The political part of my brain wanted to know if the Shia upheavals in the eastern part of the kingdom had penetrated Mecca and Medina. For Saudis, it was normal to call 10 percent of their country the pejorative rafidah (“rejectors”), the most used anti-Shia Arabic slur in the region. Saudi Shia are concentrated in the east, inconveniently close to the major oilfields. In Saudi Arabia’s geographical curse, oil and the reviled Shia live in the same land. The Al Saud feel more in control of what used to be the western Hejaz region that contains Mecca and Medina, and even the neighboring Nejd. But it is the Shia in the Ash Sharqiyah (Eastern Province) that they fear. Even Adham texted that all Shia of Qatif, referring to the governorate in the Eastern Province, are “trouble-makers.” The indoctrination of this kind of internecine hatred went deep. Qatif’s geography is inconvenient, too close to Iraq, Iran, and the contested Persian Gulf for the often-jittery Saudi monarchy. By 2015, the Saudis had mandated that pilgrims had to state whether they were Shia or Sunni on their Hajj visa applications—basically religious apartheid, Saudi style. Post-Hajj I would come back home with both derision and disgust for the Saudi Wahhabi machine and devour every piece of news that came from the region. But on this night as all these historical milestones met in my brain, I walked determinedly with Hossein, eager to be a part of the Iranian Dua.
In 2011, when I entered Saudi Arabia, Shia youths protested on the streets in the east of the country. An ignored, maligned, super-connected, and majority-under-twenty-five populace is a highly combustible mix; even one event can ignite revolutionary fire. The release of political prisoners and an end to the years of a state-sponsored sectarianism were the primary demands of the protesters. I had seen protest videos and read about the restive Saudi Shia population. Pre-Hajj, I had visions of exploring Qatif and its dissent. When there I became a prisoner of the Saudi regime. As a passport-less pilgrim, I could go nowhere but Mecca, Medina, and Jeddah airport.
I knew of the Saudi Shia underground, strangely through friends in Tehran. Traditionally, many Shia follow a marja al-taqlid (exalted source of emulation). In Iran, that person is Ayatollah Khameini, who like his predecessor Khomeini makes Velayat-e Faqih the very fulcrum of governance and all foreign policy. For the Saudi Shia, their marja is the less-influential Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, whose penile fatwa had filled me with much fear. Preaching from Najaf in Iraq, he is uncomfortably close for the Saudis.
The influential Saudi cleric Muhammad al-Arefe had once called al-Sistani an atheist, un-Islamic, and debauched. The Shia world reacted with predictable fury. But the cleric the Al Saud really feared was Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, who preached from the Qatif-al-Awamiyyah region, their own soil. Imprisoned several times, Nimr had called for the end of the regime, free elections, and even the secession of the Eastern Province. Shia youths, who were his largest support base, saw him as a “secular reformist.” I had followed Nimr’s outspokenness on Twitter carefully, beginning in 2010. Riyadh feared he would generate fitna (the undesirable Islamic state of civil strife). In truth, he was a Quran-inspired pacifist, rallying protesters to “use the power of the word” rather than violence. The “word” in Islam always means the Quran.
In Medina, on the night of that Dua, as my Iranian pal/smoking buddy Hossein and I passed the Prophet’s grave on the way to the mass of Iranians, we were getting close to the Jannat al-Baqi (Garden of Paradise) cemetery—the setting for major Shia-Sunni clashes in 2009, when the mutaween were caught filming Shia women praying at the graves. The religious police denied it, arguing they did not condone filming of any kind, and filming women would be unspeakable. Many religious figures the Shia mourned were buried here and the Saudis had destroyed the graves forever.
After the clashes, Nimr gave a particularly inflammatory, viral sermon, saying, “Our dignity has been pawned away, and if it is not restored, we will call for secession. Our dignity is more precious than the unity of this land.” Nimr had become “a prominent Saudi Shia reformist.”
