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The Challenge to Mecca
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14136 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
1 / 1988 |
1,961 Words |
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Amos Perlmutter
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Whether one believes the Saudi or Iranian account of the bloody violence that occurred during the summer hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca), the reality is that there exists a deep ideological and fundamental division between revolutionary Iran and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, one that threatens more violence and strife for the future. The language used to describe the massacre may be ideological and religious in nature, but at stake is nothing less than the balance of power in the Persian Gulf.
The Saudi-Iranian conflict--punctuated by bloody demonstrations and strife--is basically a war of words over "Islamic identity," to use the language of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Reacting bitterly to the massacre in Mecca, Iranian President Ali Khameini verbally assaulted the Saudis on August 18 and called for an end to Saudi custodianship of Islam's holy sites. Iranian hajj director Mahdi Karubi Khomeini said in a news conference in Tehran on August 26 that Saudi Arabia was the "usurping government of Hejaz," referring to the Saud dynasty's 1933 incorporation of Asir. And on November 26, senior member of parliament Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani announced over Tehran Radio that Iran is "ready to fight under any circumstances for the liberation of Mecca."
Strong language indeed, but the violence in Mecca was more than just a bloody, random event. It constituted the strongest challenge yet raised against the rule of the House of Saud since the turn of the century.
The demonstration challenged the legitimacy of Saudi Arabia's custodianship of Islam's holy sites. In the Saudis' view, this challenge is revolutionary in nature and presents a frightening threat to the dynasty and the kingdom.
The pilgrimage polemic
Ruhollah K. Ramazani, author of Revolutionary Iran (1986) wrote that, "No single issue has been as persistent and potentially as challenging to Saudi domestic and international legitimacy."
To the House of Saud, creator of the modern kingdom and descendant of the Wahhabi rulers, there is no question that Mecca is the site of Islam's birth and the Saudi dynasty its custodian. If in the past, before the oil glut, the hajj represented an important source of revenue, today it has become a nationalist symbol of the Saudi guardianship accepted by all Arabs and Muslims except the Shiites of Iran. For the Ayatollah Khomeini, however, this is nothing less than heresy. He adamantly rejects Sunni (nationalist Saudi) oversight of the hajj. Instead, Khomeini believes that Mecca should be the arena for the propagation of his brand of Islamic fundamentalism.
Hence, the pilgrimage presents an annual dilemma: the potential of political and religious agitation by thousands of Iranian pilgrims. The Saudis also fear the effect of Khomeini's volatile fundamentalism on their own Shiite population, which lives in Al-Hasa, the Eastern Province from which 60 percent of Saudi oil is pumped.
Tensions centering around the pilgrimage have mounted since 1982, when Saudi police deported some 100 Iranians. In 1983, the Saudis sought to curtail the Iranian pilgrimage altogether, after being stung by the words of Iranian Prime Minister Mussavi who, in a speech to the Iranian
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