This monograph adds much-needed substance to debates over the deepening of sectarian conflict in the Middle East and beyond. Drawing on fatwā collections, scholarly works, and sermons in Arabic, the book gives a detailed account of the attitude towards Shii Islam as propagated by ʿulamāʾ active in the various incarnations of the Saudi state from 1746 until today. Raihan Ismail is able to show that the “theological demonization of Shīʿism” in the Kingdom has reached a level of consensus to such a degree that even those ʿulamāʾ whom she terms “progressives” do not question it in public (p. 201). After briefly looking at the role and influence of religious scholars in Saudi Arabia in chapter 1, and the broader history of Sunni–Shii arguments in chapter 2, the work under review primarily aims at systematically covering areas of friction. Ismail starts out with doctrinal and theological aspects of Shiism deemed abhorrent by Wahhābī scholars in chapter 3, before mapping the latter's views pertaining to the supposed internal threat emerging from the country's own Shii minority in chapter 4. Chapter 5 explores how Saudi ʿulamāʾ perceive Iran as an external menace and chapter 6 extends this discussion to suspected Iranian meddling in Bahrain, Iraq and Yemen.
The author finds that Saudi scholars are far from being “rigid theologians” only. Rather, these actors are “alert to political circumstances and try to influence political discourses to support their theological and political outlook” (p. 12). At the same time, the ʿulamāʾ also appear driven by external events, in particular the impact of the Iranian Revolution of 1979, because geopolitics “remains a crucial factor determining the intensity, timing, focus, and content of their words” (p. 211). Nevertheless, as Ismail convincingly demonstrates, polemical attacks on Shii beliefs, be these charges of deifying the Imams, expressing contempt for the Companions of the Prophet, or rejecting the standard Quranic text as corrupted, form the discursive bedrock upon which the “rhetoric against the Shīʿa is established and developed” (p. 199). All contemporary signs point towards a hardening of sectarian boundaries. In a very poignant observation, Ismail makes the case that Saudi ʿulamāʾ take an increasingly broad-brush approach towards Shii Islam with little regard for its internal diversity. This has led them, for example, even to revise their earlier, rather sympathetic, stance towards the Zaydīs of Yemen as “good” Shiis (p. 195). Today, Ismail argues, the “legitimate Shīʿa remain an elusive and ill-defined group, mentioned in passing without any clear and consistent explanation of who they are or what characterizes them” (p. 201). Ironically, however, Ismail's choices for establishing “authentic” Shii views to put Wahhābī polemics into perspective are similarly problematic because she only relies on a narrow source base, such as the reformist creedal work ʿAqāʾid al-imāmiyya by Muḥammad Riḍā al-Muẓaffar (d. 1963) or statements by the controversial Shii revisionist Mūsā al-Mūsawī (pp. 67–74). In claiming, for example, that Twelver Shiis would hold ʿAlī in high esteem but do not regard him as more than a successor to the Prophet, Ismail downplays the esoteric potential of Shii Islam that Saudi ʿulamāʾ find especially worrying. She does not pay attention to the intense internal Shii struggle about these questions during the twentieth century. Some of the most radical Shii reformers in the vein of Muḥammad al-Khāliṣī (d. 1963), who strove to achieve Sunni–Shii rapprochement, found themselves marginalized and charged with trying to abandon essential features of Shii identity.
This observation also leads to another major issue with Saudi Clerics and Shīʿa Islam, which opts to “examine sectarianism from a political sociological approach” (p. 10). In doing so, Ismail relies on a rather schematic investigation of the historical development of Sunni–Shii polemics. For the classical and pre-modern periods, she deems it sufficient to compare the anti-Shii statements of Mālik b. Anas (d. 796) with those held by Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) (p. 53), whose views, in turn, contemporary Saudi ʿulamāʾ “largely imitate” (p. 94). In contrasting them with their supposedly more accepting Egyptian colleagues (pp. 49–51), however, Ismail does not consult Rainer Brunner's landmark study Islamic Ecumenism in the 20th Century on how al-Azhar has increasingly adopted a more intolerant stance over the last decades. Likewise, there is no reference in the book to scholars who were trained in Saudi Arabia but have gone on to pursue their polemical mission elsewhere, like the Pakistani Iḥsān Ilāhī Ẓahīr (d. 1987). Missing is also more historical nuance when discussing the reaction by Saudi ʿulamāʾ towards the Iranian Revolution. Given its initial enthusiastic reception among Muslim groups and scholars worldwide, the reader wonders whether Saudi views have indeed simply stayed “consistent” since 1979 (pp. 154–7). According to Ismail, even the political lens which Saudi ʿulamāʾ apply to Iran is mostly drawn from Ibn Taymiyya, who saw the Shiis as traitors, intent on harming the Muslim community (p. 134). Does this suggest that Saudi scholars did not at all engage with the deeper implications of Iran's system of government that put clerics in charge? Ismail's material on the political views of contemporary ʿulamāʾ may perhaps preclude her from probing these questions. It mostly dates from the last ten years and is thus informed by the increasing Shii dominance in Iraq, the fallout of the Arab Spring, the war in Syria, and the rise of the Lebanese Hizbollah as a formidable regional force. These developments stoked fears of a Shii takeover of the region, led to the deployment of Saudi troops to Bahrain, and caused an increase in anti-Shii polemical activity. Finally, the book would have also benefitted from a more theoretically informed approach towards religious polemics. This would have helped to embed accusations of sexual promiscuity against Khomeini, for example, within wider discursive patterns (p. 95). The extensive transliteration is generally consistent with only minor lapses (e.g. ʿUmar b. Khaṭāb instead of correct al-Khaṭṭāb (pp. 44–5), Burijirdī instead of Burūjirdī (p. 50), Muḥsin al-Ḥākim instead of al-Ḥakīm (p. 180)).
