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Raihan Ismail is an Associate Lecturer at the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University. Her research focues on sectarianism and political Islam in the Middle East. She has a forthcoming book on the attitudes of the Sunni clerics of Saudi Arabia towards Shiism.
Saudi Arabia is a Sunni-majority state and home to a significant Shi‘i minority, most of whom live in the Eastern Province. The Shi‘a there are mainly of the Twelver sect, which is also the major Shi‘i sect in Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, and Bahrain. The Eastern Province Twelvers are not the only Shi‘a in Saudi Arabia—there are sizable communities of Twelvers in Medina and Isma‘ilis in Najran—but it is they who sit at the center of the Shi‘i political movement in the kingdom.
