Toby Matthiesen

Based on a synthesis of decades of scholarship in numerous languages, The Caliph and the Imam: The Making of Sunnism and Shiism, is the first truly global and longue durée history of Sunni-Shii relations. The dispute over who should guide Muslims, the Caliph or the Imam, marks the origin of the Sunni-Shii split in Islam. Toby Matthiesen explores this hugely significant division from its origins to the present day. Moving chronologically, his book sheds light on the many ways that it has shaped the Islamic world, outlining how over the centuries Sunnism and Shiism became Islam’s two main branches, and how Muslim Empires embraced specific sectarian identities. Focussing on connections between the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East, it reveals how colonial rule and the modern state institutionalised sectarian divisions and at the same time led to pan-Islamic resistance and Sunni and Shii revivalism. It then focuses on the fall-out from the 1979 revolution in Iran and the US-led military intervention in Iraq. As Matthiesen shows, however, though Sunnism and Shiism have had a long and at times antagonistic history, most Muslims have led lives characterised by confessional ambiguity and peaceful co-existence. Tensions arise when sectarian identity becomes linked to politics.

Toby Matthiesen traces the politics of the Shia in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia from the nineteenth century until the present day. This book outlines the difficult experiences of being Shia in a Wahhabi state, and casts new light on how the Shia have mobilised politically to change their position. Shia petitioned the rulers, joined secular opposition parties, and founded Islamist movements. Most Saudi Shia opposition activists profited from an amnesty in 1993 and subsequently found a place in civil society and the public sphere. But since 2011 a new Shia protest movement has again challenged the state. The Other Saudis shows how exclusionary state practices created an internal Other and how sectarian discrimination has strengthened Shia communal identities. The book is based on little-known Arabic sources, extensive fieldwork in Saudi Arabia, and interviews with key activists. Of immense geopolitical importance, the oil-rich Eastern Province is a crucial but little known factor in regional politics and Gulf security.

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.

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.

This article examines the introduction of municipal elections in Saudi Arabia during the reign of King Saʿud. The elections from 1954 to the early 1960s constituted important political arenas that have hitherto been overlooked in scholarship on Saudi Arabia. Grievances and political aspirations of the Saudi population were publicly voiced during these elections, which coincided with an emerging radical press and a labour movement at the ARAMCO oil company. Though these elections were limited in scope, marred by procedural flaws and ultimately failed on the institutional level, they nevertheless had a lasting impact on people in the Eastern Province―especially the Shia― and their subsequent political mobilisation outside state structures. As such the municipal elections represent a failed attempt to co-opt local elites and to broaden the popular base of the centre in the periphery. The failure of the municipal elections contributed to the tense relationship between the Saudi centre and the peripheries, which culminated in the 1979 uprising in the Eastern Province.

Ahmad al-Ahsaʾi (1753–1826), the spiritual father of the mystical strand of Twelver Shiism, known as the Shaykhiyya, became an important religious figure in Iraq and Iran. But the Shaykhiyya also spread in his birthplace in Eastern Arabia and among migrants from al-Ahsa in Kuwait and Basra. The quietist and apolitical teachings of al-Ahsaʾi suited the Shia in Eastern Arabia, who periodically suffered from political insecurity and religious persecution. Several scholars from al-Ahsa studied with al-Ahsaʾi and with his successor as leader of the Shaykhiyya, Kazim al-Rashti. Thereafter, they returned to al-Ahsa or moved to Kuwait and Basra and set up hawzas to spread Shaykhi teachings. In the early twentieth century, the Shaykhis of al-Ahsa developed closer ties with the al-Uskuʾi, a family of marajiʿ of the Tabrizi School of the Shaykhiyya. The al-Uskuʾi also resided in al-Ahsa and Kuwait throughout the twentieth century. The Shaykhis of Basra, on the other hand, became followers of the rival Kermani School. In both Basra and Kuwait, migrants from al-Ahsa retained strong group identities because their common geographical origin was coupled with the Shaykhiyya.

This 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.

This 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.

Why did the Arab Spring fail? A large part of the answer lies in what I call the Arab Counter Revolution (ACR) — an effort taken by a coalition of states and Arab regional forces since the start of the Arab uprisings. In addition, regional politics became polarised between three main forces that sought to intervene across the region to strengthen their position.

