Professor Madawi Al Rasheed

As Israel’s onslaught on Lebanon is allowed to enter its second week, Saudi statements continue to condemn Hizb Allah’s adventurism, which they hold responsible for the ensuing death and destruction in Lebanon. Enraged Muslims, including some Saudis, have interpreted this un-fraternal madness as yet another case of Saudi pandering to the US and its allies. On closer inspection, this view appears superficial. The real source of Saudi condemnation is a much deeper fear of Hizb Allah, who is seen to represent a much greater threat than Israel itself.

An un-attributed official Saudi statement implicitly held Hizb Allah responsible for the destruction of Lebanon and the loss of lives. The statement declared that there is a difference between legitimate resistance and ‘miscalculated adventurism’, and accused Hizb Allah of acting without prior consultation with its government. A day later Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faysal reiterated the content of the earlier official statement following the meeting of Arab League foreign ministers in Cairo.

This Saudi political position was immediately followed by a religious fatwa. The sectarian Saudi religious establishment rushed to support its political leadership that had protected it against the wrath of the USA after 9/11. The fatwa was issued by Abdullah ibn Jubrin, a famous Wahhabi religious scholar known for his radicalism and political agitation during the Gulf War. His name was associated with the Memorandum of Advice that demanded the re-Islamisation of the Saudi Regime, after it was believed that it had deviated from the right path. A non-binding religious opinion, the fatwa stated that Muslims should not support the Rafidah, a pejorative name for the Shia, and must not collect donations for their refugees, because they are not true Muslims. He condemned their religious practises, described them as associationists and concluded that they are the enemies of Islam.

Sheikh Jibrin regards the Shia as kafirs – apostates whose blasphemy is worse than that fought by the Prophet in the seventh century in Mecca – a typical Wahhabi position that draws on a chain of religious scholars. The fatwa came at a critical moment and was so much appreciated by Israelis that it was reproduced in one of their local newspapers.

Once again official Wahhabis proved that they are the sectarian intelligentsia that remains loyal to the hand that feeds it. The sheikh who produced this fatwa belongs to the same coterie that the US relied on to defeat Communism during the Cold War and especially in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Arab and Muslim world. Like the Israeli press, the US will once again appreciate the services rendered by Wahhabi scholars, who will faithfully legitimate the policies of the Saudi regime – which have coincided with those of Israel, the US, Britain and many other countries.

‘Weapons of the weak’

The alliance between the regime and its Wahhabi ulema has been recently rejuvenated, most notably when the former criticised Iranian hegemony in Iraq, a development which has by implication consolidated Shia dominance for the first time in Iraq’s modern history. Saudi Wahhabis mourned the Jordanian leader of the Iraq insurrection, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was regarded as the defender of the Iraqi Sunnis against the treacherous Shia, pejoratively described as the descendents of Ibn al-Alqami, a Baghdadi Vizir held responsible by Sunnis for the fall of Baghdad at the hands of the Mogul. They applauded when Saud al-Faysal declared that the US had handed Iraq to Iran, a country representing the blasphemous Shia in the opinion of most Wahhabis.

By contrast, the ‘Saudi Street’ was divided.

No demonstrations or agitations similar to those witnessed in Amman, Cairo, and Manama were held in response to the Israeli onslaught. Instead, Saudi activists opted for the ‘weapons of the weak’, namely petition-writing.

In their usual way, intellectuals with nationalist and Islamists inclinations issued a petition. They condemned the Israeli destruction of Lebanon, thereby distancing themselves from the official Saudi-Wahhabi position that held Hizb Allah responsible for the carnage. They released their petition to the press in support of the Lebanese and Palestinian resistance. The signatories included the ‘usual suspects’: writers, university professors, lawyers, and others representing the emergent Saudi middle class.

The Saudi Shia also condemned the official position on one of their web sites and on Arab satellite television, rejecting the fatwa issued by Ibn Jibrin – a man known for his denunciation of the Shia and who in the past has condemned their religious practices, even forbidding Muslims to eat meat slaughtered by their butchers.

Sectarianism aside

Saudi Islamists – the majority of whom are Sunnis – proved that they have a love-hate relationship with Hizb Allah.

They are envious of its previous record and the popularity of its leader, Nasr Allah. Yet they managed to overlook their religious differences and sectarian identity when they glorified the resistance of Nasr Allah’s men in Lebanon. Salman al-Awdah, a Sahwai sheikh, supported the Lebanese resistance on one of the Saudi-sponsored Arab television stations. Many Saudi Islamists prioritised tawhid al-umma – the unity of the umma – rather than tawhid al-milla – unity in creed and sect – the first being a much needed position during times of crisis.

