Around the same time, a new party, Islamic Omma, emerged suddenly. It too joined the call for demonstrations, demanding justice, equality, and representation. Omma, whose Salafi program diverges from the official Salafi-Wahhabist line, suffered a blow when four of its founding members were arrested immediately after announcing their party to the Saudi leadership with several more arrested later. But it continued to support the demonstrations and published two religious treatises debunking the official religious scholars who argued that peaceful protest is illegitimate in Islam. Omma has intellectual and possibly organizational links throughout the Arab world, especially in the Kuwaiti Salafi movement.
Another group, the National Coalition and Free Youth Movement, formed on Facebook and Twitter in spite of having no offline organizational presence. Their Web pages would disappear amid government censorship only to reappear at different addresses. Many pages gathered thousands of supporters, but it is difficult to claim that all were authentic. Cyber-warfare pitted activists and non-ideological young men and women against regime security, complicating the headcount.
The virtual opposition included a mix of Islamists, liberals, non-Saudis, and others. Some youth had clear political visions for the outcome of protest, but others simply expressed frustration at their limited economic opportunities. Young activists directed anger at the older generation-tribal, religious, and royal elders-and portrayed members of the royal family and their bureaucrats as corrupt and morally bankrupt. Young women in particular expressed frustration over their marginalization. These voices of digital protest would be tested on the ground on March 11.
Days after the resignation of Egypt's Hosni Mubarak on February 11, Saudi Facebook activists announced their March 11 Day of Rage, dubbed thawrat hunayn, invoking a symbolic battle between belief and blasphemy at the time of the Prophet Muhammad. Everyone knew that demonstrations were forbidden. In the past activists who announced their intentions to demonstrate were quickly arrested.
That activists relied so heavily on online recruiting and petitioning speaks to one of the fundamental challenges facing reformers in the Kingdom. There are essentially no non-state institutions in the country. Saudi Arabia has not had trade unions since the 1950s, when the government banned them in the oil-rich province where the then-American oil company ARAMCO was based. Likewise, there are no legal political parties, youth associations, women's organizations, or independent human rights organizations.
The question for the protest organizers, then, was whether online enthusiasm would translate offline, where Saudis have little experience of solidarity.
• • •
While calls for demonstrations were gathering momentum in the virtual world, a different reality was unfolding on the ground. On February 14, thousands of Bahrainis, whose island state is linked to Saudi Arabia via a causeway, marched to the center of the capital, Manama, and took over Pearl Roundabout, their equivalent of Tahrir Square. The protesters represented the extension of the Arab Spring into the Arabian Peninsula. They called for real constitutional monarchy, a more powerful elected parliament, and genuine separation of powers. They also demanded an end to sectarianism and discrimination in employment.
The events there, which saw a Shia majority rise up against the Sunni Al-Khalifa royal family, left the Saudi leadership nervous. But Abdullah's propagandists were able to take advantage.
After Bahraini security forces killed at least four demonstrators on February 17, protest intensified. The Al-Khalifas felt threatened and called upon the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and in particular Riyadh. Meetings between several Gulf foreign ministers and GCC officials resulted in the dispatch of mainly Saudi troops-supported by a tactically insignificant but symbolically meaningful United Arab Emirates commitment-to rescue the Al-Khalifa family. Peninsula Shield, a GCC military force, would be used for the first time, not to defend the six founding member states from external enemies but to quash a rebellion against one of their ruling families. Kuwait and Qatar eventually sent troops, while Oman refrained but voiced their support for the Al-Khalifas.
On March 14, Saudi troops crossed the causeway, hands raised with victory signs from the hatches of tanks. Red cars followed carrying intelligence and security personnel to protect the ruling family and tighten their grip on the area. Three days later the protesters were chased out of Pearl Roundabout at gunpoint. Within a week, bulldozers flattened the iconic monument that had stood there.
By intervening, the Saudis hoped not only to protect their Bahraini ally, but to split their internal opposition using sectarian politics. As the protests grew and the GCC deliberated, the Saudi official press peddled the regime's line: an Iranian-Shia conspiracy was targeting the Sunni heartland. The champions of Sunni Islam would save the Gulf from the Iranian-Shia takeover. The Saudi regime proved not only to its subjects, but also to Western governments, a determination to crush protest and expel Iranian and Shia influence from the peninsula. The message to President Obama was to think twice before supporting democracy and human rights in the Arabian Peninsula. The message to Saudis was that critics would be tarred as traitors to the nation and enemies of the faith.
• • •
Inside Saudi Arabia, the regime's first line of defense against the planned March 11 protests was to mobilize anti-Shia sentiment and official Wahhabist religion. Religious leaders supported the regime in two complementary ways.
First, Wahhabi religious scholars warned from the minarets that the wrath of God would be inflicted on demonstrators. On March 7, the Council of Higher Ulama, the senior official religious authority, issued a fatwa against protests. Thousands of hard copies were distributed in mosques and neighborhoods, and digital versions made the rounds online. All local newspapers reported on it favorably.
Second, official religious scholars warned of an Iranian-Shia conspiracy directed by Saudi exiles in London and Washington and the Shia in the Eastern Province to cause fitna (chaos) and divide the country. The officials relied on conventional Wahhabi condemnations of the Shia, historically depicted as heretics and more recently as an Iranian fifth column. They reminded the believers of the need for ijma, consensus around the pious rulers of the country, and warned that protests would lead to fragmentation and bloody civil war. Neo-Wahhabi scholars-not directly associated with the official Council of Higher Ulama-had more freedom to denounce the Shia in local mosques, lectures, and sermons, all recorded and publicized on YouTube. Veteran Sheikh Nasir al-Omar joined the call against the Shia, thus adding weight to the opinions of the younger neo-Wahhabi scholars. Many in the younger generation are critical of the regime's repressive gender policies, but they support its opposition to the Shia as alien, heretical, and loyal to Iran.
While religious leaders promoted obedience and sectarianism, the "liberal press"-also officially controlled-published articles denouncing sectarianism. Liberal authors attacked sectarian preachers of hate and instead celebrated national unity, wataniyya. Not that these liberal authors favored political protest or close ties with the Shia. Rather, they offered Saudis an alternative discourse that still served the regime's interests. With society divided between supposedly liberal intellectuals and hateful preachers, the regime confirms in the minds of people that it alone can broker between the fiercely opposed groups.
• • •
Only hours before the Day of Rage, Shia demonstrators staged peaceful protests in Qatif, Awamiyya, Sayhat, and other towns and villages in the Shia-dominated Eastern Province. Security forces quickly moved to suppress and arrest demonstrators. Shia notables from the province hurried to Riyadh to express their allegiance to the king and to demand the release of political prisoners. In a gesture meant to calm the situation and demonstrate good will, some prisoners were released.
And then on March 11, the day of the planned demonstrations, things were quiet. Helicopters flew low in the skies over Saudi cities, mirroring the intimidation of protesters in Tahrir Square and Pearl Roundabout. Security forces spread through every corner and street.
An unannounced curfew loomed over Riyadh and Jeddah. At noon, Saudis prayed as usual, then they got into their cars to drive home for lunch and the usual siesta. One man dared to defy the curfew. The lone demonstrator, Khalid al-Johani, told BBC journalist Sue Lloyd Roberts and her camera crew, "The royal family don't own us. . . . I need freedom; all the country is a jail. . . . We need a parliament." Al-Johani anticipated that he would be arrested. "I demonstrate because it is worth it," he said, "I am doing this for my four children." He gave Roberts his mobile number, but after that day, al-Johani stopped answering his phone. Like Muhammad al-Wadani, he disappeared.