Two years after my Hajj, in October 2014, Nimr was sentenced to death. In 2015, the Saudis executed a record-breaking 157 people, most beheaded by sword. Nimr’s sentencing was a global Shia phenomenon. On January 2, 2016, the Saudis executed forty-seven people and casually mentioned that Nimr was amongst them. The shock caused global headlines and protests. In Tehran, using now-familiar tactics, protesters ransacked the Saudi embassy. The ever-growing number of what I call the Twitter Sheikhs of Saudi Arabia reacted immediately in different ways, depending on whose pleasure they served at. Protesters in Qatif dared to use a slogan they had rarely used, “Down with the Al Saud.” Nimr was a rallying figure. Many feared that the Shia youths will fall back into a predictable state of complacency. In Saudi terms that usually means not questioning the ultimate authority of the king, but openly complaining about everything else—usually on Twitter and YouTube. Filled with tweets and YouTube videos, my mind expected to see revolution erupting even that night as thousands of Iranians gathered. I was wrong.
This Dua Ku’mayl gathering of Iranians was close to the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, surrounded by Saudi riot police. Hossein confidently walked right into the phalanx of security.
“Let us through. We’re Iranian,” he said in Arabic to one of the Saudi guards surrounding the praying mass of Iranians. He grabbed my hand and led me defiantly past the ring of Saudi police. I had spent months studying Shia Islam. It was almost like learning a new religion. But this prayer could take up to an hour. I was not sufficiently indoctrinated, so I mumbled what little I could remember of the prayer and bowed my head to avoid suspicious glances. I felt one with the Iranians. Like them, I was an infidel. Thankfully the Iranians did not know why, or they would have rejected me as handily as the Saudis rejected them. “We have shared something momentous,” said Hossein, “so I must tell you a secret—I was part of what you guys in America were calling the green revolution in 2009.” I squeezed his hand tight, knowing how much it would have taken for him to tell me this.
There was no point in sleeping that night. Saudis open the gates to the Garden of Paradise cemetery at 4:30 a.m. Was it called paradise because all its nameless occupants were firmly settled there? We waited with a bawling Shia supplicant soundtrack. These meek mourners were the “warriors” of Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolution that the House of Saud feared so much? I had to laugh.
“Pay attention to this,” said Hossein, swatting me with his map. “It’s places like this that we really need it.” I pulled my map out of my bag.
I knew the history. The cemetery had existed since the Prophet’s time. Many religious figures the Shia mourned were buried here and the Wahhabi Ikhwan forces of the Saudis had demolished all the graves by 1926. The desecrated al-Baqi lay in ruins. It contained the remains of many of Islam’s ancestors, including some in the revered Ahl al-Bayt (Muhammad’s direct family). Grave-marker destruction, as for Daesh today, has remained a favorite Wahhabi pastime.
Finally, the gates to “paradise” opened and thousands of pilgrims rushed through. It was hard to get past the formation of mutaween. These feared creatures blocked the wailing Iranians like a face-off. This was the front line of a divide that I’d previously only understood in theory.
“Bida!” they yelled, adding “Shirk!” to good effect. The former means “heresy.” The latter, “idol worship.” For these Wahhabis, the mere attempt at praying graveside is idol-worship. They point to Muhammad’s destroying pagan idols contained in the Kaaba. The Shia argue that they are not literally praying to graves. They are merely praying to God at the grave. This is an important distinction. But for the mutaween these reviled infidels are praying to graves. It’s kind of like how many modern Protestant Christians, unlike their Catholic brethren, avoid decorating their homes with crucifixes. But you don’t often see Protestants policing Catholic prayer. The mutaween take it a step further: Any depiction of the human form at all is considered un-Islamic.
About 4,000 of these illiterate guys are on the payroll, but thousands mor
e patrol the streets as volunteers. This is what happens when years of Wahhabi indoctrination meet joblessness. Their goal is to ensure total compliance to Wahhabi ideology. Many are young and angry, and, given power for the first time in their lives, they predictably abuse it. It’s a dangerous combo. They fine and imprison people without evidence, and their accusations of apostasy can even lead to an execution. Their power seemed limitless, and I reminded myself to be careful, for my green card wouldn’t protect me in a sharia court. I would soon experience their terror. All these thugs really know are bits of the Quran. They direct much of their ire toward women going about their daily business who dare to display any skin or hair, intentionally or not. And thus my so-called ninjas.
