Sullivan on Breivik

Andrew Sullivan is brilliant:

"One of the core messages of Christianity is a rejection of worldly power. The core message of Christianism is, in stark contrast, the desperate need to control all the levers of political power to control or guide the lives of others. And so the notion that Breivik is a 'Christian fundamentalist' seems unfair to those genuine Christian fundamentalists who seek no power over others (except proselytizing), but merely seek to live their own lives in accord with a literal belief in the words of the Bible.

"But Christianist? Breivik's picture should accompany the term in any dictionary. Christianism is all about power over others, and it has been fueled in the last decade by its mirror image, Islamism, and motivated to fury by hatred of what it sees as is true enemy, liberalism. Both Islamism and Christianism, to my mind, do not spring from real religious faith; they spring from neurosis caused by lack of faith. They are the choices of those who are panicked by the complexity and choices of modernity into a fanatical embrace of a simplistic parody of religion in order to attack what they see as their cultural and social enemies. They are not about genuine faith; they are about the instrumentality of faith as a political bludgeon."

Read the entire post.

Developing Abdali

In his book Dubai: Behind an Urban Spectacle, Yasser Elshatawy mentions a development plan for the Jordanian city of Amman:

"In Amman, the real estate industry is expanding significantly due to an influx of Iraqis as well as developments across a range of industries. Leading this growth is Mawared, a state owned development and investment company. One of their key projects is Abdali carried out in partnership with the Hariri family and the Kuwaiti investment group Kipco. Abdali will eventually become a fully functioning city centre for Amman. The project is viewed as an anchor that will attract global business to Jordan...

"Rami Daher, an architectural scholar and practitioner in Amman, observes that the Abdali project is part of a wider phenomenon in Amman, which includes a proliferation of malls and gated communities in addition to luxurious towers which represent a form of 'living above the city.' He notes that these transformations are part of what he calls neoliberal urban restructuring - a privatization of public space. Al-Abdali, for example, is modelled after Solidere in Beirut. He writes that both in its orientation and design it is turning their backs to Amman's original downtown. Mawared in collaboration with Saudi Oger (the developer responsible for Solidere) formed a partnership, the Abdali Investment Company, but according to Daher, 'the state is not absent but heavily involved.' The project has led to the displacement of a major transportation terminal, as well as the removal of informal vendors."

Solidere is the name for downtown Beirut, which was developed by the assassinated Rafiq Hariri after Lebanon's civil war. The Hariri family mentioned above is the same, and is also involved in urban development in Saudi Arabia, where former prime minister Saad Hariri was born. When I first travelled to the Middle East ten years ago for a summer Arabic program in Jordan, I became acquainted with the Abdali bus station and the large clutch of budget hotels and ware hawkers which surrounded it. It was relocated sometime during the 2006-08 period I spent in Israel. It seems like the broader development project is one of a number of similar projects around the Arab world which aim mainly to brand the city to attract global capital rather than serve the daily needs of its residents.

Rhetoric Matters

Blake Hounshell reads Anders Breivik's manifesto:

"In it, 'Berwick' declares himself a 'Justiciar Knight Commander,' a leading member of a 're-founded' Knights Templar group formed at an April 2002 meeting in London. He claims the founding group has 9 members, whom he does not name, and that three other sympathizers were not able to attend the original meeting.

"'Our purpose,' the document reads, is to 'seize political and military control of Western European countries and implement a cultural conservative political agenda.'

"In grim, apocalyptic language, it advocates attacks on 'traitors' across Europe who are supposedly enabling a Muslim takeover of the continent...

"Filled with hateful rantings against Muslims -- whom the author claims are on a trajectory to take over Europe and erase its culture patrimony -- the writing bears a great resemblence to online comments attributed to Anders Breivik, 32, the confessed perpetrator of a massacre that has so far claimed nearly 100 lives."

I'm going to take heat for this, but I want to point out that just as salafi preachers in Egypt have stirred up attacks on Christians, so anti-immigrant rhetoric and demonization of Muslims contributed to this horrendous rampage against those Breivik regarded as some sort of blood traitors. To speak is not the same as to kill, but words are still actions with consequences, and prejudiced words have hateful consequences.

Today's Syria Protests

Nada Bakri reports on today's protests in Syria:

"Hundreds of thousands of Syrians across the country took to the streets on Friday, defying a brutal crackdown by security forces and demanding the end of President Bashar al-Assad’s government.

