{"id":1140,"date":"2016-01-10T01:06:47","date_gmt":"2016-01-10T01:06:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/?p=1140"},"modified":"2016-01-10T01:06:47","modified_gmt":"2016-01-10T01:06:47","slug":"saudi-arabias-not-so-sunni-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2016\/01\/saudi-arabias-not-so-sunni-world.html","title":{"rendered":"Saudi Arabia’s not-so-Sunni world"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than ever, the monarchical government of Saudi Arabia is portraying itself as the saviour of the Sunni\u00a0world<\/a> (the Sunnis\u00a0being the largest denomination\u00a0of Muslims, for readers\u00a0unfamiliar with this topic).<\/strong><\/p>\n

Don’t buy into the idea that a narrow, unrepresentative monarchy can possibly represent such a vast community. The regime in Saudi Arabia is deeply unpopular with the people, more so than many of the regimes that have been overthrown or rejected as illegitimate by much of the world during the so-called Arab Spring. This only goes to show how outdated\u00a0and outbound the Saudi\u00a0monarchy surely is.<\/p>\n

Such as\u00a0it is, I only live in a country<\/a> that is a “friend and ally” of Saudi Arabia and sells massive quantities of weapons and tear gas for it to suppress its own people’s aspirations and dictate the\u00a0interests of the Sunni world\u00a0at the barrel of a gun. Of these interests, there is Saudi Arabia’s commitment to oppose Iran – a country that did it no harm – apparently on the grounds of\u00a0demagoguery towards another denomination, the Shia. Demagoguery that comes out of Riyadh and has no adherents anywhere else. Saudi Arabia loves the idea of causing a sectarian war or regression to the medieval era, because it doesn’t really have much\u00a0else to do other than rot in the ground with other dead monarchies.<\/p>\n

The Saudi monarchy is in fact not opposed to Iran because it is Shia, but because Saudi Arabia knows it\u00a0is a rotten, corrupt monarchy whereas Iran is a sovereign republic. The Saudi monarchs have always been desperately afraid of the Islamic Revolution that took place in Iran, because they know it is the best thing that could happen to their own country and the most likely type of regime-change that will come to their country. Why does\u00a0the Kingdom that claims to defend\u00a0the Sunni world\u00a0not believe in the right of Sunnis to govern themselves in Saudi Arabia?<\/p>\n

Of course, by saying the Islamic Revolution will happen in the Arabian Peninsula, I am not saying Saudi Arabia will somehow be conquered by Iran, Shia, or Iranians. Quite the opposite. Saudi Arabia needs to be conquered by its own cherished Sunni world, whose destiny is in fact to establish their own republics – perhaps also on an Islamic basis because this appeals to the sensibilities of the vast majority of its population. Interestingly, Iran has actually reached out to groups like the Muslim Brotherhood that genuinely do have great influence over the Sunni community. The Iranians showed no opposition to the Morsi government when it came to power in Egypt, and Iranian media were not not at all happy with the coup that installed the Sisi government in power or the subsequent mistreatment of political prisoners. Maybe the Iranians were reminded of the dark days under the Shah, which is what they see every time\u00a0they look at Saudi Arabia’s unjust monarchy.<\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia’s portrayal of Iran as plotting against Sunnis is completely absurd. Look at the facts. It was Saudi Arabia itself that plotted to undermine and politically impoverish\u00a0Sunnis in most cases. Remember, it\u00a0was Saudi Arabia that conspired to overthrow the representative Sunni government of Egypt, not Iran. By all accounts, Iran was in fact overjoyed by the rise of an Islamic revolutionary party\u00a0to power in Egypt, seeing a potential ally. This was despite obvious\u00a0differences in the background over one issue,\u00a0Syria<\/a>, concerning the future of the Assad government (the Muslim Brotherhood had grievances against Hafez al-Assad and his government\u00a0for decades before the 2011 violence\u00a0began). Iran might\u00a0have completely backed down from supporting Assad,\u00a0and accepted\u00a0some kind of Egyptian-led axis with respect to Syria,\u00a0if it had believed the uprising there\u00a0was\u00a0anything other\u00a0than a cynical scheme\u00a0to install a pro-US dictator\u00a0and encircle resistance movements opposed to Israel in Lebanon. Unfortunately for Iran, the Morsi government had been betrayed and\u00a0overthrown by another pro-US dictator too quickly for Iran to come to any alliance\u00a0with the now\u00a0powerless and evicted Brotherhood. Now, Iran’s interest in the Muslim Brotherhood has evaporated because Saudi Arabia destroyed it, along with the political hopes\u00a0of many Sunnis.<\/p>\n

