ismaili officers who worked in the Police Directorate or in the Traffic Administration, “but they do not have authority.”¹⁸⁷ An Ismaili elder told Human Rights Watch that over the past seven years, the government appointed not a single Ismaili to work in any of the 213 open positions in the civil defense department.¹⁸⁸ A private report from around 2002 complains, “The number of [Ismaili] workers in all civil and military divisions in Najran does not exceed the fingers of one hand in each department.¹⁸⁹

Commenting generally about public sector employment, Ismailis cited their exclusion from leadership positions as the primary problem. One complained, “We Najranis do not fill any of the important positions in the province. Najranis are in maybe less than 2 percent of high positions.”¹⁹⁰

Regarding employment in state education, one interviewee said he did not know “one Najrani man or woman who occupies a leadership position, even at the school cafeteria.”¹⁹¹ A former Ismaili schoolteacher now working in the administration of the Ministry of Education told Human Rights Watch that the director and deputy director of the ministry’s Najran branch, Sunnis from outside the region, were of lower professional rank than qualified Ismaili educationalists.¹⁹²

Vocational colleges were only set up in Najran in the 1990s, long after other parts of the kingdom had established them, and King Abdullah promised to combine training colleges and elevate their status to the region’s first university on his October 2006 visit. In 2008 two Ismailis separately told Human Rights Watch that Ismailis from Najran had been passed over in the hiring of the university president, all teaching staff, and most other staff, despite suitable qualifications.¹⁹³

Descrimination can occur in the lower ranks too: One Ismaili elder told Human Rights Watch,

my daughter graduated with a grade of 93 out of 100 from high school and went to teach Arabic and social studies in the [name withheld] school for two years. But then her contract was not renewed and a new Wahhabi teacher was brought in who had lower grades. The head of the local education department made the decision. He is a Wahhabi.¹⁹⁴

Speaking of the civil service more broadly, one Ismaili who, through years of working in the governorate of Najran, gained first-hand insight into the mechanisms of discrimination that is normally hidden from public view, told Human Rights Watch, “In 1402 [1982], there were seven Ismaili directors out of 35 of government departments, and now there is only one”: the director in the local branch of the Trade Ministry is the only Ismaili to hold that rank.¹⁹⁵

Saudi Arabia’s civil service has 15 ranks, and ministers appoint candidates to ranks 11 and higher. This former official said that throughout his many years working for the governorate “only one person from the region was appointed above rank 10, while 20 persons from outside the region were appointed.”¹⁹⁶

This civil servant had not lost faith in the public employment system. “To a certain degree there is a clean system in the civil service appointments,” he said, but with respect to Najran he described a pattern of special appointments, which make up around 10 percent of the governorate’s staffing, a figure higher than in other regions. For these jobs, he said, “the prince [governor] makes the decisions and that is the reason that there is no Ismaili. The prince writes the appointment letter to the Ministry of Interior, saying the appointment of this outsider is for peace and stability or something like that. They prefer people from outside the region.” The reasons for excluding locals, he said, included concerns that local employees with ties with the local population and in the position of informed insiders might divulge “secrets” of the region to the broader community, “but mostly they don’t like the locals. By contrast, their relation with senior officials from outside the region [is] one of trust and security.”¹⁹⁷

At civil service positions of ranks 10 and below, promotions are supposed to be based on competitive examination for vacant positions, or by automatic elevation based on length of service. The former official quoted above explained, “The law says that either every two years you can compete for a higher post, or every four years your rank is raised as a matter of course.”¹⁹⁸ A local activist explained to Human Rights Watch that after 1996, however, when Prince Mish’al became governor, there “began a rotation system of officials into Najran. For example, they brought people in the sixth civil service rank from outside Najran to be the boss of Najrani employees of the eighth rank.”¹⁹⁹ When Human Rights Watch asked if the preference for outsiders could be explained by the absence of local talent, especially given the lag in local institutions of higher education, the civil service expert cited numerous examples of local Ismailis who had obtained certificates from the Institute of General Administration, or achieved excellent results in job training programs.²⁰⁰

