“Indeed, Allah has bought from the believers their lives and their wealth, because the garden will be theirs, they will fight in the way of Allah and will kill and be killed.” (Qur’an 9:111)
“ISIS sent two teenagers to carry out a suicide attack in Al-Kadhimiyah, sources report,” Shafaq, December 17, 2021:
Shafaq News/ A security source reported that ISIS had sent two teenagers to carry out a suicide attack in Al-Kadhimiyah, north of Baghdad.
The source told Shafaq News Agency that the responsible forces in Al-Kadhimiyah hung posters indicating that two suicide bombers were sent by ISIS to carry out a suicide attack in the area.
The source added that the two suicide bombers were delivered to Aden Square a few days ago, and their ages range between 16-17 years…
Al-Kadhimiyah includes the shrines of the two imams, Moussa al-Kadhim and Muhammad al-Jawad…
mortimer says
What? Discrimination directed by SUNNITE Muslims against Shi’ite Muslims? What is the world coming to?
………………………………………….
The Saudi government has often been viewed as an active oppressor of Shia Muslims because of the funding of the Wahabbi ideology which denounces the Shia faith.
In 1988 fatwas passed by the country’s leading cleric, Abdul-Aziz ibn Baz denounced the Shias as apostates. Another by Abdul-Rahman al-Jibrin, a member of the Higher Council of Ulama is on record as saying
“Some people say that the rejectionists (Rafidha, i.e. Shia) are Muslims because they believe in God and his prophet, pray and fast. But I say they are heretics. They are the most vicious enemy of Muslims, who should be wary of their plots. They should be boycotted and expelled so that Muslims spared their evil.”
According to Vali Nasr, al-Jibrin’s sanctioning of the killing of Shia was reiterated in Wahhabi religious literature as late as 2002.
According to a 2009 Human Rights Watch report, Shia citizens in Saudi Arabia “face systematic discrimination in religion, education, justice, and employment”.
Saudi Arabia has no Shia cabinet ministers, mayors or police chiefs, according to another source, Vali Nasr, unlike other countries with sizable Shia populations (such as Iraq and Lebanon) . Shia are kept out of “critical jobs” in the armed forces and the security services, and not one of the three hundred Shia girls’ schools in the Eastern Province has a Shia principal.
Pakistani columnist Mohammad Taqi has written that “the Saudi regime is also acutely aware that, in the final analysis, the Shiite grievances … stem from socioeconomic deprivation, as a result of religious repression and political marginalization bordering on apartheid.”
Testifying before the US Congressional Human Rights Caucus, Ali al-Ahmed, Director of the Institute for Gulf Affairs, stated
“Saudi Arabia is a glaring example of religious apartheid. The religious institutions from government clerics to judges, to religious curriculums, and all religious instructions in media are restricted to the Wahhabi understanding of Islam, adhered to by less than 40% of the population. The Saudi government communized Islam, through its monopoly of both religious thoughts and practice. Wahhabi Islam is imposed and enforced on all Saudis regardless of their religious orientations. The Wahhabi sect does not tolerate other religious or ideological beliefs, Muslim or not. Religious symbols by Muslims, Christians, Jewish and other believers are all banned. The Saudi embassy in Washington is a living example of religious apartheid. In its 50 years, there has not been a single non-Sunni Muslim diplomat in the embassy. The branch of Imam Mohamed Bin Saud University in Fairfax, Virginiainstructs its students that Shia Islam is a Jewish conspiracy.”
In November 2014 at al-Dalwah village in the eastern province of al-Ahsa, three unknown masked gunmen opened fire at a Husseiniya, or Shi’ite religious center, killing eight and injuring dozens.
While the government and the official media and religious establishment strongly condemned the attack, a handful of articles in the Saudi press argued that the attack “had not come out of nowhere”, that there was anti-Shi’ite incitement in the kingdom on the part of “the religious establishment, preachers, and even university lecturers – and that it was on the rise”.
The Saudi government has refused to allow Shia teachers and students exemption from school to partake in activities for the Day of Ashura, one of the most important religious days for Shia Muslims which commemorates the martyrdom of Muhammad’s grandson, Husayn bin Ali).
In 2009, during Ashura commencements, Shia religious and community leaders were arrested.
Shiites are banned from building mosques and other religious centers, and are forced to perform Friday prayers in homes (Al-Hassan). In the Eastern city of Al-Khobar, whose population is predominately Shia, there are no Shia mosques in Al Khobar.
Saudi Arabia’s religious police mandate prayers and all those in public buildings during prayer time are required to stop what they are doing to pray. Because there are minor differences between the way that Shiites and Sunnis pray and between prayer times, Shiites are forced to either pray the Sunni way or take a break from work.
