QATIF, Saudi Arabia — The conflict in Iraq has begun to spill over onto this hardscrabble, sunburned swath of coast, breathing new life into the ancient rivalry between the country's powerful Sunni Muslim majority and the long-oppressed Shiite minority in one of the most oil-rich areas of the world.
"Saudi Sunnis are defending Iraqi Sunnis, and Saudi Shiites are defending Iraqi Shiites," said Hassan Saffar, Saudi Arabia's most influential Shiite cleric. "There's a fear that it will cause a struggle here."
At first, the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq gave optimism to Shiites here along Saudi Arabia's eastern coast. Unlike infuriated Sunnis, many Shiites felt a surge of quiet hope when the U.S. arrived in Iraq three years ago. Emboldened by their Iraqi brethren's escape from the oppressive rule of Saddam Hussein, Shiites here and in other Sunni-ruled nations began to demand -- and win -- freedoms of their own.
Bit by bit, old rules have fallen away in recent years: Saudi Shiites won the right to publish and read sectarian literature. They can now work as journalists, build mosques and open Shiite schools to educate their sons.
But today, the power shift that seemed to be opening doors for the sect is beginning to look more like a dangerous destabilization. Some Shiite clerics here have received death threats in recent months, community leaders say. Shiites have also been accused of harboring links to Iran, a longtime nemesis of the Saudi government.
Sunni and Shiite clerics across the region have begun to warn against a \o7fitna\f7, a severe term that refers to a civil war or division within the Islamic faith.
"Now there's a psychological war against the Shia," said Mohammed Mahfoodh, a Shiite author here. "They criticize the Shia, accuse them of being loyal to an outside party, attack their religious beliefs and say they don't have interest in the stability of their countries."
Saudi Shiites have lived for centuries among the banana and date palm groves where the kingdom tapers off into the Persian Gulf, pushed literally and figuratively to the margins of Saudi Arabia. Unwittingly, they settled directly on top of the fossils that became the source of Saudi opulence: vast oil reserves that spread out beneath their villages.
Far from the skyscrapers glinting in the sun in Riyadh and Jidda, this is a very different Saudi Arabia, a place where villagers still live in mud-brick huts, where pictures of Hezbollah chief Sheik Hassan Nasrallah and Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani are plastered on walls, where roads go unpaved and old wells pock the desert.