One student described what he perceived as an unwritten government policy to fill professional posts in Najran with Sunni outsiders and disperse Ismaili professionals to other regions:

I study nursing at King Khalid University in Abha and all the students there are Wahhabis with beards who harass me. They say “You pray to the makrami [referring to the Da’i], but that’s not true. I finished my studies and have three choices for my preferred region of employment. There is demand in Najran, but I know that choosing Najran will delay my employment, so I will choose Dammam, Riyadh, or Baha.²⁰¹

According to many Ismailis, official discrimination in employment currently takes the form of an apparent preference for Sunni Yemenis recently settled in Najran over indigenous Ismailis. A January 2008 petition to Governor Prince Mish’al from Ismaili elders and activists decried “granting [the Yemenis] priority and facilitations that the citizen from Najran does not enjoy.”²⁰² Of the naturalized Yemenis, “two have now become judges in Najran. Others get government jobs, they get easier permits for trade, and even Yemenis without residency permit are not arrested,” an Ismaili banker working outside Najran told Human Rights Watch.²⁰³ One former insider of the Najran governorate sadly concluded, “Yes, there is discrimination in the appointment policy, favoring the outsiders.”²⁰⁴

Private sector

Ismailis also claim discrimination in local business opportunities. They cite the example of the Najran Cement Factory, which Prince Mish’al planned to set up together with two retired Ministry of Defense officials, Muhammad Mani’ Abal’ala and Sa’ud bin Sa’d al-‘Uraifi. They set a minimum investment amount of SAR 15 million [$ 4 million], which was beyond the means of locals, effectively excluding any local ownership.²⁰⁵

Mining companies have also recently started to upgrade their activities in the Najran area, especially in Bi’r ‘Askar. The Tinhat company, owned by Prince Muhammad bin Sa’ud, grew from four employees 15 years ago to 300 now.²⁰⁶ Other companies operating in the area are the bin Ladin company (now Bakr and Ibrahim), the Granite and Marble Company, the Red Sea Company, the al-Harbi company, the Misar al-Sa’udi Granite Company, the Taqaddum Company, the Awtad Riyadh, and Sa’id al-Ghamidi Company. Bi’r ‘Askar has a population of 2,556, but out of a total of around 1,000 employees working in these companies not more than 15 are locals, who are earning SAR 1,000-1,500 [$266- $400] per month, a group of men from the village told Human Rights Watch.²⁰⁷ When a group of Ismailis wanted to open their own granite and marble company in 2005, the Ministry of Petrol and Mineral Resources as well as local authorities refused to grant a license.²⁰⁸

Religious Freedom

Ismaili and Wahhabi interpretations of Islam, though they differ in some respects, agree on the broad outlines of Muhammad’s prophecy, the Quran, and the Prophet Muhammad’s Sunna (norm-setting behavior) as sources of law, and on most elements of the Islamic creed. Like the Shia in the Eastern Province, however, the Ismailis in Najran face government infringements in the practice of their religion. It has already been noted elsewhere in this report that senior Saudi religious officials have called Ismailis “infidels” (kuffar) and “atheists” (zandaqa), and they attribute to Shia generally these and other qualities, such as being “rejectionists” (rawafidh), that deny they are true Muslims. In Saudi Arabia, the state perceives itself as drawing religious legitimacy from its jurisdiction over Mekka and Medina, the birthplaces of Islam, and from its interpretation of the Islamic creed that it regards as normative. Being within the realm of Islam (dar al-islam) carries significance for social acceptance and, to believers, supreme importance on the day of judgment in the hereafter. This significance is especially pronounced in the application of law, which is infused with religion-based jurisprudence (see section “Discrimination in the justice system,” below).

