Historic Antagonism of 2 Islamic Sects Widens

As the first Iranian bodies from the fighting in Mecca last week arrived in Tehran on Wednesday, regional specialists and Western diplomats in the Persian Gulf area warned that the violence and ensuing rise in tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia appear to have caused a significant deepening of the historic antagonisms between the two major sects of Islam.

According to these experts, the rift between Shia and Sunni Muslims has widened in all the gulf Arab countries that are ruled by Sunnis but have large minorities of Shias: Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. Iran’s population is primarily Shia Muslim while Saudi Arabia is largely Sunni.

Even Saudi Arabia has seen a deepening of the divisions. Although Shias constitute only a small minority in Saudi Arabia’s eastern province, they hold an estimated 40% to 60% of the jobs in the crucial oil industry.

In addition to the gulf states, there are large Shia populations in Iraq, where the Sunni government is actually in a minority, and Lebanon, where Iran has achieved its greatest success in spreading its Islamic Revolution.

More than 400 people died and more than 600 were injured last Friday when Iranians at the annual pilgrimage to the Islamic holy city of Mecca staged a demonstration against the two superpowers and Israel.

It is not clear how the violence began. The Saudis say the Iranians attacked police trying to control the demonstration and stampeded a huge crowd of pilgrims. Most of those killed and hurt were trampled in the rush, they say. Subsequently, Saudi officials said that Iranians arrested in the riots admitted to a plot to seize the Grand Mosque, Islam’s holiest site, and force the pilgrims inside to swear fealty to Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as leader of the world’s 850 million Muslims.

Unprovoked Attack

The Iranians, however, say they were fired on by the security forces in an unprovoked attack that was planned by the Saudi and United States governments. They say the dead included more than 600 Iranians alone.

The tensions between Shias and Sunnis date back centuries, when a schism divided the Islamic faith over who were the proper descendants of the Prophet Mohammed.

A knowledgeable source here, who spoke to reporters on the condition that he not be identified, said that even before the events in Mecca, he had detected growing hostility toward Shias as a religious group apart from being followers of the Ayatollah Khomeini.

In the Iranian capital of Tehran on Wednesday, criticism of the Saudi regime gained new momentum as the bodies of 58 pilgrims, as well as 35 of the injured, arrived home by plane.

Survivors of the violence claimed the Saudis had fired expanding “dum-dum” bullets at Iranian demonstrators and used poison gas on the crowds.

Tehran radio said demonstrators at a mass protest at Tehran’s airport Wednesday chanted “Death to America,” and “Cut off the hand of Fahd,” a reference to the Saudi monarch.

Tehran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted a returning pilgrim as saying he was hit by 40 fragments of explosive bullets fired by Saudi police. He said police beat pilgrims with clubs, blocked routes of retreat and then opened fire with machine guns.

The agency reports, monitored in Cyprus, quoted Iranian Prime Minister Hussein Moussavi as accusing the Saudis of “obstructionism” about repatriation of the injured and dead.

Iranian Parliament Speaker Hashemi Rafsanjani has declared that Iran would “purge the holy shrines in Mecca of the wicked Wahhabis” and overthrow the Saudi regime. The Wahhabis, Saudi Arabia’s strict fundamentalist Sunni Muslim sect, have been the major force in Saudi domestic life for decades.

According to Western diplomats, Iranian attacks on Saudi Arabia’s religious standing highlights the differences in the region between Sunnis, who are the majority Muslims, and Shias, who are in the minority.

The tension has already reached sizable dimensions in Kuwait, where Shias have been excluded from sensitive jobs in the military and security after a number of attacks on oil installations by Kuwaiti Shias.

In his first public statement on the Mecca violence, King Fahd vowed Wednesday to defend Islam’s holy places, according to the official Saudi Press Agency. The monarch told leaders of pilgrim groups from 123 nations: “We will never relent in the defense of our homeland and sacred shrines with souls and money.”

In what was seen as a conciliatory gesture, however, he did not mention Iran by name in connection with the violence, stressing the need for Islamic unity.

Iran Launches Sub

Meanwhile, Iran announced that it had launched its first submarine Wednesday and would practice locking missile guidance systems onto targets in the narrow Strait of Hormuz, the entrance to the Persian Gulf.

Iran began three days of naval maneuvers at midnight Monday in the strait, the gulf and the Gulf of Oman to the south, and has told foreign ships to stay out of its territorial waters until midnight tonight. .

The submarine, as shown on Iranian television, appeared to be only about 20 feet long.