Saudi Arabia’s Religious Intolerance and the Execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr
By Will Inboden
January 4, 2016 - 12:19 pm
As the Middle East enters its sixth year of unrelenting turmoil, this past weekend witnessed an ominous escalation of sectarian tensions. It began with Saudi Arabia’s execution on Friday of Shiite leader Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, followed by Iran’s retaliatory attacks on Saudi diplomatic properties, and then a war of words and the termination of diplomatic relations between the region’s paramount Sunni and Shiite nations.
Going back to the Iranian revolution itself, as Elliott Abrams pointed out at the Council on Foreign Relations blog, the regime in Tehran has an ignominious history of disregard for the immunity of diplomatic properties. Its provocations this weekend, including facilitating mob attacks on Saudi diplomatic facilities, merits unambiguous condemnation (not rationalization, as French Ambassador to the U.S. Gerard Araud initially offered).
Iran remains one of the most malevolent and destabilizing actors in the Middle East, and bears the brunt of responsibility for how it has inflamed Sunni-Shiite acrimony across the region. Yet Saudi Arabia’s regrettable execution of Sheikh Nimr should not be overlooked or excused.
Saudi Arabia may be one of the United States’ most important allies in the Middle East — a partnership I support — but the House of Saud’s ongoing religious intolerance undermines American interests and further destabilizes a volatile region. For a generation the Saudi ruling class looked the other way (at best) while their own religious establishment’s doctrinaire Wahhabism fueled the radicalization of many Saudis at home and other Muslims abroad. The fact that 15 out of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were Saudi citizens served as a partial alarm to the kingdom’s problem, but it took the May 12, 2003 al Qaeda attacks on Western residential compounds in Saudi Arabia to shock the House of Saud into realizing that it had been feeding a dragon in its own backyard. Since then, the Saudis have been reliable and indispensable partners in the war on jihadist terrorism.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/01/04/saudi-arabias-religious-intolerance-and-the-execution-of-sheikh-nimr-al-nimr/