Alleged sectarian killings in Saudi Arabia prompt unity calls

[HAIDER]

A tough war just started inside KSA, It will take a while to see the result. But , lesson learn from Pakistan, never talk to terrorist just send them to god. They always find reason to buy time and regroup. Shutdown all suspected media outlets. These media outlets are biggest source of inspiration for potential terrorist.
Khoja took bold step, but seems channel owners were more powerful who push king to fired one of most educated and moderate person . After reading Khoja resume , really inspired, what educated person........but seems royals fail to utilize the talent of this person.

 

[somebozo]

i am spending time at the heartland of Riyadh these days....mainly Najd, Dirriyah, Qaysooma and Qasim.
Things have changed for real....

How did you reach such a nonsense conclusion I wonder? This incident is unprecedented and will not change much other than confirming the strong social fabric of KSA and unity. Which the calls of unity on the social media and in practice were a marvelous confirmation of.



The solution is not violence and murder (would that make you any different than the ones that you hate and criticize so much?) but dialogue and education. We are talking about a small minority anyway. Often youngsters from difficult homes with social and other problems as a I described.

Issues such as unemployment can also create rootlessness and make people prone to doing unlawful things whether crime, drugs etc. or occasionally joining militant movements in order to become a part of something bigger than yourself.

If that is dealt with the few radical "clerics" would speak to deaf ears but I am also very much for dealing with them as well. But you can't just remove a few bad apples among the clerics and then think that everything will be perfect. The other problems will still be there.

Besides such radical people don't need any clerics. Do you know that many of those that joined ISIS from across the world basically just became radical after reading FORUMS or watching videos? They don't need any cleric at all actually.

Playing with religion in KSA is like playing with fire.

 

[somebozo]

A tough war just started inside KSA, It will take a while to see the result. But , lesson learn from Pakistan, never talk to terrorist just send them to god. They always find reason to buy time and regroup. Shutdown all suspected media outlets. These media outlets are biggest source of inspiration for potential terrorist.
Khoja took bold step, but seems channel owners were more powerful who push king to fired one of most educated and moderate person . After reading Khoja resume , really inspired, what educated person........but seems royals fail to utilize the talent of this person.

Khoja might have earned a place on terrorist hit list...nobody knows what he will be doing post retirement. Many high qualified professionals in Saudi bureaucracy undergo forced removal only to re-surge as a consultant on far important issues.

 

[Al Bhatti]

November 12, 2014

Street vendors chat at a market in the mainly Shiite Saudi coastal town of Qatif, 400km east of Riyadh. November 11, 2014

Saudi response to Ashura attack stregthens Sunni-Shia ties

Saudi Arabia yesterday transferred the deputy governor of the kingdom’s Eastern Province, in the aftermath of an unprecedented attack on minority Shiites in the region.

A royal decree “decided to relieve Emir Jalwi bin Abdulaziz bin Musaid Al Saud” from his post and transfer him to Najran region bordering Yemen, the Saudi Press Agency reported.

Expressions of solidarity by Saudi Arabia’s Sunni leaders towards Shiites are helping to bridge a divide after the attack on the minority community, analysts say.

They say condemnation of the deadly shooting in the Eastern Province town of Al Dalwa has sent a positive signal to Shiites who have long complained of marginalisation in the Sunni-dominated kingdom.

The conciliatory gestures “could be the beginning” of a longer-term process of creating a more inclusive nation, said Stephane Lacroix, a specialist on Saudi Arabia at the Sciences Po university in Paris.

But more needs to be done or the Sunni-Shiite violence that has killed thousands in Iraq, and affected neighbouring Yemen and Bahrain, “will also hit Saudi Arabia”, he warned.

Seven Shiites, including children, were gunned down in the attack last week during the commemoration of Ashura.

Assailants also killed a man and stole his car to use in the shootings, a resident and local media reported. Two members of the security forces died in a battle with suspects, and more than 30 suspects have been detained in raids after the crimes, local media said.

Saudi Arabia’s grand mufti, Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al Sheikh, declared the attack to be“against the teachings of Islam”.

A western diplomat said the Sunni authorities had sent an important message that Shiites “are a part of the nation and we are with you against terrorism”.

He described it as “a turning point”, noting that interior minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef had visited families of the victims and the wounded, and a Shiite religious centre.

“The objective of the terrorists was to divide and trigger a kind of sectarian strife and conflict between Sunnis and Shiites but the result is exactly the opposite,” the diplomat said.

Although Sunni extremists attacked westerners and government targets in the kingdom between 2003 and 2006, a major militant attack on Shiites had never previously occurred.

The killings followed this year’s declaration of a “caliphate” in parts of Iraq and Syria by ISIL militants who consider Shiites heretics, and have targeted them.

Saudi Arabia and its Arab neighbours have joined a US-led military coalition bombing ISIL in Syria, raising concerns about possible retaliation in the kingdom.

