Ali Salman Ahmed Salman is a Bahraini Twelver Shi'a cleric and the Secretary-General of the Al-Wefaq political society. In January 1995, the Bahraini government forcibly exiled him to Dubai for leading a popular campaign demanding the reinstatement of the constitution and the restoration of parliament during the 1990s Uprising. From there he made his way to London and sought asylum. He continued opposition activities from London, where he was associated with the Bahrain Freedom Movement. Salman returned to Bahrain in March 2001 in a general amnesty as part of a set of political reforms announced by King Hamad.
Shia and Sunni Islam are the two major denominations of Islam. They chose sides following the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad in AD 632. A dispute over succession to Islamic prophet Muhammad as a caliph of the Islamic community spread across various parts of the world, which led to the Battle of Jamal and Battle of Siffin. After the death of Prophet Muhammad, Muslims had a disagreement; Sunnis believed that Muhammad's successor should be Abu Bakr and Omar, and the Shias believed that his successor should be Ali. The dispute intensified greatly after the Battle of Karbala, in which Hussein ibn Ali and his household were killed by the ruling Umayyad Caliph Yazid I, and the outcry for revenge divided the early Islamic community, which is known today as the Islamic schism to differentiate it from the Christian schism that happened later.
Although the majority of the Nigerian Muslim population is Sunni, there is a small Shia minority, particularly in the northern states of Kano and Sokoto. However, there are no actual statistics that reflect a Shia population in Nigeria, and a figure of even 5% of the total Nigerian Muslim population is thought to be too high “because of the routine conflation of Shi’a with Sunnis who express solidarity with the Iranian revolutionary program, such as those of Zakzaky’s Ikhwani.”
The Islamic Movement of Nigeria, led by Sheikh Zakzaky, is a religious organization focused on the adaptation of an Islamic State in Nigeria. Zakzaky was inspired by the Iranian Revolution and rejects the authority of the Nigerian Government. The movement focuses on a nonviolent approach toward achieving an Islamic State, which has established some legitimacy as an alternative government. The IMN is headquartered at the spiritual center, Husainiyya Baqiyatullah, in Zaria with the group's numbers estimated to be anywhere from 5% to 17% of Nigerias Muslim population of 100 million. While the main focus of the group is Islamic studies and enlightenment, Zakzaky has also encouraged his followers to pursue Western education and engage in charity work. Currently, the leader of the movement, Zakzaky, is in jail, and the group has organized protests for his release that have resulted in conflict with the Government.
Ibraheem Yaqoub El-Zakzaky born 5 May 1953. He is an imprisoned outspoken and prominent Shi'a Muslim leader in Nigeria. He is the head of Nigeria's Islamic Movement, which he founded in the late 1970s, when a student at Ahmadu Bello University, and began propagating Shia Islam around 1979, at the time of the Iranian revolution—which saw Iran's monarchy overthrown and replaced with an Islamic republic under Ayatollah Khomeini. Zakzaky believed that the establishment of a republic along similar religious lines in Nigeria would be feasible. He has been detained several times due to accusations of civil disobedience or recalcitrance under military regimes in Nigeria during the 1980s and 1990s, and is still viewed with suspicion or as a threat by Nigerian authorities. In December 2015, the Nigerian Army raided his residence in Zaria, seriously injured him, and killed hundreds of his followers. Since then, he has remained under state detention in the nation's capital pending his release, which was ordered in late 2016. In 2019, a court in Kaduna state granted him and his wife bail to seek treatment abroad but they returned from India after 3 days on the premises of unfair treatment and tough restrictions by security operatives deployed to the medical facility.
The population of Shias in Africa is composed of several communities:
The Saudi government does not conduct census on religion and ethnicity but some sources estimated the percentage of Shiites in Saudi Arabia is roughly 10-15% of approximately 23 million natives of Saudi Arabia. The modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was formed in 1932 by the House of Saud, who are followers of a movement within Sunni Islam known as Salafis. Followers of the Wahhabite mission—who dominate religious institutions, courts and education of the kingdom—believe that "Muslims should return to the interpretation of Islam found in the classical texts, the Quran and the Sunnah." They also believe that "Muslims who seek intercession from holy men, such as the imams revered by Shiites, are not 'true' Muslims."
