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.”
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.
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