It goes without saying that both the Saudi regime and its religious establishment denounce such blasphemy. They prefer the umma to remain divided unless it is unified under the banner of the Saudi regime and the guidance of the Wahhabi ulema. Against the rhetoric of Islamic unity and the sponsorship of global Islamic organisations and institutions, the Saudi regime definitely promotes a certain lack of Muslim brotherhood.

States of play

To argue that Saudi enmity towards Hizb Allah is a function of its belief in the Weberian definition of the state as the agency which has a monopoly over the use of the means of coercion is a misconception.

Some writers have argued that Hizb Allah is seen by the Saudis as a state within a state, hence it needs to be eliminated even if this requires ethnic cleansing in southern Lebanon, the destruction of the Lebanese infrastructure or the destruction of all of Lebanon. This view overlooks the regime’s history of supporting groups whose main objective was to thwart their states.

Equally, to claim that official Saudi enmity towards Hizb Allah is a reflection of historical sectarian hatred between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Hizb Allah is a misreading of the current Saudi position. Saudis Arabia supported Yemeni Zaydis against Nasserite Yemeni republicans during the Yemen war of 1962. In fact the regime welcomed the ousted the Zaydi – or ‘Sevener Shia’ – leadership, and provided them with passports and monthly allowances, which most of them have kept until the present day.

The ‘wrong’ jihad

Notwithstanding Ibn Jibrin’s fatwa – which is endorsed by many Saudis – Saudi enmity towards Hizb Allah does not solely stem from Sunni-Shia divide. This enmity has other deeper and more fundamental reasons behind it.

First, Saudi Arabia endeavours to destroy any manifestation of political Islam that is anchored in a local nationalist context. While the regime had always supported and patronised Umami (globalised) Islamist movements and trends within the spectrum of Islamism, it had always antagonised and fought against localised national Islamists, like Hizb Allah. Islamists in Morocco, Algeria, Lebanon, Yemen and – more recently – Iraqi Islamists represented by Hayat Ulama al-Muslimin, all have stories to tell about Saudi animosity towards their programme, which is anchored in one country.

By contrast, globalised Islamist movements – for example al-Qaeda – were initially supported by Saudi Arabia. The regime patronised those leaders who carried the Jihad to distant lands. Its religious scholars glorified the Amirs of Jihad – Abdullah Azzam and Osama bin Laden for example. Umami movements struggled in the way of God abroad: Afghanistan, Philippines, Bosnia, Chechnya, Somalia and elsewhere.

Before 9/11 the regime encouraged its citizens to fight abroad in pursuit of a glorious global Jihad. They fought as “cells” completely detached from a local context or community, although many Saudis ended up marrying local women and forging local roots in their Jihad destinations. Saudis who were recruited were similar to those who enjoy the annual holiday exodus from the country in search of liberation from the restrictions of their society. For many, Jihad abroad was an extension of a summer holiday, after which they returned home with heroic narratives glorifying their defence of Muslims against infidels. Only a small minority viewed its involvement in this global Jihad as a full time occupation.

The Saudi regime preferred its citizens to engage in a faraway Jihad, rather than stay at home and think about the possibility of establishing the righteous Caliphate in the Land of Two Holy Mosques or entertain ways of overthrowing the local despots – in Jihadi discourse they being none other than the Saudi rulers themselves.

Say the right thing

Sheikhs like Ibn Jibrin have no qualms with struggling in the way of God abroad but they have reservations on Jihad at home. The latter type of Jihad leads to fitna – discord among the believers. Above all it threatens to dismantle the holy alliance between the religious establishment and the Saudi rulers.

Jihad at home would no doubt lead to the biting of the hand that feeds the Wahhabi ulema. For this reason, Saudi official ulema resisted the temptation to support local Islamist activism and fought battles against Sahwis whose attention was directly preoccupied with their own Saudi context. In the 1990s they condemned Sahwi sheikhs who denounced the regime for inviting American troops to Saudi Arabia. Today they issue fatwas against the exiled Islamist opposition, especially the one that concentrates all its activities on Saudi Arabia and does not concern itself with global Islamic causes – the Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia, against whom the official ulema’s hostile fatwas are notorious.

Common inspiration

Saudi antagonism towards the Hizb Allah project stems from fear that its model might be a source of inspiration among its own local Islamists. Although Hizb Allah draws on Shia sources and ideologues, its history and the history of Shia Islamist activism in Iraq, Iran and the Gulf states – including in Saudi Arabia – was inspired by both Shia and Sunni sources. Twentieth century Sunni thought is revered by both Sunni and Shia Islamists. Like their Sunni counterparts, many Shia Islamists were inspired by ideologues such as the Egyptian Sayyid Qutb and the Pakistani Abu al-Ala al-Mawdudi, both Sunnis.

