Fact Check: The Truth About Shaykh Nimr al-Nimr

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Jan 5, 2016 Saudi Arabia
Fact Check: The Truth About Shaykh Nimr al-Nimr

Fact Check: The Truth About Shaykh Nimr al-Nimr

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following resource was published by Americans for Human Rights and Democracy in Bahrain on 29 December 2015. Shaykh Nimr al-Nimr was a leading opposition figure who was the Saudi regime executed on 2 January 2016 along with forty-six other detainees.]

Since arresting leading Shia cleric Shaykh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr in July 2012, the Government of Saudi Arabia has worked to propagate a series of misperceptions aimed at degrading Sheikh Nimr’s record as a peaceful opposition figure. However, a review of Shaykh Nimr’s speeches and opposition activities demonstrates that government claims do not hold up to scrutiny.

Myth: Shaykh Nimr is an agent of Iran.

Fact: Shaykh Nimr has repeatedly called for improvements in the situation of the Saudi Shia and an end to government injustice against them, independent of any outside considerations. His efforts to draw attention to the systematic discrimination suffered by Shia in education, employment, religion, and the judiciary, among other sectors, have earned him a following among many in the predominantly Shia Eastern Province. These same efforts, however, have won him the stern disapproval of the Saudi government, which does not hesitate to label him as a Shia agent of Iran promoting unrest and cross-border sectarian unity.

In a sermon given in spring 2012, after providing a detailed history of how Saudi Shia uprisings predated the Iranian revolution, Shaykh Nimr stated, “We have no ties with Iran or any other country. We are connected to our values, and we will defend them, even if your media continues with its distortions.”

Myth: Shaykh Nimr called for violent resistance to the Saudi government.

Fact: The Saudi government claims that Shaykh Nimr incited violent resistance through his sermons and activities in the Eastern Province. In November 2015, advisors to Saudi Defense Minister Prince Mohammed bin Salman published a statement claiming, “the al-Nimr family members pursued violence and attacks on security forces and government facilities beside terrorizing civilians.” During Sheikh Nimr’s trial, the government accused and convicted him of inciting sectarian strife and encouraging rioting and the destruction of property.

But Shaykh Nimr’s speeches outline a different vision for resistance to the Saudi government. In explaining how the movement should operate, Shaykh Nimr repeatedly emphasized that “the roar of the word” is mightier than the sound of bullets. He explained that authorities would want protesters to use weapons, because the security forces know that they have the military advantage. As a result, Shaykh Nimr insists that the protesters rely on their words–they can defeat the government by adhering to their principles, but they have no chance if they choose the path of violence. In another sermon, he stated, “When we see an armed person in a demonstration, we will tell him this is unacceptable. Go home, we don’t need you.” Both morally and strategically, Shaykh Nimr believed that violence was not the way to achieve results. 

Myth: Shaykh Nimr called for foreign intervention in the Eastern Province.

Fact: In March 2009, Saudi Arabia issued an arrest warrant for Shaykh Nimr after he suggested that the Eastern Province would consider secession if the government did not respect the rights and dignity of the Shia community. His words stoked government fears that Saudi Shia would call for foreign assistance in toppling the Saudi government. In 2008, Shaykh Nimr reportedly stated that he would always support “the people” in any conflict with the government and argued for the right of Saudi Shia to seek “external assistance” in self-defense against government aggression. He has never called for any other country to intervene in the Eastern Province or in Saudi affairs. 

Myth: Sheikh Nimr violently resisted arrest by Saudi government officials.

Fact: The circumstances surrounding Shaykh Nimr’s arrest remain unclear, with different organizations reporting different versions of the story. According to the Saudi government’s report, Shaykh Nimr confronted security patrols during their pursuit of a wanted suspect who had attacked security forces in the past. Security forces called upon Shaykh Nimr to back down, but he failed to do so, and security forces moved in to make the arrest. While they were placing him in the patrol car, two other cars drove up and started firing on the patrol. In the confusion, Nimr sustained gunshot wounds. 

However, local sources have informed ADHRB that the arrest took place differently. In this account, armed officials chased Sheikh Nimr in his car. The chase continued until he crashed his car, at which point authorities forced Sheikh Nimr out of the car and shot him in the leg. He suffered multiple injuries in the incident.

Human rights organizations tend to report that Saudi authorities “violently arrested” Shaykh Nimr, resulting in his injuries.

What is clear is that Shaykh Nimr suffered multiple gunshot wounds and injuries in the course of his arrest. At his trial, the government denied the defense team the opportunity to cross-examine the police officers who had violently arrested Sheikh Nimr.

Myth: Shaykh Nimr is a terrorist.

Fact: The government and the Saudi media have gone to great lengths to paint Shaykh Nimr as a terrorist. Recent media reports have lumped him in with al-Qaeda terrorists and “terrorists from Awamiyya.” One goes so far as to equate him with a leading al-Qa`ida theorist, reporting that Nimr and the al-Qaeda member represent two sides of the same coin. Other Saudi officials have accused the Nimr family of terrorizing civilians. The Saudi government tried and convicted Shaykh Nimr in the Specialized Criminal Court (SCC), a national security tribunal ostensibly tasked with prosecuting crimes related to terrorism.

Sheikh Nimr has no connections to any terrorist cells and has not engaged in any violent activities directed toward the Saudi government or Saudi civilians. Since its inception in 2008, Saudi authorities have used the SCC to try numerous activists on terror charges related to their free expression. Similarly, its conviction of Shaykh Nimr stemmed from the expression of dissent through his sermons, and not from any violent activity.

Myth: Shaykh Nimr wants to overthrow the Saudi government.

Fact: Shaykh Nimr’s self-proclaimed main goal is to achieve equality and justice for Saudi Arabia’s Shia minority, not to topple the government. Despite this, the Government of Saudi Arabia leveled a number of charges against Shaykh Nimr based on his sermons and his involvement in the 2011-2012 protest movement. In the early sessions of Shaykh Nimr’s trial, the prosecutor presented a list of thirty-three charges against him, including giving speeches that threaten national unity and inciting people to demonstrate. The court sentenced Shaykh Nimr to death on 15 October 2014 for breaking allegiance with the ruler, inciting sectarian strife, and encouraging demonstrations, among other charges.

In a 2007 petition to the administrative governor of the Eastern Province, Shaykh Nimr presented a list of demands outlining his vision for reform. In the petition’s preamble, he stated, “We did not demand, do not demand, and will not demand anything threatening the security of the country or its people, or to undermine the pillars of the state, or to shorten its age or weaken its institutions.” His stated demands pertain to respecting religious freedom and achieving equality. 


[Click here to access this resource in Arabic]

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Jadaliyya Reports By :
Jadaliyya Reports

Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 

[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412