Sectarianism casts shadow over Mideast
DONNA ABU-NASR

QATIF, Saudi Arabia (AP) – Like many Saudi Shiites, Abdullah Abdul-Hussein is worried that if the government does not end anti-Shiite tirades by influential Sunni clerics, the sectarian conflict ravaging
Iraq and threatening Lebanon could spread to his country.

“This rhetoric provokes trouble,” said Abdul-Hussein, referring to recent statements from key members in Saudi Arabia’s clerical establishment that have urged Sunnis around the world to expel Shiites from their lands.

“We are all citizens of the same country. The government should not allow such excess,” said the 37-year-old merchant, expressing a worry shared by many in this mainly Shiite town.

Fears of sectarian tensions go beyond this sleepy oasis in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, where the kingdom’s Shiite minority is centered. The bloodshed in Iraq and turmoil in Lebanon have enflamed the Shiite-Sunni divide across the Middle East and in much of the Islamic world.

This Associated Press article is a good companion piece to yesterday’s report from Reuters about the Shi’ites in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province.

The article shows, unfortunately, that too many people are now looking at the world only through the lens of religion. While there certainly are sectarian frictions, people seem to forget that there are geopolitical issues that have not much to do with religion. Control of oil markets, petrodollar earnings, state desires to extend their own powers; all of these are equally in play. Arab-Persian conflicts have been part of the regional history since the Safavid Empire of the 14th C. Memories of those conflicts are, sadly, just as much in people’s minds as the Crusades and 19th C. colonialism.

The Tehran-Riyadh Line
Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed

It took no more than one hour of telephone calls between Riyadh, Tehran and Beirut to end Lebanon’s unavoidable clashes that blockaded the capital with fires and barricades and even shootouts in some parts.

Although such contact has demonstrated that the Lebanese battles are in fact puppet shows manipulated from above or stopped from outside, what matters the most is that they have now been put to an end. Everything that contributes to stopping the gradual descent into abyss is praiseworthy.

However, the issue is more than just an hour of communication. It is a years-old, slow relation-building process between Iran and Saudi Arabia that has finally led to such joint action and proved that many fires could be put out through regional cooperation…

Interesting piece in the Arabic daily Asharq Alwsat by it’s former Editor-in-Chief and now Managing Director of Al-Arabiya TV.

The piece seems intended to show that Saudi Arabia and Iran have reasonably good relations, at least on some levels. It’s definitely intended to show that negotiation is better than warfare. But it has a lot of sharp edges to it, critical of Iran, suggesting that it permitted minor frictions to grow into combat that put the region in peril. There’s more between the lines of this piece than is covered in the ink.

Defending Guantanamo
Mohammed Al Shafey

London, Asharq Al-Awsat- Asharq Al-Awsat interviews Guantanamo Bay Spokesman Robert Durant on alleged prison torture, inmate conditions and why there is no need for a Muslim preacher at the camp that holds approximately 400 Al-Qaeda and Taliban members.

(Asharq Al-Awsat) Is there a Muslim preacher in Camp Delta who provides spiritual guidance to Al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees?

(Durant) Detainees receive all necessary requirements from the prison management to perform their daily worship, including the five prayers, reciting the Koran, and fasting during Ramadan. All the detainees are religious, and are very knowledgeable in Islamic issues, and they help each other in understanding Islam or when they face some ambiguous religious issues. Inside every section of Camp Delta there are Imams, religious guides, and preachers from among the prisoners themselves. Generally speaking, prisoners are more aware of their religious affairs. As for Muslim preachers who work in the military institutions, their number is usually relatively limited, and hence the sphere of their work and responsibilities become greater so that they can serve the largest number of soldiers and officers.

The joint task force, which is in charge of the camp, has nominated a number of Muslim Imams who work in other military units, from whom help can be sought when needed. The necessary requirements are provided for prisoners to facilitate their daily worship, including the five prayers and fasting during Ramadan. The prisoners have been supplied with prayer mats, prayer beads, and copies of the Koran in the language they want, in addition to the azan (call for prayers) which calls five times a day from loudspeakers hung on poles inside the camp, with suitable time for prayer without interruption from the guards. There are Imams among the prisoners, elected by prisoners themselves from the sections and cells to lead the prisoners in the five prayers or group prayer. All meals that the prison management provides for the detainees are cooked according to the Islamic law, and the time of serving the meals changes during the fasting month to accommodate Al-Suhur and Al-Iftar meals. Special meals are offered to detainees during Islamic Ids, such as Id Al-Fitr, Id Al-Adha, and Ramadan, where special meals with dates and sweets are served.