The only difference between the two Islamisms stems from the fact that the Sunnis failed miserably in achieving their objectives while the Shia succeeded.

Shia Islamism succeeded in implementing its vision in Iran and later in Lebanon, where Hizb Allah established the so-called ‘state within a state’. More recently Shia Islamists came to power in Iraq while other Sunni Islamists had failed to topple one single Arab regime, let alone establish the glorious Muslim state.

In desperation, many Sunni Islamists preferred to go global, hitting the distant enemy while leaving the local despots stronger and more capable of inflicting greater damage on those left behind. Had Sunni Islamists been successful in their local struggle against indigenous despots – that is, their immediate enemy – they would not have gone global, and inflicted their damage in places like New York, London, Madrid and elsewhere.

While Sunni Islamism fragmented, that of the Shia consolidated itself in specific localities. Before the Israeli onslaught on Hizb Allah on 12 July, Hizb Allah represented a national Islamist movement. Hizb Allah’s Jihad is anchored in one territory. Previously, its suicide bombers killed and were killed on their own soil. For this reason, the Hizb Allah model anchored in specific territory is feared by the Saudi regime. Its example must be eliminated for fear of repetition elsewhere – especially close to Riyadh.

Crossing the divide

The second reason the Saudi regime nourishes enmity towards Hizb Allah is because it has succeeded in bridging the Sunni-Shia schism by embracing the Sunni Hamas organisation and its struggle against a Zionist state determined to eliminate the Palestinians, especially those who reject its terms for peace.

As resistance movements, both Hamas and Hizb Allah accepted to be partners in the struggle in the way of God, thus leaving their sectarian identities behind – something that Iraqi Islamists, both Sunni and Shia, have failed to reach even under occupation or perhaps because of occupation.

The Hizb Allah-Hamas solidarity, under Iranian patronage, frightens the Saudi regime for two reasons. First, it extends the sphere of influence of a rival country that is regaining its position as the local Gulf hegemon at the expense of that of Saudi Arabia, whose inefficiency and complete dependence on the US for the protection of oil fields exposes it amongst its own people. Every time Iran’s President Ahmadi Nejad flirts with the Sunni majority ‘Arab Street’ – when for example he denounces Israel and denies the Holocaust – he sends a shiver through Riyadh, which resents his country’s strength, which is built on real military capabilities and manpower.

Saudi Arabia lacks both, while Iran is seen by many Saudis as a country that succeeded in transforming its oil wealth into real political power, a fact that the Saudi regime has not been able to do. If it has, then it has put its economic capabilities in the service of foreign powers. Secondly, Saudi fears of the two movements’ solidarity worries the Saudi regime because its policy so far has been based on the age old principle of divide and rule.

Dangerous democrats

The third cause of Riyadh’s antagonism stems from Hizb Allah’s acceptance of the democratic process. Hizb Allah has played by democratic rules and abided by its results, while continuing to see itself as a resistance movement that liberated southern Lebanon from Israeli occupation. Hizb Allah developed an all-encompassing social policy that overcame the reservations Islamists had about parliaments, elections, the participation of women in public life and coexistence with other, secular political parties. It accepted to resist Israel with other political parties in Lebanon. Hizb Allah reached out to other groups in a pluralist society like that of Lebanon. Although physically its supporters confined themselves to al-Dhahiyya al-Janoubiyya that developed all the institutions and services associated with a state, it managed to build bridges with other political groups not only in Lebanon but also elsewhere.

This aspect of the Hizb Allah’s experience is that which is resented most by Saudi Arabia, which accepts Islamists only – and only if they proved themselves ready to implement strategies and social policies more backward than its own. The Saudi regime recognised the Taliban only because it exhibited the worst model of an Islamic state – the parochial, puritanical, and impoverished model – which makes the Saudi regime look like an advanced and legitimate moderate example.

Saudi Arabia’s enmity towards Hizb Allah is rooted in the regime’s desire to suppress any alternative Islamist model, especially that which exposes its own backwardness at the social, political and ideological levels. The Saudis patronised the Taliban because this regime enacted Ibn Jibrin’s vision of the world – a world divided between the pious who are rendered clients of the Saudis, and the infidels, mainly other Muslims who reject this clientship. Saudi ulema glorified the Taliban state and saw it as an example of the authentic Islamic state. Had it not been for Bin Laden, the Saudi regime would have continued to support the Taliban.