"Armed forces loyal to the government opened fire on protesters in several towns and cities, killing four of them, residents and antigovernment activists said. Another protester died Friday from wounds sustained this month in the central city of Hama.

"Friday’s demonstrations, under the slogan of unity, came a week after a wave of sectarian bloodshed in Homs, Syria’s third-largest city, claimed the lives of at least two dozen people. The violence signaled a dangerous turn in the four-month popular uprising against Mr. Assad, who has been in power since 2000.

"'We are all one, not Arabs, not Kurds, not Muslims, not Christians, not Alawites, not Druze. We all want freedom,' shouted protesters in Dara’a, an impoverished town in southwestern Syria where the protests first began after teenagers there were detained for scrawling antigovernment graffiti on a wall.

"The protesters have insisted that their movement is peaceful, and they are careful to portray it as free of any sectarian leanings. They have also said the government is trying to instigate strife among Syria’s religiously mixed society. Although most Syrians are Sunni Muslims, there are a number of sizable religious and ethnic minorities, and Mr. Assad and his ruling clan belong to the minority Alawite sect."

During the 1920's, the French tried to divide Syria into a bunch of sectarian states, of which Lebanon was arguably one. Their hope that this would prevent a united Syrian opposition failed. I don't know enough about Syrian history to be able to trace whether that has been an ongoing trend through the country's 20th century history, but similar hopes on the part of the Assad regime could be at work today. Another point is that in country's where government funding is dispensed through patronage networks, those closest to the regime, which means the Alawite regions from which the current rulers sprung, benefit disproportionately and don't want the gravy train to stop. Something similar happened in Iraq after Saddam Hussein.

Academic Photocopying

Matthew Yglesias speaks to what people would do if they couldn't mooch off JStor from institutions which have it:

"If you copy something that you’re not allowed to copy without my permission, that’s a very different issue. Perhaps you deprive me of income I would have had if you hadn’t done that, or perhaps you don’t deprive me of anything. As I’ve said before, I sometimes beg online for someone to send me a copy of an academic article that I can’t get free access to. It’s never the case that my fallback option in this situation is to purchase an extremely expensive academic journal subscription. Nobody is harmed when this sort of copying occurs, and even in the cases where there is a harm the nature of the harm is quite different from the harm incurred in actual cases of theft."

One issue in higher education right now is the copyright status of electronic reserves, mostly pdf copies of articles or book chapters students are not required to purchase or to which they do not otherwise have electronic access, which faculty make available on a password-protected course website. There are legal limits on how much of this I am allowed to do, and in a current court case involving Georgia State, publishers are seeking to enforce a very strict standard, believing they are losing out on lots of licensing fees.

If, however, electronic reserves go the way of Napster, cash-strapped universities aren't going to start paying such fees. When I was an undergraduate, books and articles were placed on hard copy reserve, and individual students usually made their own copies. The right of individuals to copy something for personal educational use remains unchallenged. In my modern Middle East class last fall, I wanted to use multiple primary sources in a certain book, which was beyond the reasonable limits of what I could place on e-reserve, However, I also didn't think it was worth students' buying, so I had the library put it on reserve, and students just worked out their own copying and sharing system. Rigorous enforcement of electronic copyrights would simply result in students making more photocopies.

Change in Turkmenistan?

Is Turkmen society on the brink of major changes? After the 2006 death of "Turkmenbashi" Saparmurat Niyazov, new president Gurbanguly Berdimuhammadov abolished many aspects of his predecessor's bizarre cult of rulership, but little seemed to change in the basic structures of power. In recent days, however, I've seen three articles which suggest major change might be in the works, albeit surely from a totalitarian cult state to just a normal dictatorship.

One of these I mentioned yesterday, and that is the invitation to opposition leaders to return home and stand for office:

"Berdimuhamedov expressed his willingness to cooperate with the opposition and allow them to participate in the presidential elections in February next year. 'We are ready for a dialogue with groups that identify themselves as ‘opposition.’ If any of them wish to participate in the upcoming presidential election, they can be sure to return to Turkmenistan. I guarantee that for them, as for the citizens of our country, equal opportunities will be created to participate in the elections,' Berdimuhamedov said during his meeting with government officials (www.turkmenistan.ru, July 9).

