On February 9, the Al-Akhbar daily newspaper carried the following piece by Mohammad Choukair: “The execution of Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr by Saudi Arabia revealed the existence of a crisis in the relationship between the different sectarian minorities mainly the Shi’i minority on the one hand and the Saudi regime on the other hand. One could say that this crisis is not one between a regime and the minorities but rather a crisis between a regime and the people since the present equation is not that of the state vs. the citizen but that of an owner regime and an owned parish since there are no civil freedoms, no citizens’ rights, no political role for the people, no democracy leading to authority transfer, and no institutions to play a role in surveillance and accountability.

“However, the crisis of the relationship with the sectarian minorities, mainly the Shi’is is more complicated and intense, because, it addition to the general dimension of the relationship between the regime and the people, there’s an additional, more serious and more critical dimension, which consists of the culture dwelling in the regime’s mind: the culture of persecution, marginalization, and discrimination, which reveals itself in all the regime’s policies vis-à-vis the minorities on the level of the political participation, or the employment policies, or the general media speech, or the educational curricula, or at the level of the religious institution – which is part of the regime – and which deems the Muslim Shi’is as polytheists and apostates and rejectionists…

“Perhaps, it would have been possible for the sectarian minorities in the Saudi Kingdom to co-exist with the present situation had they not been living through a chronic state of suffering because of these policies and their excessive marginalization and discrimination. But the perpetuation of these policies on the one hand, and the fact that these minorities reached a state of chronic despair over the impossibility of any serious reform to be carried out by the Saudi regime on the other hand led to an increased pace of objection and calls for reform, rights and freedoms.

“Thus, one can say that the execution of Sheilh Al-Nimr does not represent an exception in this society. It is rather an expression of a general opinion and a deeply-rooted conviction among these minorities that achieving reform, revoking the policies of marginalization and discrimination, and obtaining civil freedoms cannot be achieved by relying on the Authority’s promises but rather through a powerful and efficient popular movement and exerting all kinds of pressures to force the Authority into acknowledging these rights and responding to these demands.

“It doesn’t seem that this conviction will grow weaker or that the objection movement will lose its shine. The reason for this not only consists of the fact that the execution crime provoked the sentiments of the Shi’i minority, or that it killed any hope they had for a change in the regime’s behavior with them, or that it executed any trust they had in this regime or its repeated promises to deal with the situation. This is also because this crime also executed any remaining ethical or human legitimacy that this regime was working on promoting.

“The execution of Sheikh Al-Nimr stripped the Saudi regime from any claimed ethical legitimacy. It exposed this regime and its real view of the sectarian minorities mainly the Shi’i minority. The execution showed that this culture is deeply rooted in the regime’s mind and that, in addition to its Bedouin nature, its traditional nature, and its resistance to any political and social modernity, this regime follows a political culture loaded with racism, and a tendency to excessive and illegal violence.

“The execution of the martyr sheikh will lead to conforming the Shi’i minority’s belief in the regime’s absence of ethics when dealing with the minorities. This execution actually executed any chance for dialogue and agreement and any opportunity at calmly dealing with the crisis of the relationship with the Shi’i minority. After this crime, no one will be able to defend the virtue of this regime… Through the execution crime, the martyr sheikh has turned from a voice into a symbol and from a man into a cause for a sect that has an old practice of turning murder into martyrdom and oppression into power…

“The regime might realize, even if this realization comes too late, that the losses it incurred through this crime are greater than the gains it made; that what the opposition has own will serve its cause; that the phase following the martyrdom of Sheikh Al-Nimr will be different from the phase preceding it; and that, following the execution crime, there will be no going back and no complacency with the demands for which the martyr sheikh has lost his life.”