Sheikh Yasser al-Habib is a Kuwaiti Twelver Shia Muslim cleric, and the head of the London-based Khoddam Al-Mahdi Organization, as well as Al-Muhassin mosque in Fulmer, Buckinghamshire, and the writer of The Lady of Heaven. Al-Habib attempts to express his religious views and his investigations and conclusions in the Islamic history, based upon Shia and Sunni sources.
Ali Jawad al-Sheikh was a 14-year-old Bahraini who died in the hospital on 31 August 2011 after reportedly being hit in the head by a tear gas canister shot by Bahraini security forces during the Bahraini uprising. The Bahraini government denied security force involvement in his death and offered a reward for information on the incident. Activists, however, began a series of large protests after his funeral.
Ayatollah Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr, commonly referred to as Sheikh Nimr, was a Shia Sheikh in al-Awamiyah in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province whose arrest and execution was widely condemned, including by governments and human rights organizations.
Anti-Shi'ism is hatred of, prejudice, discrimination, persecution, and violence against Shia Muslims because of their religious beliefs, traditions, and cultural heritage. The term was first defined by Shia Rights Watch in 2011, but it has been used in informal research and written in scholarly articles for decades.
The following is a timeline of the 2011–2012 Saudi Arabian protests since July 2012. The 2011–2012 Saudi Arabian protests are a series of ongoing protests taking place in Saudi Arabia, which began in January 2011, influenced by concurrent protests in the region.
The 1979 Qatif Uprising was a period of unprecedented civil unrest that occurred in Qatif and Al-Hasa, Saudi Arabia, in late November 1979. The unrest resulted in 20–24 people killed in what was described as a sectarian outburst of violence between the Shi'a minority and Sunni majority in Saudi Arabia and the beginning of the modern phase of the Qatif conflict.
Zaria Quds massacres refers to an incident on July 25, 2014, when the Nigerian Army opened fire on members of the Islamic Movement who were taking part in Quds day rallies, and killed 35 people, including three sons of Ibrahim Zakzaky, leader of the movement. The Islamic Movement and Islamic human rights groups have claimed that Nigerian government's close ties with Israel were responsible for the attacks on the pro-Palestinian group.
The Zaria massacre was a massacre carried out by the Nigerian Army in Zaria, Kaduna State, Nigeria, on Saturday, 12 December 2015, against Shia muslims, mostly members of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria. At least 348 civilians were killed, with 347 bodies secretly buried by the army in a masse grave.
The following lists events that happened in 2016 in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Nimr Baqir al-Nimr was a Shia cleric and critic of the government in Saudi Arabia, who was beheaded on 2 January 2016, one of 47 people executed that day for terrorism offenses. Others executed included Sunnis who had been convicted of involvement in terror attacks linked to al-Qaeda which took place in 2003. News of the killings triggered international demonstrations, and condemnation by nations, supranational organizations, and human rights groups.
The 2017–2020 Qatif unrest was a phase of conflict in the Qatif region of Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia, between Saudi security forces and the local Shia community, that arose sporadically starting in 1979, including a series of protests and repression during the 2011–12 Saudi Arabian protests.
The 2018–2019 Nigerian protests was a series of Shiite-led protests against the discrimination of Shia Muslims in Nigeria in October–November 2018 and July–August 2019. A wave of popular protests, civil violence and Strikes, called by Shiites led to wild fighting between Muslims, Christians and Police. Tens of thousands of protesters marched throughout Shia-majority streets in cities surrounding the capital Lagos. Street protests and growing opposition to president Muhammad Buhari in 2019, as part of the #RevolutionNow movement In July 2019 but however, initial protests began after an organisation’s leader was arrested. In October–November, after popular demonstrations and street unrest, police used Live ammunition to disperse the demonstrators, killing 45 demonstrators. Troops was deployed to patrol the streets in case of protests after 3 days of protests. A new wave of protests in July re-ignited into violence as demonstrators marched against Discrimination of Shia Muslims. Tens of thousands rallied in #RevolutionNow rallies throughout Abuja during a week of protests in late-July and early-August 2019. Mass protests were held in Abuja by Muslims against Police brutality acting the movement. The security forces and Riot police forcefully broke up the demands and protests on 5 August.
Shia Islamportal