(Asharq Al-Awsat) What changes have taken place at Guantanamo in the last five years?…

As a follow-up to the four-part series Asharq Alawsat did on Guantanamo back in September, 2006 [Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV], it now runs this look at conditions in the detainee camp. I find it interesting that the military spokesman for the camp says the biggest change in the camp, over the past five years, was the repatriation of 377 detainees, nearly half the total.

‘Discrimination’
Joe Avanceña

DAMMAM: FILIPINA maintenance workers employed as cleaners in hospitals, health centers and commercial establishments complained of discrimination by their own government.

Reacting to the recent announcement by the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) increasing the salaries of Filipina domestic workers from $200 to $400, the maintenance workers said their government is not being fair in the treatment of its overseas workers. “This is unjust. Is the POEA not aware of our plight? Our monthly salary as maintenance workers is only SR512,” said Leyna, a maintenance worker at Samama, a maintenance company employing several hundreds Filipina workers all over the Kingdom.

The maintenance workers said their jobs entail the same long working hours and conditions as those of domestic helpers. “We also have families to support, children to send to school. But why the difference in salary and treatment,” she asked. Many of these women maintenance workers have run away and abandoned their job, because they can hardly survive with their meager salaries.

After the Government of the Philippines imposed new restrictions on the conditions under which Filipinas could work as household servants, other Filipinas are demanding the same. It won’t be long before the male Filipinos start asking for something similar. Already, some Saudis have stopped recruiting Filipinas, though there is no Saudi governmental ban.

Saudi Gazette runs another story about those regulations and more about Saudi hesitance to hire Filipinas: Recruiters’ Nightmare

It also has a story from the Philippines stating that there will be No Exemption to the regulations.

If the Philippine government can make this stick, it will certainly put pressure on the other countries exporting their labor to do something similar.

Saudi cleric says Shi’ites loyal to kingdom, not Iran
Andrew Hammond

QATIF, Saudi Arabia, Jan 29 (Reuters) – A leading Shi’ite cleric said on Monday Saudi Shi’ites would not be dragged into a sectarian conflict in the region and that their loyalty was to the kingdom and not Iran.

“Shi’ite citizens are proud of their nationalism and don’t see themselves as an element in regional political struggles in Iran, Iraq and Lebanon,” Sheikh Hassan al-Saffar, the most prominent cleric among minority Shi’ites in Saudi Arabia, told reporters.

He was speaking as Shi’ites marked Ashura, the anniversary of the killing in 680 of Prophet Mohammad’s grandson, Imam Hussein, who is reverred by Shi’ite Muslims.

Fighting between Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias and minority Sunni insurgents has taken Iraq to the brink of civil war and raised sectarian tension throughout the region.

Saudi Arabia — a bastion of Sunni Islam — shares U.S. concern about the nuclear programme of Shi’ite Iran and fears that Tehran will help consolidate majority Shi’ite dominance in Iraq when Washington finally withdraws its troops.

Saffar said Saudi Shi’ites, who live mainly in the Eastern Province on the Gulf coast, do not take a political lead from Shi’ite authorities in Iran or Iraq.

“The marja’iya (Shi’ite religious authorities) in Iraq and Iran have never once fixed a political position or a social situation in Saudi Arabia,” he said.

“The fact that these authorities are present abroad is just an excuse to create doubt and incite against Shi’ites.”

Shi’ites in the Eastern Province, where most of Saudi Arabia’s huge oilfields are located, rose against the Saudi authorities after Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979.

The government has been suspicious of them ever since. There has been an easing of restrictions on Shi’ites openly practising their faith since Sunni militants linked to al Qaeda began a campaign to topple the Saudi royals in 2003….

Reuters AlertNet carries this piece by the reliable Andrew Hammond. I would argue only with the penultimate sentence in this excerpt: The Saudi government was ‘suspicious’ of the Eastern Province Shi’ites long before the Khomeini revolution. The religious status of the Shi’ites—even whether they could be considered Muslims—is something the hardest-core Salafists have argued against for centuries. This did not change when the country of Saudi Arabia was formed in 1932. Unfortunately, it continues to this day.

Saudi king names Jubeir as new envoy to U.S.