Hizb Allah is one group that offers an alternative social and political model – one not easily dismissed by the Saudi regime, whose own Islamists aspire towards some of the social and political achievements of Hizb Allah, before Israel destroyed them.

New models

Most importantly, the Saudi regime fears the replication of the Hizb Allah model on its own territory and specifically in the oil rich Eastern Province.

Although the regime reached a reconciliation with the Shia opposition groups in 1993, leading to the return of most Shia exiles from London, Damascus and Beirut, mistrust and latent enmity remain, especially as the regime has failed to restrain the likes of Ibn Jibrin, who continue to issue divisive and bigoted opinions against the Shia.

So far the Saudi Shia have held the view that ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’. They put their intellectual skills at the service of the Saudi regime when it declared its own war on terror against al-Qaeda. Their writers started glorifying Saudi citizenship and partnership, and denouncing Wahhabi radicalism at a time when the regime needed to defeat al-Qaeda cells, and the Saudi Shia were enlisted in the Saudi regime’s battle against radicals whose radicalism was anchored in the Wahhabi tradition.

The regime used the Shia like other – Sunni – intellectuals, to defeat its own enemies. Now the enemy is almost defeated, the regime has revived its holy alliance with the docile Wahhabiyya, after rooting out the undesirable radical elements. The Saudi Shia may now come to the conclusion that the regime cannot get rid of Wahhabiyyah altogether, definitely not for their sake. The return of Ibn Jibrin is a clear evidence of how Shia hopes of being recognised as full Muslim citizens has been shattered under Saudi leadership.

The Hizb Allah model will remain a source of inspiration for Saudi Shia. In fact, Hizb Allah al-Hijaz had already made an appearance. With the Saudi Shia reconciliation, it seems that this movement began to be consolidated as it attracted those Shia who refused to be part of the Accord reached early in the 1990s. Hizb Allah al-Hijaz may in the future gather more supporters if more and more Saudi Shia came to recognise that they have been used by the regime without securing substantial gains, beyond the current nominal presence in local municipal councils, public mourning rituals every now and then, and so on. Nothing would pacify the Shia more than recognition of their Islamic school of Jurisprudence in Saudi Arabia – a dream that Ibn Jibrin and his like would probably die before seeing adopted by their pious Imams, the Al-Saud Princes. So far the ulema have resisted including a Shia representative in the Council of Higher Ulema, while Shia Jaafari jurisprudence remains unrecognised at the official level.

Talk on the street

If the so-called New Middle East – a concept that is already a cliché – gradually replacing the old Greater Middle East, as envisioned by the Bush administration, involves the death of the post-independence Arab nation-state and the fragmentation of these states into mini sectarian cantons, the Saudi Shia may have an opportunity to establish their dream: an independent Islamic polity in the Eastern Province. Before developing into fully-fledged sectarian cantons, such polities may flourish under the guise of federalism, following the current Iraqi model. At this juncture, the Hizb Allah model will prove to be good model to emulate.

The Saudi regime joined Israel in condemning Hizb Allah because it is not a rootless terrorist cell that prepares its men to blow themselves up in Nairobi, New York, Bali or London. Had Hizb Allah done that, both the Saudi regime and the religious scholars would probably have applauded it for defending the umma in the fortresses of faraway places. They would most probably have funded and patronised it – until that critical moment when it turned its attention to its early sponsors. So far Hizb Allah has fought above all for the land of its own people. It has succeeded where Arab regimes have failed, for the most part during encounters with Israel’s killing machine.

Saudi Arabia sees Hizb Allah as the arm of Iranian hegemony in a country where the Al-Hariri clan came close to achieving the ‘Saudisation of Lebanon’. Whatever the Al-Hariri clan fell short of achieving, al-Walid bin Talal’s financial empire promised to complete. As usual the Saudi regime prefers to have more than one client at a given particular moment in time.

Saudi Arabia wishes the demise of Hizb Allah because it forged a Muslim Brotherhood which the Saudi regime endeavoured to prevent, despite the rhetoric of its support for Arab and Muslim causes. Previously, Israel invaded Lebanon to root out Palestinians. It succeeded in sending the PLO into exile in other Arab countries. Hizb Allah cannot be rooted out. It may be defeated militarily but it will continue to haunt not only the inhabitants of northern Israel but also the Saudi regime for a long time after the fires die down. The support it commanded in the Arab street – and increasingly among Saudis – worries Arab regimes that are regarded by their own people as symbols of treachery and treason. The Arab street has defined its own axis of evil: the Egyptian-Jordanian-Saudi trio who blamed Hizb Allah rather than Israel for the destruction of Lebanon for the second time.