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.
The 2006 al-Askari Shrine bombing occurred on 22 February 2006 at approximately 6:44 a.m. local Iraqi time, and targeted the al-Askari Shrine in the city of Samarra, Iraq. The attack on the mosque, one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam, has not been claimed by any group; the then President of the United States, George W. Bush, claimed that the bombing was an al-Qaeda plot. Although the mosque was severely damaged from the blast, there were no casualties.
After the death of Muhammad in 632, a group of Muslims, who would come to be known as the Sunnis, believed that Muhammad's successor as caliph of the Islamic community should be Abu Bakr, whereas a second group of Muslims, who would come to be known as the Shias, believed that his successor should have been Ali ibn Abi Talib. This dispute spread across various parts of the Muslim world, which eventually led to the Battle of the Camel and Battle of Siffin. Sectarianism based on this historic dispute intensified greatly after the Battle of Karbala. During the battle, Husayn ibn Ali and some of his close partisans, including members and children of Muhammad's household, were killed by the ruling Umayyad Caliph Yazid I. The outcry for revenge divided the early Islamic community, albeit disproportionately, into the Sunni and the Shia. This is known today as the Islamic schism.
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 is a banned Shia religious organization which aims to establish an Islamic state in Nigeria. It was founded by Ibrahim Zakzaky, who 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 around 5% 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, was in jail recently, and the group organized protests for his release that have resulted in conflict with the Government.
Ibraheem Yaqoub El-Zakzaky is a Nigerian religious leader. An outspoken and prominent Shi'a leader in Nigeria, he has been imprisoned several times for his struggle against what he sees as injustice, especially the system of corruption in his country. Zakzaky claims that only Islam can offer solution to the complex socio-political problems facing Nigeria, which has over the years stagnated the country's development. In a lecture he has delivered in marking the occasion of Sheikh Uthman Bn Fodio Week organized by the Academic Forum of Islamic Movement, Zakzaky stated that he is continuing the Jihad of Uthman Bn Fodio to make sure that Islam becomes the ruling religion in not only Nigeria but the entirety of West Africa. In a lecture he delivered on the same occasion in Sokoko, one of his proponents, Dr. Nasir Hashim has claimed that Zakzaky’s dream is the only hope for Africa.
Shia Islam in Africa is the continent's second most widely professed sect of Islam behind Sunni Islam.
The Saudi government does not conduct a census on religion or ethnicity, but some sources estimate the Shia population in Saudi Arabia to make up around 20% of the approximately 34 million natives of Saudi Arabia.
Sheikh Yasser al-Habib is a Kuwaiti Shi'i scholar, and the head of the London-based Mahdi Servants Union, as well as Al-Muhassin mosque in Fulmer, Buckinghamshire, and the writer of The Lady of Heaven. Al-Habib's work focuses on Islamic history, drawing on 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 from 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 or Shiaphobia is hatred of, prejudice against, discrimination against, persecution of, and violence against Shia Muslims because of their religious beliefs, traditions, and cultural heritage. The term was first used by Shia Rights Watch in 2011, but it has been used in informal research and written in scholarly articles for decades.
The 1979 Qatif Uprising, also known as the Muharram Intifada 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, also known as the Buhari 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 (IMN). At least 1000 civilians were killed, with 347 bodies secretly buried by the Army in a mass grave.
The following lists events that happened during 2016 in Nigeria.
The Qatif conflict is a modern phase of sectarian tensions and violence in Eastern Arabia between Arab Shia Muslims and Arab Sunni majority, which has ruled Saudi Arabia since early 20th century. The conflict encompasses civil unrest which has been sporadically happened since the 1979 uprising, pro-democracy and pro-human rights protests and occasional armed incidents, which increased in 2017 as part of the 2017–20 Qatif unrest.
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.
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