RIYADH, Jan 29 (Reuters) – King Abdullah has named his U.S.-educated foreign policy adviser Adel al-Jubeir as Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, the official Saudi Press Agency reported on Monday.

A royal decree published by the agency confirmed the resignation of Prince Turki al-Faisal, who quit as the kingdom’s envoy in the capital of its closest Western ally last month after about 15 months in the post.

A U.S. official said in December the Saudi government had asked Washington to consent to its choice of Jubeir, 44, to represent the world’s largest oil exporter.

Saudi ties with its traditional ally have undergone a period of tension since the 2003 U.S.-led war in Iraq.

Prince Turki’s resignation fuelled speculation that he may succeed his ailing brother Prince Saud al-Faisal as foreign minister.

He resigned two days after he fired an adviser who wrote an opinion piece published in the Washington Post suggesting the kingdom, a bastion of Sunni Islam, would back Iraq’s Sunnis in the event of a wider sectarian conflict with members of the Shi’ite sect.

Saudi Arabia has since said it will not take sides in Iraq’s sectarian violence.

Jubeir is a well-known figure in Washington government circles. Young and articulate, he was designated by the kingdom to lead a public effort to dissociate the royal family from the Islamic extremism of al Qaeda after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.

The US government has given Agrément—official acceptant of—Adel Al-Jubeir as the next Saudi Ambassador to the United States. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first non-Royal ambassador the Kingdom has sent to the US as its representative.

You can read more about Al-Jubeir at this Wikipedia article.

[UPDATE: Arab News carries this brief announcement, taken from the Saudi Press Agency (SPA):
Jubair Is New Envoy to US]

AMERICAN ISLAM: THE STRUGGLE FOR THE SOUL OF A RELIGION

Paul M. Barrett
Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2007
12:00 Noon 1:30 PM

At the Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy (CSID)
1625 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Suite 601 Washington DC, 20036

Summary:
Near the end of this fascinating and carefully researched portrait of Islam in contemporary America, a California mosque experiences a surprisingly heated internal debate about whether to host a fireworks celebration on the Fourth of July. Somehow, the “canopies of red, white, and blue that for a moment illuminated the minaret and dome” of the mosque crystallize many of the tensions that Barrett describes, particularly how so many individuals struggle to be faithful Muslims and patriotic citizens during troubled times. One great contribution of the book is the diverse portrait it offers of Islam in America today, but as Barrett shows, such ideological and racial diversity haven’t been easy: Pakistani immigrants are sometimes at odds with African-American converts and (mostly white) Sufi spiritualists; feminists draw angry fire as they strive for greater equality; and self-proclaimed progressive Muslims feel at odds as American mosques become increasingly conservative and strident. Barrett is an engaging writer who puts a human face on all of these issues. The book is remarkably evenhanded, but Barrett can also be critical at times, whether analyzing the shortcomings of the Patriot Act or pointing to the inconsistency of a self-starting New York imam who works for justice but also praises Muslim extremists. Balanced and insightful, this grassroots journalistic account mines the complexity and depth of American Islam.(Jan.)

About the Speaker:

Paul M. Barrett is an Assistant Managing Editor at Business Week, a position he assumed in September 2005. He is responsible for overseeing investigative projects. Prior to joining Business Week, Mr. Barrett was the legal affairs reporter for The Wall Street Journal. He also held the positions of Supreme Court correspondent, page one special projects editor, and page one news editor at the Journal. Prior to that, he was a staff writer and editor for The Washington Monthly. Mr. Barrett is the author of American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), which is scheduled to be released in January 2007. He is also the author of The Good Black: A True Story of Race in America (Dutton, 1999; Plume, 2000). He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Harvard College. He lives in New York with his wife, Julie Cohen, a television producer with Dateline/NBC.

Those in Washington who would like to attend the lecture in person should send an e-mail to Sherif@islam-democracy.org

If you would like to hear the lecture on-line, you can go to the registration page where you must register with an e-mail address. I suggest you use the also check ‘System Check’ link on that page to ensure you can take part.

Saudi king rejects talk of family rift

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah has denied talk of rifts within the royal family which rules the world’s biggest oil exporter as an absolute monarchy, according to an interview published on Saturday.

In the interview carried by state news agency SPA, the king said a heavily publicised appearance of numerous leading figures of the royal family at the return of a prince from a British hospital was aimed to dispel talk of disputes.