This chapter seeks to re-examine Saudi Arabia as both a Cold War actor and an arena in which Cold War struggles were played out from 1945 until 1990. While the US-Saudi alliance is widely discussed in the academic literature and in public debate, the origins of this alliance in the Cold War, and the role of Saudi-sponsored Islam as anti-Communism, are not often the focuses of serious scholarship. But Saudi Arabia was a key funder of anti-communist causes in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and its interpretation of Islam had since the reign of King Faysal been used as an anti-communist ideology in partnership with the United States. Inspired by new Cold War scholarship, which moves the focus of the Cold War to the Global South, this chapter seeks to rethink Saudi foreign relations in the Global South during the Cold War. Saudi activities, until 1979 often carried out in conjunction with Pahlavi Iran, were very important for the United States. A Cold War focus thus allows for a fresh look at the history of the country and the wider region, including Saudi Arabia's anti-communist foreign policy and the trajectories of leftist movements in the Gulf region.

The long 1960s in the Gulf States was a period of great political changes, in which struggles over the very future of the region's political systems were fought out. Some of these struggles are still written out of the official histories of these countries. They are also seldom mentioned in the academic literature on the region, as they do not fit into dominant paradigms of the rentier state, authoritarianism, or Islam, and are also often left out in accounts on the Global Cold War more broadly.

Toby Matthiesen, “Renting the Casbah: Gulf States’ Foreign Policy towards North Africa since the Arab Uprisings”, in Kristian Coates Ulrichsen (ed.), The Changing Security Dynamics of the Persian Gulf (London: Hurst & Co, 2017), 43-59.


This chapter deals with the relations between countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the three North African countries that saw mass uprisings (Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya) since 2011. Morocco and Algeria, which survived the Arab uprisings with their political systems intact, will not be discussed in this chapter because the persistence of the old regimes either ensured unanimous Gulf support (Morocco) or limited opportunities for Gulf involvement (Algeria). Indeed, the chapter will look at the ways in which various Gulf states, above all Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, and, to a lesser extent, Kuwait have tried to influence the political transitions in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. It argues that the period since 2011 has witnessed a profound shift in the foreign policies of the GCC states from petrodollar diplomacy to direct involvement in politics and even military intervention.

Toby Matthiesen, "Sectarianization as Securitization: Identity Politics and Counter-Revolution in Bahrain", in: Nader Hashemi and Danny Postel (eds.), Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of the Middle East (London: Hurst & Co, 2017), 199-214.


The small island nation of Bahrain provides one of the most salient case studies of the sectarianization process. Bahrain has a long history of organized political opposition that has taken the form of street protests, strikes, trade unions, and underground political parties, as well as in a parliament with limited powers (1973–1975 and since 2001). Anti-colonial nationalist and leftist movements of
various ideological persuasions that mobilized many Bahrainis since the
1950s were cross-sectarian. The parliament of 1973–1975, under the
influence of communists and Ba‘athists, started to challenge the authoritarian system of government of the minority Sunni Al Khalifa family and the pervasive powers of the security services. As a result, parliament was disbanded in the summer of 1975, elections were postponed indefinitely, and political opposition was driven underground. The decline of these cross-sectarian and secular political movements and theThereafter, Sunni Islamic movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood as well as Shi’i Islamist movements, such as the Da‘wa Party, Hizbullah (the Line of Imam (Khomeini), or Khat al-Imam), and the so-called Shirazi movement (named after its spiritual guide, Muhammad Mahdi al-Shirazi), gained a foothold in Bahrain. The state built up Sunni Islamic movements as a counter-weight to the Shi’i Islamic movements that emerged after Iran’s 1979 revolution. Sunni Islamic groups, therefore, by and large did not mobilize in opposition to the monarchy. And
while the uprising in 2011 started as a cross-sectarian mobilization, and
the opposition tried to use national and not sectarian slogans, many
Sunnis were frightened by it, and more or less supported the crackdown.
Particularly as repression started to target the Shi’a as a group, many
Shi’a, including some elite Shi’a families, started to see the state as an
adversary. The regime used all means at its disposal, including the media, the security forces, and even vigilante groups, to scare the Sunnis with the specter of a Shi’a takeover, and to portray the uprising as led by Shi’a radicals who wanted to establish an Iranian-style Islamic republic.
Sectarianization in Bahrain is thus a deliberate and long-term strategy
by the regime to undermine the possibility of a broad-based coalition
demanding democratic change. But sectarianization and disproportionate policing of Shi’a residential areas has also sustained and strengthened opposition to the state amongst Shi’a Bahrainis, thereby undermining security and perpetuating a sectarian dynamic.

The 1993 amnesty agreement between the Saudi Shiʿa opposition and King Fahd is one of the most important milestones in relations between Shiʿa citizens and the Saudi ruling family. It has remained a controversial topic amongst Saudi Shiʿa, and different political actors have positioned themselves in different ways towards the agreement.