One direct result of the intolerance the official Saudi religious establishment displays towards minority creeds is the government’s destruction, over the past five to ten years, of mosques frequented by Ismailis, and Shia generally, in Medina, including the Fudhaih mosque of Imam Ali bin Abi Talib, the Shams mosque,²⁰⁹ the al-‘Aridh mosque (from Ummayad times), and the fountain of the Prophet’s wife, Umm Ibrahim.²¹⁰

In a Mekka conference convened by the Organization of The Islamic Conference in the summer of 2006 to reconcile differences between Islamic sects and schools of jurisprudence, conferees listed the Shia Zaidi and Ja’fari sects as legitimate schools of thought, but excluded mention of the Ismailis. Ismaili protests succeeded in removing from the draft language names of specifically accepted schools of thought, substituting instead a general assertion that “all schools of thought are recognized.”²¹¹

That this is not the case in practice is illustrated by a personal account related to Human Rights Watch. A young Ismaili in Najran told us how, having served a short prison term for illegal weapons possession, a year after his release he got a job in the local Ministry of Finance after succeeding in the civil service competitive examination. He completed all the paperwork, but officials told him that his conviction barred him from government work for four years.

I tried to appeal but had no luck. They said, “Go to the criminal investigation to get an exemption.” There, an officer told me I needed a stamp from a [religious] shaikh certifying that I pray five times a day. I said, “I am Ismaili. I can’t get that stamp. Only Sunni shaikhs have stamps.” He just said, “Bye-bye.”²¹²

The dominant Saudi view of the religious praxis of Ismailis as religiously suspect manifests itself in discriminatory policies, detailed below, that violate the religious freedom of the Ismaili community. First, security and administrative authorities directly prevent Ismailis from practicing their faith and imparting religious beliefs to their followers. Second, the state materially supports Sunni mosques and preachers, but not similar Ismaili facilities or personnel. Third, the intolerance Saudi officials sometimes display towards heterodox Islamic practices, and Ismailis in particular, shows up in the promotion of the state-sanctioned Sunni creed and practice among schoolchildren and the disparagement of Ismaili beliefs.

Saudi authorities have at various times exiled the Ismaili Da’i, detained him, or placed him under house arrest. One Ismaili told Human Rights Watch in July 2006 that “the Ismaili religious leader [was] prohibited to go out to preach to people and pray with them.”²¹³ Another Ismaili specified that “the Da’i and all Ismaili men of religion do not teach since the Holiday Inn hotel events … [because] of certainly not publicized government pressures.”²¹⁴ In an earlier incident, in 1997 the Ministry of Interior placed the Ismaili spiritual guide under house arrest, and prohibited visitors, communal prayer, or any other interaction with him. A group of Ismailis went to Interior Minister Prince Nayef to complain, but found themselves imprisoned and ill-treated following their complaint. Shortly thereafter, the Da’i was released from house arrest, and the petitioners to Prince Nayef signed a pledge not to “inconvenience” the authorities again, and surrendered their passports.²¹⁵

In an undated letter sometime before June 2005, Ismaili shaikhs from Al Fatima, Jashm, and Muwajid, and the sons of Abdullah Hamadan, asked then-Crown Prince Abdullah to “remove the shackles imposed on our shaikh … and treat him like you treated his predecessors.”²¹⁶ These restrictions continued into 2008. One Ismaili close to the Da’i told Human Rights Watch, “Today, the Da’i cannot receive anyone in his house to teach the religion, all religious teaching is forbidden, as is the printing of books.”²¹⁷

Ordinary Ismailis also face official curbs on their freedom to practice their religion. Ismaili religious practice is similar to that of the prevailing Sunni sect, and differences are often limited to dates of important holidays. As described in Chapter IV, this minor difference (reliance on a fixed calendar as opposed to the official Saudi calendar’s reliance on actual sighting of the new moon to announce the beginning of a month) prompted local authorities in Najran to close Ismaili mosques at the time of the Eid al-Fitr holidays in early 2000, which in turn spurred the Holiday Inn disturbances. In an earlier incident in the summer of 1995, the mabahith arrested a group of at least eight Ismaili men from Najran who had just returned from pilgrimage in May because they had adhered to their own calendar for calculating the days of the pilgrimage, which differed slightly from the official Saudi calculation of those dates. A contemporary of these men asserted that their jailers deprived the men of sleep for a period of a month.²¹⁸ That same year, the authorities arrested two Ismaili prayer leaders during a Muslim holiday, again because the Ismaili calendar diverged slightly from official Saudi timekeeping.²¹⁹

Shaikhs Ahmad Al Sa’b and Mas’ud Al Haidar, in a petition to King Abdullah written after August 2005, complained that Ismailis did not have the opportunity to “take care of the affairs of their creed, to build mosques or enlarge existing ones, to acquire their [religious] books and to give [religious] instruction to those who want [to receive it] and who are interested.”²²⁰ Human Rights Watch heard accounts supporting all of these complaints.