Iran or Saudi Arabia? Tally up which country\u00a0has done more to suppress the political aspirations of the Sunni world,\u00a0and you will find that Saudi Arabia is far guiltier than Iran. Saudi Arabia’s guilt in this area extends far beyond a single country like Syria but to a whole host of countries including Egypt and Libya, where Iran\u00a0displayed no influence. There is no example of Saudi Arabia actually giving power to the Sunni community anywhere, and only examples of it taking this\u00a0power away, because Saudi Arabia is fundamentally opposed to republics and opposed to revolutionary parties in all cases, including Islamist parties.<\/p>\n

It is high time that the remaining monarchies in the world reform or are replaced. The world has seen enough dynasties, enough self-obsessed kings aspiring to gain more power for their own families\u00a0rather handing over governance of their country to the people. If Saudi Arabia is too inflexible to stop talking about bringing democracy to Syria<\/a> and instead talk about bringing democracy to their\u00a0own country, their\u00a0hypocrisy will bring an\u00a0even worse pattern of escalating\u00a0violence, executions, revulsion and\u00a0eventual\u00a0uprisings\u00a0inside Saudi Arabia. Barack Obama has even alluded to the Saudi regime possibly coming to an end through a new armed uprising in the region, and ultimately everyone gets tired of a regime as ridiculous and embarrassing as this one – even its allies.<\/p>\n

There are, of course, dedicated defenders of the Saudi regime as there are of any regime. They portray the Kingdom as being the object\u00a0of their apparent patriotism, and portray opponents\u00a0as “interfering” when they comment on its illegitimacy. The wars Saudi Arabia is prosecuting against innocent Sunnis in Syria, Yemen and elsewhere are\u00a0based on\u00a0groundless accusations that they are working for Iran, and in fact demonstrate how\u00a0Saudi Arabia fails to\u00a0stand up for the Sunni world and consistently stands against it and undermines it.<\/p>\n

Nothing Saudi Arabia has said about Iran has\u00a0much to do with genuine\u00a0religious allegiances or decency, and everything it has said\u00a0is about waging cowardly wars for the benefit of a few moldy rulers, whose families should have been thrown out of power\u00a0decades if not centuries ago. While it is correct\u00a0to oppose regime-change against republics and developing countries<\/a>, Saudi Arabia is neither. It is a corrupt monarchy devoted to subverting justice\u00a0and development\u00a0in other countries, and it is not just my wish but the will\u00a0of history that it should be thrown out. It is also a fact that republics are sovereign, according to modern requirements\u00a0of statehood, whereas\u00a0kingdoms are not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More than ever, the monarchical government of Saudi Arabia is portraying itself as the saviour of the Sunni\u00a0world (the Sunnis\u00a0being the largest denomination\u00a0of Muslims, for readers\u00a0unfamiliar with this topic). Don’t buy into the idea that a narrow, unrepresentative monarchy can possibly represent such a vast community. The regime in Saudi Arabia is deeply unpopular with…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":577,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,68,71,63,37,72,892,67,66,16,3,70,56,15],"tags":[1059,489,1124,1352,1353,509,1348,1350,1349,1000,1035,1351,616,1105,1324,73],"class_list":["post-1140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alter-globalization","category-conflict-2","category-conflict-resolution","category-futurism-2","category-history","category-international-relations","category-islam","category-middle-east","category-politics-2","category-press-tv","category-religious-studies","category-religious-violence","category-uk","category-us","tag-arab-spring","tag-bashar-al-assad","tag-development","tag-hafez-al-assad","tag-history","tag-iran","tag-islamic-republic","tag-ksa","tag-mohammed-morsi","tag-muslim-brotherhood","tag-regime-change","tag-republicanism","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-shia-sunni-conflict","tag-sunni","tag-syria"],"yoast_head":"\nSaudi Arabia's not-so-Sunni world - L'Ordre<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Does Saudi Arabia stand up for the Sunni world? 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Bentham","description":"Harry J. Bentham is a British futurist blogger who has been a contributor at a number of think tanks including the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies since 2013. His work at Press TV and the L'Ordre blog featured at the multi-faith Beliefnet website has gained increasing attention and praise, including in the international media. Commentaries on political and ethical controversies by Bentham have been published at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, H+ Magazine, Dissident Voice and numerous other publications. 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