“The reception was a response to any talk abroad concerning the cohesion and solidarity of this family and to Internet sites and forums that talk of an alleged rift,” he said in the comments, also published in Kuwaiti newspaper al-Seyassah.

“Our people understand, and this talk will not take their attention … The whole Saudi family is together … I advise the media not to listen to the stories of troublemakers.”

This Reuters article appears in The Sydney Morning Herald, from Australia.

The Saudi media, both Arabic and English, gave widespread coverage over the last week of the return of Pr. Abdul Majid, Emir of Mecca, from medical treatment abroad. I had been curious why the coverage was so great; King Abdullah explains that it was intended to send a message. Given that most of the (male) members of the Royal Family were at the airport to meet him on his arrival, I suspect the message of ‘family unity’ was received.

Former UW employee deported to Saudi Arabia
Lornet Turnbull

The Department of Homeland Security this week deported a former employee of the University of Washington’s School of Nursing, a Saudi Arabian man who the government said had links to an al-Qaida front group.

Supporters of the man say he is sure to be tortured back home.

Majid Al-Massari was arrested in July 2004 for overstaying his visa. The then-34-year-old also had a nearly two-year-old misdemeanor drug conviction, itself grounds for deportation.

Officials with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Al-Massari is a member of the Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights, an Islamist organization based in London that seeks to overthrow the Saudi government. Al-Massari’s father heads the group. The U.S. government considers it a front for al-Qaida and said Al-Massari had solicited funds and helped administer the group’s Web site.

In December, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that nothing prevented authorities from deporting Al-Massari. At the same time, the court acknowledged serious unanswered questions about whether he might be tortured in Saudi Arabia and set a May date to consider that portion of his case — while allowing his deportation to proceed.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court also denied Al-Massari’s request for a stay.

Mohammed Al-Massari—father of Majid—identifies himself as the ‘ideological voice of Al-Qaeda’ (See first link below). He was directly linked to a plot to assassinate Saudi Kind Abdullah and has called for the violent overthrow of the Saudi government. Majid has apparently helped to run his father’s website and has posted materials and given interviews to his father’s site in support of Al-Qaeda. Majid’s case has been through the courts many times, including the US Supreme Court which declined to hear his case.

You can find more about his case in these articles, both also from The Seattle Times:

2004: UW employee detained; father blames Saudis

2006: Saudi with notorious father fights deportation

Factional Fighting Rages in Gaza Despite Saudi Offer

GAZA CITY (AFP) -Rival Palestinian factions have clashed again in Gaza despite agreeing to Saudi-mediated talks to end the worst bout of internecine violence in a year that has left 30 people dead in four days.

Gunbattles between the rival Hamas and Fatah factions raged throughout the night across the impoverished territory, where three people were killed in the southern town of Khan Yunis and two others in Gaza City, medics said.

…Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah offered on Sunday to hold talks in the Muslim holy city of Mecca to stop the “disgraceful” fighting, a proposal welcomed by faction leaders.

“I invite my brothers of the Palestinian people, represented by their leaders… to a quick meeting in their brotherly homeland Saudi Arabia … to discuss their differences without any intervention from outside parties,” he said in an appeal carried by the state news agency SPA.

The ruling Hamas movement’s political supremo Khaled Meshaal and the Fatah party leader, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, both welcomed the offer, though no date for the meeting has yet been announced.

The Palestinian internal conflict shows no signs of abating though both sides say they welcome Saudi mediation.

The Italian news agency AKI has this report on the offer:

SAUDI ARABIA INVITES HAMAS AND FATAH FOR TALKS IN MECCA

Riyadh, 29 Jan. (AKI/DAWN) – King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has invited the Palestinian leaders for talks in the Muslim holy city of Mecca to discuss their differences and reach an amicable solution to their conflict. In an urgent appeal, the king called for resorting to reason and dialogue instead of the use of arms for settling their disputes.

“I invite them all … for an urgent meeting in brotherly Saudi Arabia at the sacred house of God (Mecca’s Grand Mosque) to discuss disputes in a neutral (environment) without intervention from any other side,” the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) quoted King Abdullah as saying in an open letter…

Media Stereotypes: How Can Arabs, Muslims Fight Them
Iman Kurdi (ikurdi@bridgethegulf.com)

Terrorists, thieves and barbarians; violent, backward and religiously unhinged — this could easily sum up how Arabs and Muslims are portrayed on screen, be it the big screen of Hollywood or the little screen of television. Or quite simply extreme.