One Ismaili told us, “In early 1426 [2005], the people of the Al Mutif area in Ubayyan quarter wanted to build a new mosque to pray close to their homes, but did not receive permission. The matter went to the religious police, then to the Ministry of Guidance, Islamic Affairs, Preaching and Foundations, then to the governorate, then to the security departments. In the end, they were able to build the mosque.”²²¹ By contrast with this lengthy struggle to get state permission, another interviewee recalled that in around 2002 the state confiscated land in two exclusively Ismaili areas and built Sunni mosques there, to which it now busses Bangladeshi migrant workers for prayers.²²² An Ismaili currently living outside Najran recounted how one day several years ago, authorities from the Ministry of Islamic Affairs put a padlock on the small mosque adjacent to the petrol station his family owned and appointed a Sunni imam to work there. The family, who had built the mosque, was not allowed any longer to pray there according to the dictates of their faith.²²³ In another example, he mentioned that “about four to five years ago, people wanted to enlarge the Salih bin Ruqban mosque, but they never received permission to do so.”²²⁴ Around three years ago, Ismailis failed to gain permission to enlarge the al-Jaffa mosque.²²⁵

In Shurfa, an area close to Najran city where the government is currently settling Yemeni Sunni tribes, local inhabitants told Human Rights Watch they were not permitted to build Ismaili mosques.²²⁶ In a tour of a sparsely populated stretch of the Najran valley on the border with Yemen toward the end of 2006, Human Rights Watch was able to observe several Sunni mosques, but only isolated Ismaili mosques, although Ismailis still outnumbered the Sunnis from outside the region who had settled there recently.

Saudi Arabia censors all printed material that enters the kingdom or is published there. Some Saudis say that the list of permitted materials has grown more inclusive when it comes to religious works by Muslims who do not adhere strictly to interpretations favored by Saudi clerics, but Ismailis still cannot print or freely import their own prayer books.

One Ismaili in Najran told Human Rights Watch in 2008,

We have the books we have. They are in our houses. We cannot reprint them here or bring them in from Egypt or Bahrain. If a customs official catches you with a banned Ismaili prayer book on the causeway [from Bahrain], he will confiscate it.²²⁷

Even possession of such prayer books can provoke governmental intervention.  One Ismaili elder told Human Rights Watch of the case of an 82-year-old Ismaili man, who in November 2005 went to Medina, where religious police discovered him reading Munassaq Du’a, an Ismaili prayer book, confiscated his book, and called the regular police who arrested him. This was a book the Ministry of Information had permitted, he said.²²⁸

An Ismaili grievance petition circulating in 2003 noted that the government

continue[s] to confiscate Ismaili prayer books with prayers to Imam Ali and to Imam Zain al-‘Abidin, and demand[s] they be substituted with books by bin ‘Uthaimin and bin Baz, two prominent Wahhabi religious figures [who served] on the highest governmental body for religious interpretation.²²⁹

The authorities force Ismaili children to partake in Sunni religious education classes in school. In a petition to then-Crown Prince Abdullah, Ismaili leaders claimed that “teachers from outside the region forcibly inculcate the pupils [with Wahhabi doctrines] and threaten them with failure if they do not participate, and they request the pupils to bring the religious books of their [Ismaili] religious creed and then subject them to ridicule and curses.”²³⁰ An Ismaili father told Human Rights Watch in February 2008, “My children, a son in sixth grade and a daughter in fourth grade, are constantly taught that what your father thinks is wrong, that you Ismailis are wrong.”²³¹ Harsh punishments have been meted out to Ismaili teachers and students for challenging this. 