I had Googled the mutaween and was already petrified. Their notorious barbarism is on full display on the web. You just need to type “Mecca school fire” as search terms. In 2002, a girls’ school in Mecca caught fire. Worldwide media also lit up. What followed was a global tragedy and an enormous PR fiasco for the monarchy. The mutaween barred the doors, preventing the girls’ escape, because they were not properly covered, and they barred the male civil-defense forces from rescuing the girls because they claimed that direct contact with the girls’ bodies would arouse the men sexually. And so, rather than risk such impropriety, the mutaween shoved girls trying to escape back into the inferno. Fifteen of them burned to death. More than fifty were severely burned. I find it difficult to imagine a more despicable example of a zealotry that encourages adherents to follow the letter of the law at the expense of its spirit. The subsequent global outcry was so loud that the incident marked one of the rare moments the US government publicly reprimanded the Saudis.
I had grown up with gender segregation. I had spent time in states that police morality. Even Iran’s feared religious police, the Basij, paled in comparison to the barbarism of the mutaween. In 2007, the mutaween beat a man to death when they caught him selling alcohol in Riyadh. In 2013, two men died when their car drove off a bridge, chased by mutaween for singing patriotic songs about their country. Videos of mutaween abuses proliferate on YouTube.
As dawn broke above the graves, the green dome of the Prophet’s grave appeared on the horizon. Saudis have tried to destroy this dome for years. Swarms of pigeons took off into the desert sky. The wailing mourners had moved on, and an eerie silence replaced the din. The prayers I now heard were whispered. My companions discussed the quality of the lighting for photographs of the unnerving landscape. I broke away, seeking a solitude more appropriate for this place of death. Some poor pilgrim, who must have died here, was being buried. At that moment it occurred to me that no one in this man’s family would ever know where to find his remains. This was no headstone land.
I had thought I had forever lost my ability to cry after my mother’s funeral. In part I had come to this strange land to look for those lost tears. I was glad to be alone.
Muhammad, for many Muslims, chose the spot where the vast Baqi exists today. Do the Saudis still mess with it? I wondered. That morning it felt like a city of the dead. Schools of Islam dispute where the Prophet’s daughter Fatima is buried near here. Muhammad had no male heirs, so Fatima’s presence in Islam’s lineage is central. For some, she is buried under the green dome. Others argue that she is buried in Baqi.
I walked back to the Prophet’s mosque. I prayed Fajr. I felt more in tune with my faith than I had for a long time. I was meant to be here.
After a nap, Shahinaz and I (luckily without incident) went to the mosque again for Zuhr (noon) prayers. Our happiness was short-lived. Soon a mutawa appeared, saying she couldn’t sit with me. Ignoring my protestations and Wahhabi law on not touching strange women, he scooped her up and dragged her away.
She texted, “It’s fine, let’s text after Zuhr and we will find each other again.”
In the Tatooine area, it seemed men and women could walk together. What looked like miles of ceiling closed in to shield the pilgrims from the morning sun with nary a squeak. More bin Laden gadgetry installed to ensure our comfort. Here, the discipline of Islam was on full display. Perfectly formed rows of supplicants stretched for miles. We were emulating the Prophet’s sunnah, his way of life, which all good Muslims are taught. The Prophet, or one of his companions, must have decreed that not even one believer should break formation, physically, and by extension, spiritually. At this time, I noticed that all the women, including Shahinaz, had suddenly disappeared.
I lingered at the green dome under which Muhammad was buried. Since the eighteenth century its existence had been contested, and yet it stood firm. This is the divine in action, I thought.
I reunited with Shahinaz and we explored our surroundings. This Prophet’s Mosque is Islam’s second-holiest mosque. The first obviously is the Masjid al-Haram at the Kaaba’s ground zero in Mecca. As a child, I knew there were secret messages and signs in the heavily calligraphed columns that surround Muhammad’s grave. This was Islam’s Da Vinci code. For the Shia, it was of utmost importance: The Prophet’s daughter Fatima, who would lay forth the lineage of Islam through her husband and their first Imam Ali, had her “room” here. The very foundations of the Prophet’s Medina home lay within this mosque.
Sunnis believe that the rightful inheritors of Muhammad’s legacy, the earliest two caliphs culled from his closest companions—Abu Bakr and Umar—were also buried there.
“For me, this is not a mere mosque,” I whispered to Shahinaz. It was where long-lost memories became sacred. It was where the first Islamic nation and community were built, as close to the concept of democracy as could possibly exist in seventh-century Arabia. During Muhammad’s life it was a home, it was a center for community to gather, it was a university, it was a place of refuge for the homeless, and yes, it was also a mosque.
