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As popular uprisings spread across the Middle East, popular wisdom often held that the Gulf States would remain beyond the fray. In Sectarian Gulf, Toby Matthiesen paints a very different picture, offering the first assessment of the Arab Spring across the region. With first-hand accounts of events in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, Matthiesen tells the story of the early protests, and illuminates how the regimes quickly suppressed these movements. Pitting citizen against citizen, the regimes have warned of an increasing threat from the Shia population. Relations between the Gulf regimes and their Shia citizens have soured to levels as bad as 1979, following the Iranian revolution. Since the crackdown on protesters in Bahrain in mid-March 2011, the "Shia threat" has again become the catchall answer to demands for democratic reform and accountability. While this strategy has ensured regime survival in the short term, Matthiesen warns of the dire consequences this will have—for the social fabric of the Gulf States, for the rise of transnational Islamist networks, and for the future of the Middle East

Cover -- Half-title -- Series information -- Title page -- Copyright information -- Dedication -- Table of contents -- List of maps -- Acknowledgements -- A Note on Conventions -- Glossary -- List of abbreviations -- Introduction -- In the Shadow of the Wahhabiyya -- The Shia in Historiography -- Sectarianism and Communal Politics -- Structure of the Book -- 1 Politics of Notables -- Shia Islam in Eastern Arabia -- An Imperial Frontier -- Political Economy of Piety -- The Shaykhiyya and Clerical Networks -- Ibn Saud's Conquest of al-Ahsa and Qatif -- The Shia Court in Qatif -- The Shia Court in al-Ahsa -- Conclusion -- 2 Oil and Dissent -- A Saudi Workers Movement -- Local Elections -- Searching for the Arab Nation -- Communists and Co-optation -- Conclusion -- 3 Shia Islamism -- The Shirazi Movement -- The Uprising of 1979 -- The Limits of Notable Politics -- Conclusion -- 4 A Decade of Confrontation -- Revolutionary Iran and the Gulf Shia -- Lost in Exile -- A Female Vanguard -- A New Governor and the Decline of the Left -- The Hajj and Saudi-Iranian Tensions -- The Line of the Imam -- Conclusion -- 5 No More Revolution -- The Gulf Crisis and Calls for Reform -- The Petitions Movement -- Secret Negotiations -- The Deal with King Fahd -- Divided Opposition and the Khobar Bombings -- Conclusion -- 6 Marginal Recognition -- The Integration of the Opposition -- Civil Society -- Shia Courts between Notables and Islamists -- A Saudi Public Sphere -- Abdullah and the 2003 Petitions -- Politics of Representation -- An Imagined Community Online -- Conclusion -- 7 A New Intifada -- Sectarian Clashes -- A Renewed Shia Protest Movement -- Arrests and the Politics of Notables -- The First Deaths -- A Manhunt and Simmering Tensions -- Conclusion -- Conclusion The Politics of Sectarianism -- Bibliography -- Primary Sources -- Personal Archives.

The Communist Party of Saudi Arabia was a pro-Soviet Marxist-Leninist party that existed from 1975 until the early 1990s. Its roots lay in the labor movement of the 1950s in the oil-producing Eastern Province. The history of this province is a hitherto almost unknown aspect of modern Saudi history, Arab Marxism, and the broader Cold War. The Saudi Communist Party helped to launch an uprising in 1979 in the Eastern Province and was particularly active in propagating its ideas throughout the 1980s as the Soviet Union and Saudi Arabia fought a proxy war in Afghanistan. Despite opposing the monarchy's use of Islam as a tool of legitimacy and a propaganda instrument against Communism in the Cold War, the party called for a common front with Islamic groups opposed to the monarchy at home. After the dissolution of the party in 1991, former party members became key actors in the reformist petitions of 1990–1991, 2003, and 2011. This article is based on fieldwork in Saudi Arabia, interviews with veteran leftists from the region, and hitherto unexamined primary sources in Arabic, German, and English, including party publications and archival sources.

AbstractThis article analyzes how Saudi Shiʿi historians have adapted tools associated with nationalism to create distinct historical narratives for the Shiʿa of Eastern Arabia. State-sponsored narratives have either left out Shiʿi Muslims or cast them as unbelievers and alien to the Saudi body politic. In contrast, historical narratives written by Shiʿi authors emphasize the Shiʿa's long history of sedentarization, their cultural heritage, and their struggles against foreign occupation. The article is based on fieldwork in Saudi Arabia and a close reading of hundreds of articles and books on local history published mainly since the 1980s. Through the Saudi Shiʿi case, I show that "identity entrpreneurs," or activists who create, politicize, and profit from identities to further political aims, understand local historiography to be crucial to their overall projects.

AbstractThis article shows how ideas of Arab nationalism, socialism, and communism spread to the Arab Gulf states. It outlines how migrant workers, teachers, students returning from abroad, and the emergence of a print culture filled with Arab nationalist and leftist ideas in the 1940s created the basis for widespread political mobilization in the oil-rich Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. After major strikes in 1953 and 1956 and a harsh crackdown, leftist activists moved underground and into exile. They continued to be active clandestinely and gathered in various capitals in the region. Members of the Shia Muslim minority in the Eastern Province played a special role in the labour movement and secular opposition groups. The latter promised the Shia inclusion in a larger political project and thus they were seen as an antidote to sectarian discrimination against this minority. The article emphasizes the importance of transnational networks, organizational resources such as libraries and social clubs, and a radicalized public sphere for political mobilization.