Die Amnestie-Vereinbarung von 1993 zwischen der saudischen schiitischen Opposition und König Fahd stellt einen der wichtigsten Meilensteine im Verhältnis zwischen den schiitischen Staatsbürgern und der saudischen Herrschaftsfamilie dar. Die Vereinbarung von 1993 bleibt weiterhin eines der umstrittensten Themen innerhalb der saudischen schiitischen Gemeinschaft, und verschiedene politische Akteure haben sich in unterschiedlicher Weise zu der Vereinbarung positioniert. Der 1993-Deal vereinnahmte den Mainstream der Opposition und stellte die Notabeln-Familien kalt, die traditionell die Hauptgesprächspartner des Staates in schiitischen Gegenden waren. Aber gleichzeitig hat es das Feld oppositioneller Politik neuen Gruppen geöffnet. Diejenigen, die die Bedingungen des Deals kritisiert haben, haben dann ihre oppositionellen und manchmal militanten Aktivitäten fortgesetzt, und wurden zu Anführern der neuen Protestbewegung, die seit 2011 als Teil der arabischen Erhebungen begannen.

Saudi Arabia’s fragmented Islamist field has displayed a diversity of responses to the  coup  in  Egypt,  the  conflict  in  Syria,  and  the  Saudi-led  war  in  Yemen.  While  a  group of younger  Saudi  Islamists  and  intellectuals  have  embraced  elements  of  democracy,  the  war  in Syria, the authoritarian political system, and domestic sectarian tendencies have rallied support for the ISIS model of violent political change.

In the 21st century, the monarchies of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the UAE – the group of countries constituting the GCC – have emerged as one of the most dynamic and fast-changing regions of the world. At the same time, however, these profound transformations in the Gulf, and the fact that the Gulf States were “put on the map”, could not overshadow the evidence that the GCC states were located in a highly volatile region, that subnational identities competed with national identities and that the political systems of the GCC were undemocratic and authoritarian.

Arab Shia communities are all related in multiple ways to their local and national contexts. Given their geographical dispersion and doctrinal pluralism there are important differences, but they have long had strong transnational connections as well, particularly to the shrine cities and Hawzas (Shia religious schools) in Iraq and Iran. Anti-Shia polemics generally overemphasize these transnational connections, while Arab Shia leaders often downplay them, stating that the national affiliation is the most important trait of Arab Shia identity.

The prominence of transnational identities has been one of the main features of the Arab uprisings that started in late 2010. While all the uprisings were driven by local grievances and the protesters were careful to initially use local and national slogans, in most cases the transnational dimension became central, particularly after the harsh security responses and the failure of some of the democratic experiments (such as in Egypt). But has this transnational dimension undermined the importance of the state as a key actor and as the form of government these transnational movements aspire to? Or are movements such as Islamic State merely replicating many of the forms of governance that have characterised Middle Eastern states for decades?

In February 2011, Bahrain probably had the highest ratio of protesters as part of the citizen population of any of the Arab countries. In the preceding decade, its security establishment, while never totally absent from politics, had become less visible. In mid-March 2011, however, the security forces were able to instigate a broad clampdown against the mobilized public and ensure the survival of the regime within a matter of days. How can this be explained? And what are the enduring consequences of the resurgence of Bahrain’s security state?

Sectarian conflict and polarisation has become a key feature of Middle East politics in the aftermath of the Arab uprisings of 2011. This workshop looked at some of the key drivers of this, such as the troubled legacy of foreign intervention, state failure, regional rivalries between Saudi Arabia, Iran and others, ruling strategies of authoritarian regimes as well as the spread of identity and sect-based political movements. With in-depth analysis of the two key arenas of sectarian conflict in the contemporary Middle East, Syria and Iraq, and a paper on the consequences of state collapse, this publication looks also tries to make recommendations how the EU could help reduce sectarian tensions.

حين اشتدت رياح التغيير والربيع العربي، واجتاحت عددا من الدول العربية، إما بثورات جذرية أو بإصلاحات سياسية، كانت تنشد تلافي الثورات، لماذا كانت دول الخليج بمنأى عن كل تلك الرياح؟.. ولماذا لم يُسفر الحراك الشعبي الواسع في بعض دول الخليج -كما في البحرين والكويت- أو تلك المطالبات والتحركات المحدودة -كما في باقي دول الخليج- عن أي نتيجة تستحق الذكر في ملف الإصلاح السياسي؟.. بل ما حصل هو عكس ذلك، حيث تضاءلت مساحة الحريات واشتد القمع في عدد من دول الخليج. ثم ما دور الاحتقان الطائقي الموجود لأسباب سياسية وتاريخية، والذي يُوظف أيضا من قبل بعض السلطات في زيادة انقسام المجتمع وفي ضرب أي حراك إصلاحي؟ الباحث في جامعة كامبريدج البريطانية توبي ماثيسن، الذي أعد أطروحته للدكتوراه عن الشيعة في الخليج، كان حاضرا في البحرين ودول خليجية أخرى حين بدأت الاحتجاجات فيها، ورصر بدايتها وتطور مسارها وما نتج منها، ودوّن مشاهدته البحثية في هذا الكتاب -

