Publication

This publication argues that when Saudi Arabia executed the Shiite Sheikh Nimr Baqr al-Nimr and 46 others on 2 January 2016, it made two critical mistakes. First, because it felt its Islamist-Jihadist leadership was being threatened, it overreacted to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s recent claim that the End-of-Time Battle against false Muslims and Shiites in the core Middle East will be led by so-called Islamic State. Second, it turned a blind eye to an obvious truth -- THE fault line in the Sunni-Shiite schism is no longer in Eastern Arabia. Instead, it's centered in al-Jazira (Lebanon, Syria and Iraq), which means that any symbolic attempt to suppress the Shiite challenge to the Sunni Custodians of the Holy Shrines must be answered in kind. Given these errors, the text’s author concludes, al-Nimr's execution may now lead to an "imminent fateful apocalyptic cataclysmic eruption" in the Middle East.