"Most Turkmenistan nationals interviewed by the Jamestown Foundation were skeptical about the president’s latest statement. Nevertheless, it has invigorated Turkmen opposition leaders currently living in exile in Europe. 'If this statement from Berdimuhamedov is genuine and he will fight for it to be implemented, it is hard to overestimate the statement’s importance,' according to the leaders of 'Vatan' opposition party Khudaiberdi Orazov and Republican Party of Turkmenistan 'Abroad' Nurmukhammet Khanamov (www.chrono-tm.org, July 11)."

RFE-RL is reporting that key leaders do plan to return if they receive an OSCE safe passage guarantee. RFE-RL also reports on an outbreak of citizen journalism covering the Abadan explosions:

"Privately owned media do not exist in the country. TV and radio are tightly controlled by the state, which also closely monitors citizens' contacts with the outside world. Even a disaster like this would normally go unreported.

"But this time, events took a different turn. One of the factors was the unprecedented activism of citizen journalists who reported the event to the outside world even as it was still unfolding -- in some cases risking their lives in the process. It's the first time in the history of Turkmenistan that anything like this has happened...

"But the reporting really got going with two pictures of the damaged buildings (posted later the same day) on the Turkmen version of the online social chat site teswirler.com.

"People: I just escaped from that place when the explosions started," wrote Jeronimo87, an apparent eyewitness to the explosion, in a comment posted on teswirler.com.

"The post continued, 'God keep us under his protection from what just happened. An artillery shell fell next to me. I barely escaped even with a car.'

"Another user, aylale, wrote: 'One of the [shells] fell on my relatives' home. Thank God that they were able to escape in time.'

"Other bloggers described families who'd lost their homes sitting by the side of the road.

"There were dozens of other comments posted on the website describing the event, and they've attracted dozens of responses."

Finally the government is moving to privatize housing, with Parliament taking up the legislation in June. All of these developments are huge in a country that only five years ago was run by a lunatic's whim with no dissent of any kind tolerated.

UPDATE: See Joshua Foust on the flowering on on-line networking in Turkmenistan.

(Crossposted to American Footprints)

Recognizing Free Libya

The Free Libya forces have gained some crucial international recognition:

"Major western and regional powers said yesterday that they officially recognised the Libyan opposition as the legitimate representatives of the country in a move designed to convince Col Muammar Qaddafi that his 41 years in power are over...

"The contact group, made up by more than 30 countries, includes leading western powers such as the United States, the United Kingdom and France as well as regional countries such as host nation Turkey, the UAE and Morocco and international organisations including the Arab League, the African Union and Nato.

"'The contact group reaffirmed that the Qaddafi regime no longer has any legitimate authority in Libya and that Qaddafi and certain members of his family must go,' the statement said. 'Henceforth and until an interim authority is in place, participants agreed to deal with the National Transitional Council (NTC) as the legitimate governing authority in Libya.'

"Col Qaddafi responded late last night, saying the contact group's recognition of the NTC, held no significance...

"The French foreign minister, Alain Juppe, said the international community could now 'unfreeze certain Libyan state assets because it is the NTC that will henceforth exercise this responsibility'. Mamoud Shamman, an NTC official in Istanbul, said the opposition needed US$3 billion (Dh11bn). 'We need funds, funds, funds,' he said."

This is important in part because of the Arab membership in the contact group. I suspect the timing was related both to a desire to generate a positive headline for the the rebels, as well as to provide them with the funding mentioned from Libya's state assets.

(Crossposted to American Footprints)

Explosions and Openings

I wasn't expecting either explosions or promises to the opposition in Turkmenistan, but this month has seen both:

"On July 7 powerful explosions in Abadan shook Turkmenistan’s political landscape. Following clear attempts to cover up the incident, a few days later the Turkmen regime had to admit that the incident had caused 'some casualties.' Turkmenistan’s President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov demoted several government ministers, threatening them with a military tribunal.

"Ironically, on the day of the incident, Berdimuhamedov expressed his willingness to cooperate with the opposition and allow them to participate in the presidential elections in February next year. 'We are ready for a dialogue with groups that identify themselves as ‘opposition.’ If any of them wish to participate in the upcoming presidential election, they can be sure to return to Turkmenistan. I guarantee that for them, as for the citizens of our country, equal opportunities will be created to participate in the elections,' Berdimuhamedov said during his meeting with government officials (www.turkmenistan.ru, July 9)."

Wisely and predictably, opposition leaders don't fully trust the Turkmen government, and the official version of the Abadan explosions is widely doubted. The blasts were probably associated with weapons supplies, and Russian media reported casualty figures over 1000.