In 2009 a group of Shiites on their way to perform hajj pilgrimage (one of the five pillars of Islam that all able-bodied Muslims are required to perform once in their lives) in Mecca were arrested by Saudi religious police.
Between February 20 and 24, 2009, Shia pilgrims from the heavily Shia Eastern Province who had come to Medina for the anniversary of the prophet Muhammad’s death clashed with Sunni religious police at the Baqi’ cemetery over doctrinal differences concerning the rituals surrounding commemoration of the dead. Security forces shot a 15-year-old pilgrim in the chest, and an unknown civilian stabbed a Shia religious sheikh in the back with a knife, shouting “Kill the rejectionist [Shia].” The authorities denied that anyone had been wounded, and played down the ensuing arrests of Shia pilgrims.
Religious police have arrested Shia Women in the Eastern Province for matters as trivial as organizing classes for Quranic studies and selling clothing for religious ceremonies as they were involved in political activities which are not allowed in KSA.
In the eastern city of Dammam where three quarters of the 400,000 residents are Shia, there are no Shia mosques or prayer halls, no Shia call to prayer broadcast on TV, and no cemeteries for Shia.
Late 2011, a Shiite pilgrim was charged for being “involved with blasphemy” and sentenced to 500 lashes and 2 years in jail.
Also late 2011, a prominent Shiite Canadian cleric, Usama al-Attar.
He was released on the same day, declaring the arrest entirely unprovoked.
Much of education in Saudi Arabia is based on Sunni Wahhabi religious material. From a very young age, students are taught that Shiites are not Muslims and that Shiism is a conspiracy hatched by the Jews, and so Shiites are worthy of death.
Government Wahhabi scholars, such as Abdulqader Shaibat al-Hamd, have proclaimed on state radio that Sunni Muslims must not “eat their [Shia] food, marry from them, or bury their dead in Muslims’ graveyards”.
The government has restricted the names that Shias can use for their children in an attempt to discourage them from showing their identity. Saudi textbooks are hostile to Shiism, often characterizing the faith as a form of heresy worse than Christianity and Judaism.
Because anti-Shia attitudes are engrained from an early age, they are passed down from generation to generation. This prejudice is found not only in textbooks (often characterizing the faith as a form of heresy worse than Christianity and Judaism
), but also within the teachers in the classroom, and even in the university setting.
(Wahhabi) teachers frequently tell classrooms full of young Shia schoolchildren that they are heretics.
Teachers who proclaim that Shiites are atheists and deserve death have faced no repercussions for their actions, barely even receiving punishment.
At a seminar about the internet, held in King Abdulaziz City of Science and Technology, professor Dr. Bader Hmood Albader explained how the internet was beneficial to society, but at the same time there were many Shia websites proclaiming to be Muslim websites, which needed to be stopped.
Much discrimination occurs in the Saudi workforce as well. Shiites are prohibited from becoming teachers of religious subjects, which constitute about half of the courses in secondary education.
Shiites cannot become principals of schools.
Some Shiites have become university professors but often face harassment from students and faculty alike.
Shiites are disqualified as witnesses in court, as Saudi Sunni sources cite the Shi’a practise of ‘Taqiyya’- wherein it is permissible to lie while they are in fear or at risk of significant persecution. Shia cannot serve as judges in ordinary court, and are banned from gaining admission to military academies,
and from high-ranking government or security posts, including becoming pilots in Saudi Airlines.
Amir Taheri quotes a Shi’ite businessman from Dhahran as saying “It is not normal that there are no Shi’ite army officers, ministers, governors, mayors and ambassadors in this kingdom. This form of religious apartheid is as intolerable as was apartheid based on race.”
Human Rights Watch reports that Shiites want to be treated as equals and desire to be free from discrimination (Human Rights Watch). However, the Shia minority is still marginalized on a large scale.
gravenimage says
Thanks for that grim information, Mortimer.
mortimer says
Shi’ites who venerate Muslim saints and honor their tombs are considered ‘idol worshippers’ who deserve the death penalty by many Sunnite imams.
Walter Sieruk says
Those adults who manipulated the two teenagers to because suicide /homicide bombers to use them a stooges for Islam’s jihad are despicable cowards . Instead of using impressionable youth as jihad murder tools those Muslim adults do engage in the murderous jihad attacks themselves if they really believe that doing such blood and deadly jihad bombing are such grand things to do.
That they don’t exposes what totally unconscionable villains those jihadist adults actually are.
gravenimage says
So true, Walter.
Patriot says
True these Dogs are cowards.
gravenimage says
Iraq: Sunni Muslims send two teenagers to carry out jihad suicide attacks in area of Shi’ite shrines
…………..
Hideous but no surprise.
Note both the Muslim-on-Muslim violence and the abuse of children here.
God, I hate Islam.
Chessss says
Don’t they all support jihadi behavior. ?
Better there than here?
Keep it at home?
Must be missing something.