Jan 3^rd

Forty-seven people were executed by Saudi Arabia in the last day or so. This bloodshed was not public as most Saudi executions are; these consisted of beheadings and firing squads and included at least four Shi’ites, Saudi Arabia is almost entirely Sunni. The executed men had been condemned for some time and many had only been accused of criticizing the Saudi government, not of committing, or even advocating, violent overthrow of the Kingdom.

Saudi Arabia is devoted to the Wahhabi sect. These people believe that the Muslim religion must be purified. Wahhabi was born about 1700 and was affiliated with the Saudi family long before they came to control the entire country. The purification process called for by Wahhabi is not very different form that advocated by ISIL. Every decision about everything should have its roots in the Koran. This obviously means no “graven images;” they were even banned by the Ten Commandments after all. People praying to plaster images of Christ or to images of saints are anathema to Muslims generally and this behavior particularly infuriates the fundamentalist Muslims who believe that statuary of all kinds should be destroyed. Of course not all Sunni Muslims are Wahhabi; many are much more modern. Most of Egypt, Turkey, Jordan and the rest of the Muslim world is Sunni, Iran is the primary Shia country.

Iran is a very considerable power and they were very upset that the Saudis’ had executed a venerated Shia Cleric named Namir al Namir. The Saudis insisted that he was fomenting the overthrow of the government and the Iranians insisted that he was doing no such thing. The result is that the tension between Iran and the Saudis has ratchetted up considerably. The Saudi Embassy in Iran has been trashed, set on fire and looted. While the Iranian government has said that they will catch and punish the perpetrators of this outrage. I doubt that they are in any danger. The Head of Government the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has declared that, “God’s hand of retaliation will grip the necks of Saudi politicians.”

It’s obvious that the Saudi’s have control of the Muslim holy places, particularly Mecca. Non-Muslims are not allowed in Mecca and Muslims must make a pilgrimage to Mecca at least one during their lifetime. It is unlikely that Iran will take any military action against Saudi Arabia in spite of the huge population disparity.   About a third of the Saudi population of 27 million are not nationals while Iran has a population of close to 80 million. That is rather clearly a mismatch. With the Saudi’s sitting on all of the Muslim holy places any military action seems unlikely.

A fundamentalist branch of the Muslim religion is an efficient killing machine. Most of this killing machine has been turned against other Muslims. The Muslims fleeing to Europe and the few coming to America are trying desperately not to be consumed by this tragedy. Then we have a few Christians who claim that they can’t understand why Muslims are killing each other. Apparently they aren’t aware of the Catholic–Protestant blood baths we have had, most recently in Northern Ireland.  There is no need to detail them here; anyone with access to a computer can find that gruesome history. Nationalism and religion can each lead to disasters unless we’re careful.