Iran's Segregation Battle

The new hot issue in Iran is whether college classes should be segregated. Golnaz Esfandiari places the battle in its political context:

"The line (of gender segregation) has become sharper in recent weeks, with the announcement that come September, when the new academic year kicks off, a number of universities would be introducing gender-based segregation.

"The push for segregation comes from the country's religious conservatives at a time when Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is involved in a public power struggle with President Mahumd Ahmadinejad.

"In a departure from his track record on segregation, the president has firmly stated his opposition to the latest plan. In a recent letter, Ahmadinejad publicly characterized the initiative as 'superficial and unscientific' and said it should be halted. On July 7, Science Minister Kamran Daneshjoo heeded the order, announcing that the plan had, indeed, been scrapped.

"Former reformist lawmaker Fatemeh Haghighatjou says the president, who is far from being a champion of women's rights, is trying to capitalize on the general public's opposition to segregation at a time when he is facing increased isolation on Iran's political scene."

Esfandiari notes later in the article that Ahmadinejad has supported segregation in the past, though he has also been on the liberal side of the fence. In 2006, he advocated allowing women to attend soccer matches, a move vetoed by Khamene'i.

Berber Households and Global Capitalism

Several weeks ago I read David Crawford's Moroccan Households in the World Economy and decided I wanted to blog about it, but I was leaving town right afterward and am only now looking at it again with the details now far from my mind. Because of that, I apologize for some sketchiness in what I say below.

The book, concerning the village of Tagharghist in the Atlas Mountains, is an ethnography, a genre I often enjoy because I'm fascinated with how people live. Crawford is an extremely talented writer, and apart from the introduction and conclusion, as well as short bits in most chapters highlighting how material relates back to central themes, you can enjoy this book even if you have little tolerance for academic jargon and scholarly formulations. He also includes generous quotations from his field notes which are vivid in their descriptions at times frank in their expressions of emotion. From the first few chapters in particular, readers will get a clear sense of life in this village.

The book's topic is how the extension of global capitalism interacts with the world of the village. As in many other times and places, the basic economic and social unit in Tagharghist is the household headed by a patriarch whose authority over his dependents is nearly absolute. The first four chapters explain how households function individually and collectively, and how time and labor emerge as factors which differentiate among factors economically. I've also noted he has a discussion of one lineage which represents a useful picture for how economic inequality emerges over generations despite an ideology that values equality and laws and customs which in theory perpetuate it.

Chapter 5, "Seeing and Being Seen by the State," is important for those who wish to understand rural Moroccan politics. One of Crawford's arguments, that development projects represent the primary form of engagement between the state and this rural community, calls to mind Toby Jones's Desert Kingdom: How Oil and Water Forged Modern Saudi Arabia. He also argues that, to the people of Tagharghist, the state, conceived as a series of patronage and authority connections leading up to a distant monarch, has a certain family resemblance (my term, and no pun intended) to the genealogical expression of power within households.

Crawford address urban wage labor in his final chapter, and points out that participation in the wage economy is dictated by patriarchs and functions as yet another way to use labor in support of a household, though one that allows some to secede early from their natal household and start their own. In his conclusion, Crawford emphasizes the ways this complicates economic theories which take the autonomous, rational individual as the primary actor. In one hard-hitting sentence, he says, "The awkward truth is that since economics takes itself as the discipline best positioned to explain to the rest of us how the capitalist economy works, and since capitalism expands precisely in places like (Tagharghist) that are organized through households, and since economists admittedly have little idea how household economies work, we are handicapped in understanding what is arguably the single most significant dynamic in our contemporary social world."

Simply put, this is an excellent book, one I recommend for those interested in Morocco, including its politics and economic development, those interested in capitalism and globalization, and those interested in rural household or lineage societies in any time period.

(Crossposted to American Footprints)

Slow Grinding in Libya

Camille Tawil provides a useful look at the status of the Libya War. After describing NATO's success is degrading Qadhafi's forces, she looks at key campaigns:

"NATO attacks succeeded in reversing the situation on the ground in the rebels’ favor. In the east, opposition forces moved from Ajdabiya toward the oil port of Brega (al-Burayqah - some 80 miles to the west), but they have not yet been able to take it, despite heavy bombardment by NATO from air and sea. It has been reported that one of Qaddafi’s sons, Muatasim, is leading the defense of Brega, which, if true, indicates how important the town is to his father (al-Hayat, May 19). The fall of Brega can open the road for the rebels to reach Sirte, Qaddafi’s birthplace and a stronghold of his tribe, the Qadadfa.