In 1999 (1420) missionary Sunni schoolteachers tried to force Ismaili schoolchildren in Najran to convert to their Wahhabi Sunni doctrine. They used beatings, threats, and grades reduced below the level needed for admission to universities and jobs. Some of the students, including Muhammad Husain al-Ghibar, Zhafir Muhammad al-Salum, ‘Abd al-Rahman, Faraj Al ‘Abih, and Salih Ali Al Zamanan ended up in court, and were sentenced to imprisonment and public flogging in front of fellow students.²³²

An Ismaili from Najran described to Human Rights Watch how in the early months of 1421 (2000) a Sunni teacher reportedly insulted the Ismaili faith and raised doubts about the patriotism of locals from Najran. That same year, a student fought with the teacher outside school. Shortly thereafter, the mabahith summoned a group of students, including Mubarak Salim Al Mis’id, Ali Yahya Al Salim, and Ali Farj al-Salum, from the school, mistreated them, and charged them with resisting authority. At their trial, the judge sentenced them to between 18 and 24 months in prison and 800 and 1,200 lashes.²³³

In another incident, around 2001, a teacher from Jizan tried to force Ismaili students to adhere to the Wahhabi creed. The students informed their parents, some of whom went to speak to the teacher. The teacher then complained that the parents and three Ismaili teachers had incited the students against him. Following this complaint, a court case ensued that resulted in the Ismaili teachers being sentenced to flogging in front of their students.²³⁴

At the end of March 2003, a middle school teacher tried to force Ismaili students to follow the Wahhabi beliefs through beatings and intimidation. When the students refused, he took down their names, tied them up, and paraded them through school saying, “Look at the Ismaili who refuses to follow the school of thought of the state!”²³⁵

An Ismaili former history teacher told Human Rights Watch in April 2008 about his ongoing ordeal in court following an investigation six years ago into alleged remarks he made in class that the Ministry of Education interpreted as insulting the Companions of the Prophet Muhammad and questioning the official line of Sunni history in favor of Ismaili historical beliefs. The Ministry of Education demoted him as a disciplinary measure.²³⁶

Preferring not to participate in missionary lectures by Wahhabi instructors at work has been sufficient to land an Ismaili in prison. In 1999 a civil defense department employee did not participate in a religious lecture at his workplace because these sermons declared persons of the Ismaili faith heretical. The mabahith arrested him. When he later complained to the minister of interior, naming two colleagues who could testify to the incendiary and discriminatory nature of these sermons, those colleagues were given new assignments outside Najran.²³⁷

Discrimination in the Justice System

Discriminatory policies based on Ismaili religious identity also mar the justice system. In several cases that Human Rights Watch is aware of, a judge ruled against an Ismaili because of his religious identity. In two cases, the judges made this explicit, while in other cases the circumstances surrounding the accusations, or the fact that Sunnis are not sentenced similarly for similar offenses, strongly suggest a link between the judgment and the minority religious identity of the accused. A further area of discrimination against Ismailis in the justice system is the treatment of Ismaili prisoners as compared with their fellow Sunni inmates.

Judicial legitimation of religious discrimination

Only Sunnis can be Sharia court judges in Saudi Arabia. (A very limited exception to this unwritten rule is the presence of Shia judges in two courts in the Eastern Province who have jurisdiction over personal status cases exclusively involving Shia. Sunni Sharia judges in the Eastern Province handle all criminal cases regardless of the sect of the defendants, all other cases where one of the parties is Sunni, and all appeals, even in cases where both parties are Shia.) For Ismailis in Najran, Sunni judges handle all cases, including personal status issues such as marriage certifications (Ismailis have to marry twice, several Ismailis told us: once in private according to their own traditions, and once officially before a Sunni judge), and questions of inheritance.

