via memeorandum Jules Crittenden, Elder of Ziyon and others noted this story from Saudi Arabia.
Members of Khobar’s Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice were the victims of an attack by two Saudi females, Asharq Al-Awsat can reveal. According to the head of the commission in Khobar, two girls pepper sprayed members of the commission after they had tried to offer them advice. Head of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in the Eastern province Dr. Mohamed bin Marshood al-Marshood, told Asharq Al Awsat that two of the Commission’s employees were verbally insulted and attacked by two inappropriately-dressed females, in the old market in Prince Bandar street, an area usually crowded with shoppers during the month of Ramadan.
“Offer them advice” is likely a euphemism for “threaten them.” But what I find especially interesting about this story is that in occurred in the Eastern Province. Max Singer wrote a fascinating article a few years ago, “Free the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia.”
Before its conquest by Ibn Saud, the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia (EP), which lies along the shore of the Arabian Gulf and which contains all of Saudi Arabia’s oil fields, was populated mostly by two groups of Shiite Muslims who were quite different culturally and religiously from their Najdi conquerors. One group was Bedouins and settled date-growers and farmers living around two groups of oases. The other was pearlers, fishermen, and traders living in coastal villages along the Gulf. Since the vast recent expansion of the oil industry, the population of the EP has multiplied, partly from natural growth of the original local population, but also by migration from other parts of Saudi Arabia and a much larger immigration of foreign Arabs and other Muslims and some professionals and managers from Europe and the U.S., all of whom are excluded from citizenship. Appreciating the predicament of the people of the EP requires some information about the official religion of Saudi Arabia. It is unofficially known as Wahhabism—which is conventionally described as a form of Hanbali Islam—begun by the Najd preacher Mohammed bin Abdul-Wahhab in 1745, who spread his faith by partnership with the local Najd warlord, who became the founder of the Al Saud dynasty. (Some Muslims resentfully say that calling Wahhabism a school of Islam is like calling the Branch Davidians of Waco a school of Christianity.) Wahhabism is an austere desert belief, based more on fanatic intensity than scholarly roots in Islamic writings and teaching. In addition to objecting to any memorials to the dead, and any freedom for women, it holds that most Muslims who are not Wahhabis are “polytheists†who should be treated like infidels, and killed if they refuse to convert to Wahhabism. They specifically deny that Shia Muslims are true Muslims and therefore insist that they have no rights in Saudi Arabia, even in areas where they had been living for many centuries before Saudi Arabia existed. (A newly published book, Wahhabism: A Critical Essay, by Berkeley Professor Hamid Algar calls Wahhabism “a peculiar interpretation of Islamic doctrine†that was “stigmatized as aberrant by the leading Sunni scholars†since it was first put forth.)
So is this (seemingly) minor incident perhaps an indicator of deeper fault lines. Are the indigenous Shi’a of the Eastern Province starting to rebel against their Wahhabi enforcers? Or was this just an isolated incident.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
saudi arabia
wahhabism