The Al Dalwa attack “shows that Sunni extremists have shifted their target set beyond the regime toward Shiites – perhaps in an attempt to provoke civil strife,” said Frederic Wehrey, a Gulf expert at the US-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Since 2011, protests and sporadic attacks on security forces have occurred in Shiite areas, leaving about 20 Shiite youth dead.

But there has been no major Shiite backlash to the Al Dalwa killings.

“Maybe this will be a chance for the Saudi state to reach out to the Shia and to try to change something,” said Toby Matthiesen, a research fellow at the University of Cambridge.

He said the shooting “sends a message to the Shia that the state, the Saudi state, is their only real protector against attacks by Sunni militants”.

The shooting could paradoxically help to bridge the gap between Shiites and the authorities, Mr Matthiesen said, but the government would have to take more fundamental steps to address the minority’s disquiet.

He said these could include pardoning Shiite imam Nimr Al Nimr, who was sentenced to death last month.

Mr Al Nimr was a driving force behind demonstrations in the oil-rich east in 2011 and 2012.

Tensions have continued to simmer in parts of the region, where an estimated two million or more Shiites live.

A resident of Al Dalwa said Shiites appreciated Prince Nayef’s visit and the government’s response to the murders.

But he said the community needed more, including a clampdown on sectarian speech in the media and reform of a school curriculum that portrays Shiites negatively.

Saudi response to Ashura attack stregthens Sunni-Shia ties | The National

 

[al-Hasani]

@Al Bhatti

In fact that terrorist attack had the diametral opposite effect that the terrorists hoped for as your article clearly shows. Despite being written in the Western press (notoriously anti-KSA and often famous for propaganda).

This shows what we Saudi Arabians always knew. The strong social fabric of the country.

i am spending time at the heartland of Riyadh these days....mainly Najd, Dirriyah, Qaysooma and Qasim.
Things have changed for real....

Things are always changing. I just objected to your comment about Islam. Anyway I am not that familiar with Najd anyway.

A tough war just started inside KSA, It will take a while to see the result. But , lesson learn from Pakistan, never talk to terrorist just send them to god. They always find reason to buy time and regroup. Shutdown all suspected media outlets. These media outlets are biggest source of inspiration for potential terrorist.
Khoja took bold step, but seems channel owners were more powerful who push king to fired one of most educated and moderate person . After reading Khoja resume , really inspired, what educated person........but seems royals fail to utilize the talent of this person.

Well, the neighborhood is on fire everywhere (almost) so of course it's no laughing matter. The Al-Baghdadi retard also threatened KSA directly in the most recent public recording. Among many other Arab countries.

I do not know about the case with Khoja other than rumors in the media and Arabic forums. I doubt that it had anything to do with his move to close those two channels.

 

[1000]

Well, the neighborhood is on fire everywhere (almost) so of course it's no laughing matter. The Al-Baghdadi retard also threatened KSA directly in the most recent public recording. Among many other Arab countries.

I do not know about the case with Khoja other than rumors in the media and Arabic forums. I doubt that it had anything to do with his move to close those two channels.

Yet Islamist hate preachers have continued for years with approval of the states they found themselves in until recently some things changed as Jordan felt threatened but those measures are small, larger measures are needed to deal with the plague but this won't happen anyway. There will always be a state that will take them in, today Turkey or Qatar are the ones most likely to do so, as they've done earlier.

 

[al-Hasani]

Yet Islamist hate preachers have continued for years with approval of the states they found themselves in until recently some things changed as Jordan felt threatened but those measures are small, larger measures are needed to deal with the plague but this won't happen anyway. There will always be a state that will take them in, today Turkey or Qatar are the ones most likely to do so, as they've done earlier.

Name just 1 single country in the MENA region that did not have people doing hate speeches at one point or retards that were relatively free to spread hatred? Whether racial, political or religious hatred. There is no such country. Especially in the Arab world that not long ago was engulfed in a conflict between Arab nationalists and Islamists. Many countries tried to appease both sides in order to ensure stability. KSA was one of them.

Under the secular Saddam Hussein you had Islamic scholars like this on the lose as well.

It is also no secret that there is no real solidarity and trust in the ME so it is no surprise that states care about their own house first before caring about the neighborhood. Regardless of how common ethnic, cultural, linguistic, historical, geographic ties they might have. Just look at the relations between Iraqi Shia Arabs in the South and KSA. Basically people that easily could be part of the same country without many differences yet the hatred is big today due to sectarianism and politics. In fact on many instances the exact same people like just across the border belonging to the same clans, tribes and families. Today you have Iraqi Shia Arabs in the South that hate KSA despite their great-great-great etc. grandparents migrating from what is now KSA to Iraq a few centuries ago. Some less than 100 years ago.

Governments are panicking due to ISIS's rise. It's understandable but as I have always said then if there was real cooperation which I stand for we would see much less problems in the region than we do.

But people are more busy finding the small differences between us than the similarities. So it does not look good. I just hope that the GCC will reform and show the light in the Arab world in a good way although even there you have differences….