Mas’ud Al Haidar and Shaikh Amad Al Sa’b, the two Ismaili tribal leaders, in a letter to King Abdullah after 2005, wrote that judges sometimes remarked that “the people of Najran pay obedience to others beside God and are not zealous for their country.”²³⁸

Court rulings against Ismails solely because of religious identity

Public outcry over two cases in which judges affirmed discriminatory treatment of Ismailis shows that many Saudis perceive such rulings to be wrong. By contrast, official silence and failure to rectify the treatment of Ismailis by judges only lends a stamp of approval to discriminatory dealings with religious minorities in the justice system.

On May 10, 2006, a judge in Jeddah refused to allow an Ismaili lawyer to present the case of his client on the sole grounds that he is Ismaili. Journalist Qinan al-Ghamidi portrayed the exchange between the lawyer and the judge in the Saudi daily al-Watan newspaper:

The judge said, “I will ask you a question and you will answer truthfully.” The lawyer said, “Alright.” The judge asked, “Are you of the Yam [tribe]?” The lawyer answered, “Yes.” The judge asked, “Are you Sunni or Ismaili?” The lawyer answered, “Ismaili.” The judge said, “Take your [lawyer’s] card and your power of attorney and get out, for I will accept nothing from you. And call your client [and tell him] he can attend on his own or look for a “Sunni” lawyer.²³⁹

Human Rights Watch met with the lawyer in question in December 2006 in Jeddah. He said he had not heard from the Ministry of Justice about any official disciplinary action against this judge. In his article, Qinan al-Ghamidi invited the minister to respond.²⁴⁰ The Saudi National Lawyers’ Committee, an interest group of lawyers under the national Chambers of Commerce organization, requested clarifications from the ministry, which replied that the judge in question denied the lawyer’s Ismaili faith was the reason for barring him from appearing.²⁴¹

Shortly before that ruling on March 15, 2006, a judge in ‘Asir province annulled the marriage of an Ismaili man to a Sunni woman, reasoning that “the [marriage] contract is not sound because of the lack of [the man’s] religious qualification, because the Shia are not qualified [to marry] Sunnis.”²⁴² The verdict remains in force.

Three officials in the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Awqaf, Mission, and Guidance, including the general supervisor of the Najran regional office, served as character witnesses for a man accused by local Ismailis of wrongdoing in a commercial case. A statement by these officials cast the local Ismaili population as non-Muslims, alleging that the complaint against the person in question “was issued by a people whose motive, which has not escaped the ruler, may God grant him success, is religious jealously [of their school of thought] and not ardor for the homeland, and the investigation into this charge has been seized by those who are indebted to obedience to others beside God.”²⁴³ Charging a person with worship of others beside God effectively bans the person’s testimony in court. The Najran chief judge, Muhammad bin Ahmad al-‘Askari, endorsed the view of the three officials on 3/7/1421 [October 2, 2000] in a handwritten note on the statement and affixed his signature and seal as a sign of authentication.²⁴⁴ Human Rights Watch was unable to ascertain the outcome of the case.

Prosecutions targeting Ismail religious practice or identity

The incident precipating the April 2000 Holiday Inn events, covered in Chapters IV and V of this report, was the arrest of Ismaili cleric Muhammad al-Khayyat amid accusations of “sorcery.”Just over a year earlier, Saudi security forces had arrested two Ismaili prayer leaders, Mahdi and ‘Ali Al Futaih, and “accuse[d] them of sorcery and deviance,” based on having found women’s hair in the house.²⁴⁵ In 1998-99 (1419), courts found Mahdi and ‘Ali Al Futaih guilty of “sorcery” and sentenced them to three years in prison and 300 lashes. Three other prayer leaders, Nasir Al Qura’i, Muhsin Al Bahrai, and Hatim al-Makrami, were arrested around the same period for “sorcery” and received sentences of, respectively, seven years in prison, three years and 300 lashes, and two years and 200 lashes.²⁴⁶

In other cases, evidence of discrimination based on religious identity is more circumstantial. In three cases, Sunni judges in Najran sentenced three Ismailis over words they had allegedly uttered deemed offensive to the Prophet Muhammad. One was sentenced to death for “a crime against God,” another to 14 years in prison with 4,000 lashes, and the third to six years in prison and 2,320 lashes. The death sentence has not been carried out.