"In western Libya, the rebels of Misurata have also been on the offensive, after breaking the siege laid by Qaddafi’s forces on the city since the start of the uprising in February. However, the rebels have been trying for weeks to overrun the nearby town of Zliten, which blocks their advance on Tripoli, around 100 miles to the west. The rebels claim that they have not entered Zliten yet because they are waiting for the town’s own rebels to rise against Qaddafi. Despite claims that the rebels are indeed active inside Zliten, the town is still held firmly by Qaddafi, either because the majority of its own citizens are still loyal to his regime, or because of fear of his troops stationed inside the town. Here, again, it has been reported that Qaddafi has deployed one of his sons, Khamis, the head of the 32nd Brigade, to lead the defense of Zliten (al-Khaleej [UAE], June 2).

"But if the rebels in the east have failed to overrun Brega, and their colleagues in Misurata have also failed to enter Zliten, the opposition forces in Jabal Nafusa, south west of Tripoli, have managed to score an important victory against Qaddafi, whose forces were pushed out from almost the entire region, which lies 70 miles west of Tripoli. In June, the rebels of the Nafusa Mountains broke the siege which Qaddafi forces had laid against them from the start of the uprising, and they quickly advanced north towards Tripoli. In order to continue to Tripoli, they must first take Gharyan from loyalist forces, a task the rebels are confident can be achieved sometime this month. Rebel success in this region seems to have been the result not only of their patience and courage, but also due to weapons drops from French aircraft, including Milan anti-tank missiles (Le Figaro, June 28). The rebels are also reported to be receiving weapons from Qatar and are known to have received aid smuggled in via Tunis. Even if the Nafusa rebels manage to take Gharyan, they will soon find themselves facing major populated areas still loyal to the regime."

The overall picture I came away with is that the rebels are slowing grinding out progress, but the emphasis is on "slowly." Qadhafi's best hope for survival is simply to keep fighting and hope for NATO to tire of the mission, perhaps enshrining a division of the country in the process. Tawil notes that he can probably take heart from the fact that the rebels have failed to inspire large-scale revolts in areas still under his control, suggesting his regime may have some genuine loyalty, or at the very least a critical mass of fear in the population, in the areas still under his control.

(Crossposted to American Footprints)

Berber Recognition in Morocco

Younes Abouyoub analyzes an aspect of the new Moroccan constitution I hadn't heard about:

"Most Moroccans applaud—and rightly so—the bold decision of King Mohamed VI to include in the preamble of the newly proposed constitution the official recognition of Tamazight as a state language alongside Arabic, the first official acknowledgement of Amazigh (Berber) identity on a constitutional level in a North African country. In fact, this inclusion is what some analysts have speculated led to the overwhelming approval of the July 1 constitutional referendum; Thomson Reuters reported that 98.5 percent of the population voted in favor, with a 73 percent turnout of registered voters. Skeptics cast doubts over that figure, citing voting irregularities, and point out that the king’s play of the Berber identity card is no more than a bid to pass off a cosmetically new constitution while holding on to his monarchy. Those who are more cynical suggest that the consequences might be dire, and lead Morocco down the road to the Algerian model of tension between those of Arab and Berber origins...

"The recognition of Tamazight is quite a shift; as recently as 2005, when Amazigh activists Ahmed Dgharni and Omar Louzi attempted to launch a political movement advocating Berber identity, their Moroccan Amazigh Democrat Party (PDAM) was banned by the Ministry of the Interior in 2007, and later legally dissolved on the grounds that ethnic-based parties were (and still are) prohibited in Morocco...

"While historically different than Algeria, Morocco is not immune to a possible rift between what have hitherto been two fluid identities if the ongoing political reforms fail to deliver a truly citizen-based identity. Amazigh activists and pan-Arabists across Morocco have returned to the question of identity politics along the divisive model: within the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture (IRCAM), scholars question whether Morocco rightly belongs to the 'Arab world,' while pan-Arab activists respond that Morocco’s Islamic identity is proof enough, accusing IRCAM of fostering ethnic divisions by choosing the neo-Tifinagh alphabet (rather than the Arabic) to write out Tamazight."

My assumption is that the monarchy is just trying to bolster Berber support.

