One Saudi’s Lonely, Costly Bid for Sunni-Shiite Equality RIYADH Saudi Arabia
— MIKHLIF AL-SHAMMARI has been jailed
> repeatedly, declared an
> infidel, ruined financially and shot four times — by his
> own son — all for
> this: He believes his fellow Sunni Muslims should treat
> Shiites as equals.In a Middle
> East torn by deepening sectarian hatred, that is a very
> unusual conviction. He
> has made it a kind of crusade for eight years now, visiting
> and praying with
> prominent Shiites and defending them in print, at enormous
> personal cost. The
> government of this deeply conservative kingdom continues to
> file new
> accusations against him, under charges like “annoying
> other people” and
> “consorting with dissidents.”But Mr.
> Shammari, a gaunt 58-year-old with an aquiline nose and a
> jaunty smile, is not
> easily discouraged. “I’m not against my government or my
> religion, but things
> must be corrected,” he said in a furtive interview in a
> hotel lobby (he has
> been banned from talking with the news media). “We must
> all encourage human
> rights and stop the violence between Sunni and
> Shia.”" I'm ready to pay
> with my life for my beliefs." Mikhlif Al-shammari
> credit Abdurahman al
> Shammari.Mr. Shammari
> is not Saudi Arabia’s best-known human rights activist,
> and others have put in
> more time and suffered much longer prison terms. But he has
> a rare distinction:
> No other member of the kingdom’s Sunni Muslim majority has
> made it a mission to
> demand equal rights for the Shiite Muslim
> minority.Even the
> most educated and cosmopolitan Saudis often look down on
> Shiites, who make up
> about 10 percent of the Saudi population, as closet Iranians
> or undesirables.
> Some of the religious conservatives who wield great
> influence here go much
> further, saying Shiites are worse than Jews because, unlike
> genuine infidels,
> they have been exposed to the truth of Islam and
> nevertheless choose to pervert
> it. Shiites have long complained of discrimination of
> various kinds, as well as
> the vitriolic abuse hurled at them by government-employed
> clerics.Mr. Shammari
> believes this is not just ancient religious prejudice, but a
> deliberate
> strategy by the Saudi monarchy to keep its subjects divided
> and therefore less
> likely to demand a voice in their
> government.Whatever the
> reasons, it is clear that the sectarian divide helps to tamp
> down dissent in
> the kingdom. In 2011, for instance, even liberal and
> democratic-leaning Saudis
> were frightened off by protests in the kingdom’s eastern
> province and in
> neighboring Bahrain because they were carried out mostly by
> Shiites, the
> majority population there. Street protests are illegal in
> Saudi Arabia.MR. SHAMMARI
> says his protest derives partly from his origins: He is a
> leader of the Shammar
> tribe, which includes both Shiites and Sunnis and straddles
> the border between
> Saudi Arabia and Iraq. The Shammar suffered discrimination
> in the early days of
> the Saudi kingdom, because they were viewed as having
> divided loyalties.His activism
> has been extremely modest, by Western standards: Starting in
> 2006, he met and
> prayed with Shiites, and wrote several articles calling for
> an end to
> discrimination. He was promptly called in by Interior
> Ministry officials, who warned
> him to knock it off. He refused, and was jailed for almost
> four months.When he
> emerged, Mr. Shammari said, his company, a subcontractor for
> the state oil
> company, Aramco, was bankrupt, its offices empty. The
> workers told him they had
> been warned by government officials to stay away. Furious,
> he decided to devote
> himself full time to human rights work, whatever the
> consequences.The police
> had also detained his eldest son, Adel, then 28, for five
> days of questioning.
> When Adel got home, he had changed, Mr. Shammari said, and
> soon began telling
> the rest of the family that their father had become an
> infidel.On Mr.
> Shammari’s return from prison, Adel — who had run away
> — began sending him
> death threats by text message, he said. He asked for help
> from the police, he
> said, but got none. Adel then fled to Iraq, where he fought
> in the insurgency.
> Returning home, Adel was arrested and placed in the
> kingdom’s rehabilitation
> center for jihadis, part of a high-profile effort to
> de-radicalize members of
> Al Qaeda. But when Adel got out after two years, Mr.
> Shammari said, “he was
> even more radical than before.”At the time,
> Mr. Shammari had just emerged from his second jail term,
> this one 21 months
> long. The charges in that case were vague, but they followed
> well-publicized
> protests he staged after a judge tried to dissolve a
> Sunni-Shiite marriage on
> sectarian grounds.In June
> 2012, Mr. Shammari organized a trip for the entire family to
> Mecca, hoping to
> reconcile with his angry son. But as they gathered in a
> Riyadh lobby at 6:30
> a.m. to drive to the airport together, Adel emerged from a
> prayer room, pulled
> out a pistol and shot his father. Mr. Shammari jumped behind
> the concierge’s
> desk, while two Bangladeshi attendants fled. Adel shot his
> father three more
> times, but one of his sisters managed to knock the gun
> sideways, so that the
> bullets missed her father’s vital
> organs.Mr. Shammari
> spent 45 days recovering in the hospital. When he got out,
> he said, “I found no
> reason not to keep helping people — immigrants, women
> subjected to abuse, other
> people in need.”“I’m ready
> to pay with my life for my beliefs,” he
> added.HE has
> received encouragement from one member of the royal family,
> a prince named
> Turki bin Khalid al-Sudairy, who helped him gain a position
> on a state human
> rights commission and a national program to combat domestic
> violence. Prince
> Turki urged him to travel around the kingdom and address its
> human rights
> problems, Mr. Shammari said. But the Interior Ministry
> continues to file
> charges against him. The latest came in December, when he
> was accused of
> inviting activists for dinner, visiting a dissident Shiite
> cleric, praying with
> Shiites, and the like. He was convicted on those charges and
> awaits sentencing.Mr. Shammari
> speaks of his ordeal with a weary smile. He believes that
> Saudi society is only
> slowly evolving toward greater tolerance, and that those who
> push against old
> taboos will pay a price. But he finds it trying that human
> rights activists are
> often treated more harshly than murderous
> jihadists.Last year,
> for example, Abdullah al-Hamid and Muhammad al-Qahtani, the
> founders of the
> Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association, were sentenced
> to five and 10
> years in prison, respectively, on charges such as disobeying
> the ruler and
> forming an unlicensed organization. Such activists are
> routinely banned from
> travel outside the kingdom. Yet Mr. Shammari’s son Adel,
> who continues to call
> the house from prison every month and threaten to kill the
> entire family, had
> no trouble traveling to the Philippines and then to
> Iraq.“If you’re
> in Al Qaeda, they reason with you, give you money, a car, a
> wife,” Mr. Shammari
> said.Some of his
> friends and relatives urge
> him to tone down his activism, Mr. Shammari
> saidwistfully.
> “It’s hurting me and my
> family,” he said. “But I’ve reached the point where I
> cannot step back.”
>
>
>
>