A case that received international attention is that of Hadi Al Mutif, who allegedly said two offensive words in 1993 during afternoon prayers with fellow cadets in a police training academy close to Najran. Najran chief judge Muhammad Ahmad al-‘Askari arraigned Al Mutif on the formal charge of “insulting the Prophet” (sabb al-rasul). Interviewed by telephone in prison, Al Mutif told Human Rights Watch that Judge al-‘Askari did not ask him how he wanted to plead, but said to him, “Don’t deny it. If you do, you will go back to the mabahith for further interrogation,” even after Al Mutif had told the judge that he had “hallucinations” from the torture he had endured at the hands of his mabahith jailers, including beatings, prolonged forced standing, and sleep deprivation. 

Al Mutif’s trial, which was closed to the public, began around two years after the arraignment, and lasted six sessions. Al Mutif told Human Rights Watch that in the first session, when he heatedly challenged the testimony of one of the witnesses, a police officer smashed Al Mutif’s head into a window in the presence of the judge.

Al Mutif said that at the next session, the judge “questioned whether I was a Muslim because I follow the Ismaili sect. They spoke to me as though I was not a Muslim and asked ‘How many prayers are there in a day?’ and made me pray in front of them.” At the end of the six sessions, the judge sentenced Al Mutif to death. 

Al Mutif told Human Rights Watch that when he appealed the verdict, Shaikh Abdullah al-Mani’, chief judge of Mekka’s Appeals Court, said of Ismailis, “You are a corrupt minority, you don’t belong to Islam in any form, you have no creed or religion.”²⁴⁷ Al-Mani’s court upheld the death sentence against Al Mutif.

An Ismaili lawyer and activist commented to Human Rights Watch,

The time has come that we ask the Ministry of Interior what is happening in Najran, because after [Prince] Mish’al came, all the problems started. Before that, a child was not sentenced to three years because he throws a football onto a Wahhabi mosque, an Ismaili was not sentenced to death for saying something about the prophet. We have to understand if this is Mish’al policy or state policy.²⁴⁸

A near identical fate to that of Hadi Al Mutif befell 16-year-old Mu’idh Al Salim, a student at the Hisham bin Abd al-Malik high school in Najran. On May 4, 2001, the mabahith arrested him after he had allegedly used words deemed insulting to the Prophet Muhammad when he got angry in front of his teachers who were discussing his test score. At trial, a judge sentenced him to death, but in his case the appeals court reduced the sentence to 14 years in prison and 4,000 lashes. King Abdullah pardoned Al Salim on his visit to Najran in early November 2006 (see also below, “Discriminatory treatment of Ismail prisoners).²⁴⁹

In a third case, a court in Najran sentenced journalist Hadi al-Dughais to six years in prison and 2,400 lashes for “calling the Civil Defense Office at 11 p.m. on March 2, 2004 while being drunk and insulting Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), the king and the authorities.”²⁵⁰ Eighty of the 2,400 lashes he received were for drunkenness; the rest for his alleged insults to the king and the Prophet.

Al-Dughais had called the Civil Defense after finding a child trapped in a well. He speculated that the incompetence of the response to his call—with the rescue team taking hours to arrive—became a matter the Civil Defense then wanted kept quiet. He told Human Rights Watch that when the police came to arrest him two days later, he had no idea what the reason was, but that he thought that his “bold writings and my religious sect” played a part, since the Civil Defense Office was heavily staffed by Sunnis from outside the region. He added that from his experience in prison, Ismailis usually receive more severe sentences than Sunnis for similar crimes.²⁵¹

Discriminatory treatment of Ismaili prisoners

Ismaili prisoners in Najran complain that the prison authorities treat them differently based on their religious identity. Their biggest concern is that Ismaili prisoners rarely benefit from a reduction in their sentences for memorization of the Quran. Current Saudi regulations hold that a prisoner will receive a reduction of up to half his or her sentence for memorizing the entire Quran. For only 10 chapters memorized, he or she receives a reduction by one-sixth. For 20 chapters memorized, one-third, and for 30 chapters—the entire Quran—half the sentence. This rule is in itself discriminatory against non-Muslims, who cannot benefit from this provision without converting to Islam. There are no similar incentives providing for non-Muslim religions or for persons without a declared religion.

