Abstract
Wahhabi anti-Shi‘ism has gained increased attention in the international media since 2005, just as the civil war in Iraq has increased the wider public‘s awareness of the confessional divide between Shi‘is and Sunnis in the Muslim world. Indeed, the Sunni Jihadists of al-Qa‘ida in Mesopotamia (al-Qa‘ida fi Bilad al-Rafidayn) even declared an all-out war on the Iraqi Shi‘is and focused their terrorist campaign on Shi‘i targets. As the Wahhabiyya is widely seen as one of the intellectual roots of Jihadist terrorism, many observers seek for an explanation of the escalating anti-Shi‘i violence by looking at Saudi Arabia.
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Notes
Christopher Melchert, Ahmad ibn Hanbal (Oxford: Oneworld, 2006), p. 79.
On the Nakhawila, see Werner Ende: “The Nakhawila: A Shi‘ite Community in Medina, Past and Present,” in Die Welt des Islam 37, 3 (1997), pp. 263–346.
Harold R. P. Dickson, Kuwait and Her Neighbours (London: Allen & Unwin, 1956), p. 157; IOR: L/P&S/18/B 340: Notes on the “Akhwan” Movement. By Major H. R. P. Dickson (May 1920), p. 1.
On these events in detail, see Jacob Goldberg, “The Shi‘i Minority in Saudi Arabia,” in Juan R.I. Cole/Nikki R. Keddie (eds.), Shi‘ism and Social Protest (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), pp. 230–246; Joseph Kostiner, “Shi‘i Unrest in the Gulf,” in Martin Kramer (ed.), Shi‘ism, Resistance, and Revolution (Boulder: Westview Press, 1987), pp. 173–186.
On the events in detail, see James Buchan, “The Return of the Ikhwan, 1979,” in David Holden/Richard Johns (eds.), The House of Saud: The Rise and Rule of the Most Powerful Dynasty in the Arab World (London: Sidgwick Jackson, 1981), pp. 511–526; Johannes Reissner, “Die Besetzung der Groβen Moschee von Mekka,” in Orient 21 (1980), pp. 193–203.
As a consequence, the Saudi Shi‘is began to regard the 1980s as one of the worst decades in their history. Nakash, Yitzhak, Reaching for Power: The Shi‘a in the Modern Arab World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), p. 50.
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© 2011 Ofra Bengio and Meir Litvak
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Steinberg, G. (2011). The Wahhabiyya and Shi‘ism, from 1744/45 to 2008. In: Bengio, O., Litvak, M. (eds) The Sunna and Shi’a in History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137495068_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137495068_10
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