Name: Zhang Rongrong Student ID：b07044
Research paper supervisor:Dr.Seku Conde
Minzu University of China
2007-2008 Academic Year

Abstract: Shia is the minority in Saudi Arabia. For a long time, the Shia have suffered discrimination in politics, economics, culture and religion. In order to obtain a fair status in the country, the Shia launched opposition activities in various forms, such as demonstrations, terrorist plots and founding organizations. All though most of these confrontations were suppressed, they did mean an alarm to the Sunni authority. The country should seek a proper way to handle the relationship between Sunni and Shia to gradually promote the process of modernization and democracy.
Key Words: Shia, Political opposition, Religious freedom, Saudi Arabia
 
    The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was founded in Sep.23th, 1932. It has a population of 24.9 million, including 5.8 million non-nationals.[1] Here is the cradle of Islam that is the national religion within the kingdom. Most of its people are Muslims who are divided into two sections: Sunni and Shia, with the former 85% and the latter 15%.[2]
Saudi Arabia is a traditional Islamic monarchy following the orthodox Wahhabi Sunni religion. In the kingdom all political opposition is forbidden. There is no freedom of religion for Christians, and the Shia minority is strictly supervised. Women are clearly the objects of discrimination.[3]
Saudi Arabia is well known as the “oil kingdom” around the world. Its capacity of petroleum reserve and production are both at the top of the world. Petroleum and petrochemical industries are the economic lifelines of the country. Although the Shia constitute only 20% of the total Saudi population, they form a majority -75% - of the population in the oil-rich region.[4]
Although Sunni and Shia are different sects of the same religion - Islam, the conflicts between them have existed all the way almost in all Arabian countries. The basic divergence in their belief is who are the valid monarchs.
History: Origin of Shia Opposition
The Shia believe that the split between the Shia and Sunni began with Muhammad’s death, when Abu Bakr was accepted as the successor to Muhammed by the majority of Muslims, then Umar and Uthman. They believe that the successorship was given to Ali at Ghadir Khum (a hadith accepted by Shia scholars), and that the testimony that can be traced back to reliable sources is to be trusted, while traditions that cannot be fully verified are suspect.[5]
Shia and Sunni historians record that many Shia have been persecuted, intimidated, and killed, through what Shia consider a coup d'état against Ali’s caliphate. Many prominent Salafi Sunni scholars are known to have openly considered the Shia as disbelievers. Imam Ash-Shafi’i, one of the most prominent early scholars of his time said in regards to the Shia “I have not seen among the heretics a people more famous for falsehood than the Raafidite Shiites.”
In Saudi Arabia, the Shia Muslim is the religious minority. They lived primarily in the Eastern Province, 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. 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, 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 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.
Reality: Shia’s Unequal Status
The Shia came to occupy the lowest rung of the socioeconomic ladder in the newly formed Saudi state. They are currently subject to a plethora of political, cultural, and economic discriminatory policies. They are sharply restricted against political organizing, do not have a right to free expression, face employment discrimination in both the public and private sectors, and are restricted from equal access to the Saudi police/military or high office. Members of the Shia minority are also the objects of officially sanctioned religious discrimination.
In 1992, a report by the Minnesota Lawyers’ International Human Rights Committee said that the Shia in Saudi Arabia were subject to arbitrary arrests, widespread torture of detainees, coerced confessions, lack of defense counsel, closed trials and judges subject to the will of royalty.[6] This was part of a campaign of harassment of the Shia minority which also included employment discrimination, travel restrictions, harassment of students studying abroad and the destruction of Shia religious buildings.
Political
Members of the Shia minority are discriminated against in government employment, especially with respect to positions that relate to national security. 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.
On Aug. 1993, of the 60 members of the new royally appointed Saudi Advisory Council, only one is a Shia. Even those members of the royal family who are portrayed as progressive and modern, like Princeton graduated Prince Faisal, has never allowed a Shia to serve as ambassador despite the significant percentage of Shia in the country.[7] “The Shia are not allowed to serve their country in the defense, security and diplomatic fields. In general, the Shia community feels a sense of marginalization.” Said Sheikh Hassan al-Saffar, one of the main leaders of the Shia community.
Deutsche Presse Agentur reported on Sep. 20, 1994 that Sunni fundamentalist leader Sheikh Abdullah al-Jibrain wanted Saudi Arabia’s Shia community to be declared a “non-Islamic confession”, treated as “unbelievers” and barred from many employment opportunities.
Legal sources report that testimony by Shia is often ignored in courts of law or is deemed to have less weight than testimony by Sunnis. For example, in May 2001, a judge in the eastern province ruled that the testimony of two Shia witnesses to an automobile accident was inadmissible.[8]
Besides, Shia may be imposed on very cruel punishment and various abuses once committing a crime. According to a report by Washington Post in 1997, A Saudi Shia called Hani Al-Sayegh was involved in the June 1996 Dhahran bombing and was brought into custody in Canada as a security risk. He told Canadian officials that he fled Saudi Arabia as a result of the constant harassment, beatings, and questioning faced by him and his Shia relatives at the hands of Sunni officials.
Recently, the Shia community has focused on more symbolic protest, such as the petition submitted to the Crown Prince in 2003 by a group of Shia calling for more democratic reforms, equal rights, and an end to religious, economic, and political discrimination against Shia. The Saudi government also has undertaken repressive actions by randomly taking Shia sheikhs into custody for violating so-called restrictions on Shia religious practices. Amnesty International reports that interrogation and torture are common in these cases, and are often used until a confession is signed.[9]
Economical
In the economic realm, the Shia are much worse off than the rest of Saudi Arabia’s Sunni population. They are socially excluded from better jobs and receive less government funding.
The Shia plays an important role in oil production, but the most of the profits do not belong to them. The discovery of oil brought them employment, if not much of a share in the contracting and subcontracting wealth that the petroleum industry generated. The 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.
The Shia live in the eastern of the country where oil is quite rich. However, the government restricts employment of Shia in the oil and petrochemical industries. The Saudi Arabia’s Shia have been excluded in the oil industry since the 1980s.[10] In Sunni eyes, the Shia not only dominate the oil-rich areas of the eastern region of Saudi Arabia, but are attempting to usurp the role of “protector” of the central dream of all Arabs, the Palestinian cause.[11]
A report from The Baltimore Sun in 1996 indicated that the Saudi economy is failing as oil prices drop. A weakening economy could hit the [...]

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