UPDATE: Here is a Romanian translation of this material.

Hama Under Siege

American media find it less important than Casey Anthony, but Hama has become a critical flashpoint in Syria's uprising:

"The death toll from the siege of Hama had by Wednesday night reached 28, with dozens more wounded, according to residents and activists. One resident told the Guardian he had counted 93 tanks on the outskirts of the city – an indicator of what may lie ahead if Hama's 800,000 people continue to defy the regime's leaders in Damascus.

"After four months of almost daily uprisings across Syria, Hama has become a focal point of a nationwide revolution. Residents claim they are standing up to the might of President Bashar al-Assad's military with rocks, slingshots and some light weapons.

"They suggest that the regime no longer knows what to do with Hama, which it has at times during the past two months saturated with troops and at other times abandoned.

"The central city was the scene of the biggest demonstration yet seen in Syria last Friday – a huge gathering of at least 200,000 people that electrified the protest movement across the country and sparked the latest military action."

To make sure the timeline is clear, at one point the Syrian military withdrew from Hama, which became the scene of even larger protests, including the on Friday that probably triggered the current attacks after the firing the the governor on Saturday. Anthony Shadid reports on the city under rebel control:

"But a government decision last month to withdraw its forces has ceded the streets to protesters, who have tried to create an alternative model to the heavy-handed repression that serves as a trademark of Baathist rule. Residents interviewed by telephone said they had begun working collectively in acts as small as cleaning a downtown square and as large as organizing the defense of some neighborhoods.

"More critically, the scenes of enormous, peaceful rallies there Friday, with their echoes of dissent in Egypt and Tunisia earlier this year, have served as a persuasive critique of the government’s version of events, which had won over large segments of Syrian society. Throughout the nearly four-month uprising, the government has pointed to the deaths of hundreds of its forces, in particular in the still murky events in Jisr al-Shoughour in the north, to argue that the unrest is the product of violent Islamist radicals with support from abroad."

The city of Hama was essentially destroyed in 1982, and over 20,000 were massacred as the regime of Hafez al-Assad, Bashar's father, cracked down on Syria's Muslim Brotherhood. The Guardian, in the article linked first above, suggests memories of that contribute to anti-regime sentiment in the city today. On the note about political Islam, protestors in Hama are chanting "God is Great," but that is generally meant as an indictment of rulers who demand the sort of obedience due only to God, as seen in its use in the 2009 Iranian election protests.

(Crossposted to American Footprints)

Bahrain's Growing Sectarianism

Laurence Louer argues that the current crackdown in Bahrain shows sectarian tendencies that are an important break with the past:

"It would be an error to think that the Al Khalifa’s constituency is only to be found among the Sunni population; Shi’i Bahrainis are riven by numerous internal divides that translate into different political attitudes. Shi’i businessmen, who play a major role in funding and organizing popular religiosity and are very much attached to their Shi’i identity, share corporate interests with their Sunni counterparts. Both are tied to state elites by patronage networks still largely headed by the immovable Prime Minister Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa, who has been in office since 1971.

"The 76-year-old prime minister has the reputation of placing personal loyalty to himself above sectarian identity in granting protection. In this regard, he is in line with the traditional positioning of the Al Khalifa who—contrary to their Saudi protectors—have typically displayed a liberal attitude towards religion. The princes and strongmen of the dynasty have contributed to the financing of popular Shi’i rituals and to the renovation of mosques and husseiniyyat (places where the Shi’a celebrate important festivals). In Bahrain, the ninth and tenth days of the month of Muharram (when the Shi’a celebrate the martyrdom of their Imam Hussein) are public holidays and the rulers have always maintained good relations with many among the traditional clerics.

"Even so, the monarchy’s crackdown on the 2011 uprising confirms that it is moving away from these enlightened positions. The counter-demonstrations initiated by the regime have been headed by Sunni religious scholars who have explicitly tried to mobilize sectarian solidarity by presenting the demonstrators as Shi’a acting on behalf of Iran. In May there were alarming reports of vandalism in more than forty Shi’i shrines, mosques, and cemeteries, some of which were destroyed on government orders. Meanwhile, a Sunni sectarian movement called the National Unity Gathering called for the boycott of Shi’i businesses in the city of Madinat Hamad."

Based on Louer's reputation I assume this is true, but wonder how different it is from Bahrain's Shi'ite uprising in the mid-1990's, as well as whether these tactics show Saudi influence.