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Published Date: September 23, 2008
DUBAI: Human Rights Watch urged the Saudi government on Monday to end its 'systematic discrimination' of minority Ismaili Shiites, charging that they are treated as second-class citizens. 'The Saudi government preaches religious tolerance abroad, but it has consistently penalised its Ismaili citizens for their religious beliefs,' said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director of the New York-based watchdog.
The government should stop treating Ismailis as second-class in employment, the justice system and education,' he said in a statement. A HRW report released documents 'a pattern of discrimination against the Ismailis in government employment, education, religious freedom and the justice system,' the statement said. HRW said that several hundred thousand, 'perhaps as many as one million,' Ismailis live in Saudi Arabia, which hosts Islam's holiest shrines and applies a rigorous doctrine of Sunni Islam known
as Wahhabism.
Most live in Najran province on the southwestern border with Yemen. Saudi Arabia took control of Najran from Yemen in 1934, incorporating into the kingdom the local Sulaimani Ismaili community, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. More than 70 years on, 'Saudi authorities at the highest levels continue to propagate hate speech' against them, HRW said. In April 2007, the Council of Senior Religious Scholars, the body tasked with officially interpreting Islamic faith, termed Ismailis 'corrupt infidels, debauched ath
eists.
Hundreds of Ismailis were arrested following clashes with security forces in Najran in April 2000 and some 400 others were purged from the local bureaucracy, the rights watchdog said. Seventeen Ismailis are still serving jail terms over the unrest. According to HRW, Wahhabi judges in Saudi Islamic courts 'routinely discriminate against Ismailis,' such as when a judge annulled the marriage of an Ismaili man to a Sunni woman in March 2006 on grounds that he lacked religious qualification.
HRW noted that King Abdullah opened an interfaith conference initiated by Saudi Arabia in Spain in July. But 'the measure of Saudi religious tolerance will be its practice at home, not only what it preaches abroad,' Stork said. The rights group called on Riyadh to set up a national institution to recommend remedies for discriminatory policies and respond to individual claims.
In its annual International Religious Freedom Report issued on Friday, the US State Department said community leaders in Najran reported government discrimination against Ismailis, including 'allowing Sunni religious leaders to declare them unbelievers' and relocating them to other parts of the country.
The Najran Ismailis are a separate branch of the broader Shiite sect and do not follow the Aga Khan who heads the mainstream Ismailis. Ismaili activists have also alleged that the government is seizing lands in Najran to settle Sunni Yemeni tribesmen who are granted Saudi citizenship in an attempt to alter the area's demographic and religious composition. The State Department report said that while Saudi Arabia continued to place severe restrictions on religious freedom, there were 'incremental improvement
s in specific areas, such as better protection of the right to possess and use personal religious materials.' - AFP
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