 

[al-Hasani]

Your terrorism won’t divide us​

Thursday, 13 November 2014

Saudi Arabia’s al-Jazirah newspaper published a wonderful headline last Wednesday. It read in bold red: “Your terrorism won’t divide us.” It’s a reassuring message that Saudis need at a time when they see their neighbors fighting and killing one another after being divided into sects and parties. However, is it true that “they won’t divide us?” Has the Iraqi Sunni or the Iraqi Shiite chose to live through the war they are currently facing? Should we contemplate how sectarianism flared up in Iraq and who ignited it?

Sectarianism and hatred are not the choice of the general public. Most people are moderate centrists like the people of the Saudi town of al-Ahsa who were shocked last Monday evening by the first and most dangerous sectarian incident to happen in their governorate. The aggressors were not from the area and they do not represent the majority of Saudis. They are a group with deep hatred towards the Shiites or rather towards “the other,” regardless of who this other is. Their vision of the country and society does not harmonize with that of the majority. Even if elections happen in Saudi Arabia, they wouldn’t win. But why are they capable of dragging us all into the fire of sectarianism as they did in Iraq? It’s because they are willing to do so and because we haven’t fortified ourselves from the infection of sectarianism when they spread it among us. Most of us refuse to make such a confession; however it’s the truth. Take a quick tour of a religious education workshop and listen to the sectarianism and insults when other sects, particularly the Shiites, are discussed. Take another quick look at satellite television channels and you will hear even more hateful statements under the excuse of defending what’s religiously right. School books, fatwas (religious edicts), articles, social media and conversations in gatherings’ have all instilled sectarianism and intolerance in us and have prepared us to become involved in sectarian strife either by taking action or by making statements.

Attack on a husseiniya
The leader of the attack on a husseiniya in the village of al-Dalwa embodies this very well. All we know about him is that he snuck back from Syria into Saudi Arabia and that he was member of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). We can therefore imagine what kind of intellect and doctrine he espouses. He certainly did not go through the risk of sneaking back into Saudi Arabia just because he hates the Shiites.

He returned to Saudi Arabia, planned and conspired because he and his ISIS state have a sinful scheme that targets the kingdom and its national unity. His plan, as we later learnt, sought to cause as much harm as possible to the Shiites. He and his gang tried to target the women’s section in the husseiniya (a Shiite gathering place) first because he knew that killing women causes more anger. He wanted to stir hatred in order to drag in moderates from all sides. This would anger the Sunnis who in turn would verbally attack the Shiites. The state would arrest the assailantant and tension would increase among us. Al-Qaeda or ISIS would then respond with an attack and the victims would always be moderate citizens who did not choose to be part of the struggle between the two parties. People would then forget who started the fight but they would remember who killed who. They would exchange photos of victims and each party would exaggerate the brutality of the other - brutality that forms the basis of extremism between Sunnis and Shiites. The victory of the Khomeini revolution and the rise of Sunni fundamentalism are what will fuel great sedition.

Don’t underestimate the threat
Don’t underestimate the threat of al-Qaeda, ISIS or salafist jihadism by saying they’re incapable of disintegrating our national unity. I hope the Shiites also clarify their stance towards extremists on their side, such as towards Nimr al-Nimr who has been detained and sentenced to death and who attacked the pillars of the Saudi state. Don’t be reassured by the romantic stories of Sunnis and the Shiites eating dates together in a farm in al-Ahsa. The Iraqis also ruefully speak of the days of co-existence between their Shiites and Sunnis but look how they ended up when they submitted to people like Nouri al-Maliki and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi who are capable of dragging everyone into their sectarian agenda.

Yes, tension with Iran contributed to increasing sectarian strife but it’s in Saudi Arabia’s interest to refrain from using sectarianism as one of the tools in this struggle with Iran. Despite the latter’s obvious sectarianism, we must rise above this. We cannot act like them and hang every Shiite opposition figure on gallows like they are doing to Sunni Ahwazi people every Friday.

We are not helping the Syrian people because they are Sunnis but because they want freedom. We did not oppose Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq because he’s a Shiite but because he tore his country apart. We must prevent any preacher from attacking the Shiite sect because by attacking the latter sect, he is harming all Saudi citizens, tearing the country’s unity apart and creating the foundation for al-Qaeda and similar groups to act.

Let us neutralize sects when it comes to the struggle with Iran as the latter is like al-Qaeda - it hopes for chaos and strife in our country because that is how it seeks to expand.

This article was first published in al-Hayat on November 8, 2014.

________________________

Jamal Khashoggi is a Saudi journalist, columnist, author, and general manager of the upcoming Al Arab News Channel. He previously served as a media aide to Prince Turki al Faisal while he was Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States. Khashoggi has written for various daily and weekly Arab newspapers, including Asharq al-Awsat, al-Majalla and al-Hayat, and was editor-in-chief of the Saudi-based al-Watan. He was a foreign correspondent in Afghanistan, Algeria, Kuwait, Sudan, and other Middle Eastern countries. He is also a political commentator for Saudi-based and international news channels.

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/vie...014/11/13/Your-terrorism-won-t-divide-us.html