يسلّط هذا المقال الضوء على جوانب من أهمية العمّال المهاجرين، والطلاب والأساتذة، والشبكات الردايكاليّة المتخطيّة لحدود الدوُل، وثقافة النشر الغنيّة بالأفكار التقدميّة، وحضور مظالم سوسيو- اقتصاديّة ومظالم مبنيّة على الهوية في خلق تعبئةٍ سياسيّةٍ واسعة النطاق. كما يُظهر كيف ساعدت الموارد التنظيمية وشبكات العلاقات الشخصية الموجودة مسبقاً – بما فيها الروابط العائلية – على صمود التعبئة العمالية وتنظيمات الإضراب. إن صنع طبقةٍ حديثة من القوى العاملةِ في مخيّماتِ النفط في المنطقة الشرقية في السعودية مثّلَ شرطاً أولياً لتكوّن النشاط العماليّ، كما أن ضعفَ الوضع المعيشيّ للعمّال سابقاً في هذه المخيمات ضيمٌ رئيسيٌّ أدى لإضرابين كبيرين في عاميّ 1953 و1956م. بعدَ أن تم كسر الإضرابات، سعى قادتها إلى إيجاد تشكيلةٍ من أحزاب المعارضة العلمانيّة التي ظلّت فاعلةً خِفْيةً أو في المنفى.

This option builds on the core courses of the MPhil in Modern Middle Eastern Studies and seeks to complement the historical knowledge and language skills gained there with a thorough understanding of history, society, and politics of the Gulf states and the Arabian Peninsula. It will provide an overview of the key factors that shaped the development of the modern Gulf states, in particular since the discovery of oil. The aim is to give students the theoretical and methodological tools to analyse the domestic and foreign policies of the Gulf states in light of a historically grounded understanding of state-society relations.

Contents

Over the course of the term, we will look at key themes and topics that shaped the history of the modern Gulf states (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman). Each seminar will have a thematic arch and link and compare developments across the different Gulf States (and at times make cross-references to neighbouring countries such as Iraq, Iran and Yemen). It will explain how highly hetereogeneous populations, characterised by migration, trade and warfare, came to form the citizens of newly independent states by the 1970s. In particular after the oil boom of 1973, these states and their economies were profoundly transformed, leading to the influx of millions of migrant workers. Given that it is the largest country on the Arabian Peninsula, Saudi Arabia and its role as a regional hegemon and its use of Islam will be a particular focus. The last seminar will look at how the Gulf states have been affected by and have responded to the regional fallouts spurred by the Arab uprisings.

Aims and Objectives This course builds on the core courses of the MPhil in Modern Middle Eastern Studies and seeks to complement the historical knowledge and language skills gained there with a thorough understanding of IR theories and of their applicability to the Middle East. It teaches students to engage with IR theory in order to critically evaluate claims made about the Middle East and its international relations. Students will gain a substantial understanding of the international relations of the Middle East since 1945 and the foreign policies of key Middle Eastern states and non-state actors.

London war in diesen Tagen vollgepflastert mit Plakaten, die sein  Konterfei zeigten mit Slogans wie «Er bringt einen Wechsel in Saudiarabien». Die Rede ist von Muhammed bin Salman, kurz MBS, den Kronprinzen Saudiarabiens. Der 32-Jährige ist auf Werbetour. Auch die britischen Zeitungen waren voll von Inseraten, die die «Reformen» des Kronprinz lobten, und die spezielle Beziehung der beiden «Vereinigten Königreiche». Grossbritannien liefert Waffen, hilft bei der saudischen Intervention im Jemen, und sorgt dafür, dass die Kritik an dem Bombardement der Saudis dort nicht allzu laut wird.
Es ist die erste grosse Auslandreise von bin Salman, seit er letztes Jahr zum Kronprinzen wurde. Nach Grossbritannien, wo er auch zu Besuch bei der Königin Elisabeth II. im Buckingham Palace war, reiste er weiter in die USA. Die zwei Besuche sind von symbolischer Bedeutung. Die USA und das Vereinigte Königreich sind Saudiarabiens wichtigste Verbündete, und dessen grösste Waffenlieferanten. Die Staatsbesuche zeigten, was dem Kronprinzen wichtig ist: Pomp und die Ankündigung grosser Rüstungsgeschäfte.

The night of November 4 will long be remembered in Saudi Arabia as a turning point. Three events took place in Riyadh: the arrest of several dozen Saudi princes, officials, and business leaders; the resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri; and the shooting down of a ballistic missile, launched from Yemen, aimed at the city’s King Khalid International Airport.