One prisoner told Human Rights Watch that there is no stated difference between Ismailis and Sunnis in prison in memorizing the Quran and receiving a reduction of one’s sentence. But in practice “we didn’t get the benefit of memorization. It is prohibited.”²⁵² Another prisoner said that only a minority of Ismailis in prison enjoyed the privilege of having their sentences reduced for memorizing the Quran, or for good conduct, which can produce a one-quarter reduction of sentence. In his case, he memorized half the Quran during his imprisonment but the governor’s office (imara) rejected his request for a reduction of sentence in late 2006, stating only that “this prisoner does not benefit from memorizing the Quran.” This prisoner said that there have been “Ismailis who receive a reduction of their sentence by one half for memorizing the Quran, but Ismailis are generally treated worse in prison than Sunnis.”²⁵³ Another Ismaili we interviewed confirmed that his imprisoned brother had been unable to benefit for a reduction in his sentence despite having memorized large parts of the Quran.²⁵⁴ The reasons why some Ismailis reportedly benefit from reductions of sentence and others do not are entirely unclear to Human Rights Watch.

Mu’idh Al Salim, the schoolboy sentenced to death for insulting the Prophet Muhammad, with sentence later commuted, and finally pardoned by the king in November 2006 (see above), would actually have been eligible for release earlier if the benefits associated with memorizing the Quran had applied: He had memorized the Quran fully, so halving this 14-year sentence and applying to the remainder a further one-quarter reduction for good behavior, his release date should have been August 2006.²⁵⁵

According to Saudi prison regulations, prisoners also benefit from conjugal visits and from three days’ furlough for deaths and weddings of close relatives. Here, too, Ismaili prisoners in Najran complain that, unlike the Sunni prisoners, they do not receive similar benefits.

One former prisoner told Human Rights Watch that the Najran governorate had directly prohibited his temporary release already agreed by the prison authorities to see his dying mother and, after her death, to attend her funeral. This prisoner, who said he had a prison record of good behavior, recounted with distress how his mother’s health grew worse by the day, yet all pleas to the governor and his deputy fell on deaf ears. On the day after his mother’s death, he said, his relatives went to the governorate

at 11 a.m. and again in the afternoon, then to the mabahith director to ask for only 6 hours’ or 24 hours’ furlough. The director asked for the death certificate and my prisoner’s identification. They took a cellphone number for me and said they’d call the mabahith in Riyadh to seek its opinion. There was no response. My relatives went back to the governorate, from there to the prison affairs department, which finally agreed to write a letter stating that “the prisoner is to be released according to the directions.” Then the prison asked us for a guarantor. We brought one. Then the prison director said that he would have to seek an explanation of what “according to the directions” means. This was at 1:30 p.m. on the last day of my mother’s three-day wake. The day passed, and I was still in prison.²⁵⁶

This prisoner said that he knew of at least six other Ismailis who were not granted furlough for the deaths of a mother, father, or sister.²⁵⁷ Another Ismaili said that he has so far been unable to obtain conjugal visits for his brother, who is in prison.²⁵⁸

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Such acts of discrimination increase the feeling of Ismailis that they are second class citizens in their ancestral region, where they constitute a large majority. King Abdullah’s visit in November 2006 raised local hopes that Ismailis in Najran would begin to have their concerns heard, not only in Najran, but also in Riyadh. However, the mabahith on May 13, 2008, arrested Ahmed Al Sa’b who together with six other influential Ismailis had met King Abdullah in late April and presented him with their grievances, including a call for Prince Mish’al to resign.²⁵⁹ His continued detention sends a clear signal that Riyadh is unwilling to tolerate the expression of the grievances of the Ismaili community, let alone address them.