There is no such thing as a “normal” Arab or Muslim character. When one pops up, it is usually in order to blow up the world or — if the mood is more romantic — to kidnap a white woman and whisk her off to his harem.

So what? Why should it matter that films portray Arabs and Muslims as caricatures? Should we not just laugh and shrug it off?

I remember back in 1994 when the film True Lies was released. I saw the film in a packed movie theater in London’s Bayswater area. Three-quarters of the audience was Arab. Boy did we laugh! Not only was the plot ludicrous but Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke Arabic! Take his heavily accented English and multiply by a factor of ten and you get an idea of what he sounds like pronouncing Arabic words he does not understand. Not only that but the lines they gave him were so hilarious. We didn’t get offended, we were too busy laughing.

Not anymore though. Last week Britain’s Islamic Human Rights Commission released a report entitled “The British Media and Muslim representation: The ideology of demonization.” The report argues that Muslims are consistently portrayed as violent, dangerous and threatening in Hollywood movies and that this reinforces prejudice against Muslims. No surprises there then.

There have been a number of studies that have looked in detail at how Arabs and Muslims are portrayed in films. From the silent films of the 1920s that showed Arabs as brigands and thieves to present day films that show Arabs as ruthless terrorists intent on world domination, Hollywood rarely portrays Arabs sympathetically. That in itself is not news. But what strikes me about this report is — dare I say it — how oversensitive Muslims have become.

Iman Kurdi, a Saudi writer resident in Europe, offers up this provocative piece in Arab News.

Her thesis is the diametric opposite of the stance taken by various Arab and Islamic groups who prefer to see negative depiction of their kindred as blatant attacks on their moral values and even their existence. (CAIR, are you listening?)

Kurdi offers up her own critique of the stereotypes, finding that they’re rather incoherent in the way they blur all Muslims and all Middle Easterners into some homogeneous entity. I think she’s right in this. The stereotypes can’t differentiate Turk from Persian from Arab, or Shi’a from Sunni from non-Muslim Sikh. ‘Non-European, but not from Africa, the Far East, or Latin America’ seems to be the level of detail available. And this, of course, forgets that there are Muslims in every country on earth, some immigrants, some converts.

She offers some recommendations for film-makers on how they might better focus their portrayals of the true enemies of civilization. She also offers her critique of societies that do not welcome criticism. The article is worth reading.

Appeals Court Upholds Ruling in Controversial Fatima Divorce Case
Ebtihal Mubarak, Arab News

JEDDAH, 29 January 2007 — An appeals court yesterday upheld the decision of a judge in the northern city of Al-Jouf in October to divorce a couple in absentia at the request of the wife’s half brothers.

The 34-year-old woman, Fatima, mother of two children by her marriage to Mansour Al-Timani, 37, has been in a prison in Dammam since October with her youngest child, Suleiman, a year old. She has steadily refused to return to the custody of her family since she was arrested in Jeddah for living with the man she legally married with her father’s consent more than three years ago. The older child, Noha, 2, is in her father’s custody and occasionally visits her mother in prison.

Prison officials have prevented Mansour from talking to Fatima since her interview with this newspaper in November. He told Arab News yesterday that he would continue to fight the ruling even though the judiciary has given its final verdict.

Fatima’s lawyer, Abdul Rahman Al-Lahem, issued a statement yesterday, saying the ruling “contradicts both Islamic principles and (secular) laws and also abrogates a very basic human right: the wife’s wish to stay by her husband’s side.”

I admit to being surprised by this verdict. I had imagined that once the ‘grown ups’ in the Saudi legal system looked at this case, the verdict of the lower court would be overturned. I fail to see on what basis this ruling is permitted to stand. As the article makes clear, Islamic law, i.e., Sharia law clearly provides no justification for this decision.

As the public and press are still seized with the unfairness of this issue and as the woman involved is preferring to stay in jail rather than in the custody of her brothers, this will end up being sorted out by the King. It’s too bad that the law is so weak.

To quote Charles Dickens in Oliver Twist: “If the law supposes that,” said Mr. Bumble,… “the law is a ass—a idiot.”

And all those who would bash Saudi Arabia and its religious establishment as being cruel, anti-women, and mindlessly tied to precedent will now have a new cudgel with which to strike.