Our Hajj guide described a fatwa from the nineties that came from the particularly cruel Saudi Grand Mufti ibn Baz. It partially decreed:
There is a specious argument put forward by those who worship graves (code for Shia), namely the fact that the grave of the Prophet is in his mosque . . . It is not permissible for a Muslim to take that as evidence that mosques may be built over graves, or that people may be buried inside mosques, because that goes against the traditions of the Prophet, and because it is a means that may lead to shirk . . .
Baaz came in a long, destructive ideological Wahhabi line. The father of the “third Saudi State,” ibn Saud, captured the Hejaz (that contains Mecca and Medina) in 1925. His ISIS-like ikhwans (“brothers”) used their brutality to demolish nearly every tomb or dome in Medina in order to prevent their veneration. The job was finished on April 21, 1926, on a day that some Shia mark as Yaum e Gham (“Day of Sorrow”). They never dared to touch the Prophet’s grave, which determined pilgrims were almost stampeding to touch.
Many Muslims believe an empty grave next to Muhammad’s is reserved for Jesus, who will return near the Day of Judgment to kill the Daijal (Antichrist, false messiah). Gold-plated Ottoman-style columns surrounded this area, with gold-inlayed Quranic verses. The grave itself was invisible because it was covered with gold mesh and black curtains.
Our Hajj guide also described a Grand Mufti al-Shaykh–signed pamphlet during Hajj 2007. It said that “the green dome shall be demolished and the three graves flattened in the Prophet’s Masjid.” The hypocrisy of the Sauds was clear. No bejeweled ornamentation, they said. But this was it: a mausoleum with a disagreeable medley of faux gold, marble, and more. Why would a Muslim not pray to his/her Prophet at such an ornate mausoleum? The bin Ladens claim they spent $6 billion here. Shahinaz and I snickered at their faux, gaudy results. We both knew the Sauds are petrified of the worldwide outcry the destruction of this dome and Prophet’s (mausoleum-like) grave would cause.
I lost Shahinaz as the orderliness broke into religious fervor closer to his grave. With their canes, mutaween whacked pilgrims who were daring a moment of graveside prayer. And yet they persisted. I felt peace in the pandemonium. Every believer wanted to g
et as close as possible to the grave. We were united in our forbidden longing. Even the incessant harassment of the mutaween could not take that away from us.
“Let’s meet after Baqi in the hotel. I am safe,” Shahinaz texted.
The crowd dispersed. The heat was unbearable. Over lunch at Al-Baik, a Saudi KFC, Shahinaz and I confabulated. A terrible incident had occurred: A woman in her tent had diarrhea and her period simultaneously. She had soiled her sleeping bag. With the exception of Shahinaz, who gave her Imodium, she was being treated like a pariah. Shahinaz helped her move and clean up. The sleeping bag needed to be replaced and the group leader had one. Where was simple compassion? Piety required it. No one except for Shahinaz seemed to possess any. And she said a few women were barely literate, probably products of “arranged marriage.”
Life in Saudi Arabia could be described in a sentence. Constant prayer, interrupted periodically for daily life and beheadings. But forcibly shoving religion down people’s throats never worked. I told Shahinaz what Adham had said. The majority of young Saudis hated prayer, and yet it was inextricably wound into the fabric of their lives. It was best not to be caught stationary outdoors during prayer time, anywhere. I had slept through Fajr on my first day, after all, and no storm troopers beat down my hotel room door. But we were experiencing judgmental fellow pilgrims. A woman had told Shahinaz to wear socks and gloves when she went out. Once, when I was praying just outside my packed hotel room, two guys said, “Praying in a corridor is haram.” This I knew: Laughing mid-prayer was haram—forbidden.
My desi-dar was going off frequently. Desi literally means “from the homeland,” which is South Asia. Many unskilled workers here were desi. Later, I sat down next to a younger man I immediately recognized as Pakistani owing to the shape of his close-cropped beard and his fairer skin. His skin tone matched mine. Muslim Indians, and by extension Pakistanis, generally have lighter skin than their Hindu neighbors.
A Sinner in Mecca Page 13