If you are invited to attend forums or seminars without being asked to participate, and are then surprised at the last minute to learn you are required to speak and have to draft your ideas in haste, you will find that your contribution is more valuable and enriching and that you are writing your vision with ideas from outside the box and far away from any prejudice. During a seminar about sectarian diversity in the future of the Arab Gulf region, held in Doha last week, many ideas were on the table and rendered the meetings closer to brainstorming sessions. The attendees listened to the ideas improvised by some in a calm language, while distancing themselves from political outbidding and the sectarian scarecrow, with a will to enhance the values of citizenship, considering that the weakening of the feeling of citizenship fuels sectarianism and leads countries toward strife. Upon an invitation addressed by the director of the Arab and International Relations Forum in Qatar, Dr. Mohammed al-Ahmari, I participated – along with a number of known Gulf figures – in a pure Gulf seminar. Only Gulf attendees were present (whether Sunni, Shiite or Ibadi Muslims) from all six states to discuss the “role of sectarian diversification in the future of the Gulf region.” I believe they were able to alleviate the tensions, at least among each other, while unanimously calling for the enhancement of the principle of citizenship at the expense of belonging to the sect. I was unable to participate on the first day, but upon my arrival on the second day I asked colleague Ali al-Dhafiri about the first day's happenings, and I found him to be optimistic. On the morning of the second day of the seminar, I shared a car with Jaafar al-Chayeb and Muhammad Mahfouz (Saudi Shiites) and our conversation revolved around the fact that the country came first. In reality, the meeting did not witness any tensions, screaming or angry reactions, as all the participants wanted to overcome these tensions, listen to the pros and cons and respond to them calmly to enhance cohesion and Sunni-Shiite coexistence. I did not count the number of participants, but it seemed to me that most of them came from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the Emirates and Oman. Since the first session, the Bahraini crisis was prominently present on the table of discussion, and the attendance of the secretary general of the Shiite Wefaq Association was positive, especially since he adopted a reasonable – although sometimes diplomatic – rhetoric and tried to refute the accusations cast against his Association of being connected to Iranian agendas. He thus assured more than once that his Association did not aim at toppling the rule in Bahrain, that the goal was to reform the regime, not overthrow it, and that the Sunnis and the Shiites were partners, despite the mistakes. On the other hand, Abdul Latif al-Mahmoud (Sunni), the head of Bahrain's National Unity Rally, hoped to see a unified and combining country that cannot be infiltrated by sectarianism. He pointed out that the Wefaq tried to exploit the situation in his country to serve political purposes, and that the Arab Spring opened the appetite of the Shiites who wanted to render it a Shiite Spring. At this level, the attendees hoped that the two men (i.e. Salman and Al-Mahmoud) would end the meeting with a handshake, which did not happen although each of them stressed that his hand was extended to the other. For her part, Bahraini poetess Sawsan al-Sha'er (Sunni) touched all the participants, spoke with sadness, while trying to recollect the February incidents, the occupation of the hospitals and the attacks staged against Sunni homes, which forced her parents to barricade themselves and close the doors with chairs out of fear of what she dubbed “the Shiites' intercontinental loyalty.” However, Ali Salman calmly responded to her in a subsequent session, denying her statements while relying on what was featured in Bassiouni's report. On the other hand, Islamic Kuwaiti Deputy Waleed al-Tabtabaei believed that the Sunnis were living a one-sided love story with the Shiites, while in my opinion, he spoke with a “tense” language that does not serve peaceful coexistence, neither in Kuwait nor in Bahrain, nor anywhere else. As for Abdul-Aziz al-Thanian, he believed that plurality was positive and constructive, and that it imposed the prevention of the hardliners within the sects from undermining national unity. He also called to overcome mutual sectarian rejection for political purposes. Colleague Fahd al-Urabi al-Harithi said for his part that the solution resided in democracy, the sustainment of credibility and the assumption of social and human responsibility in supporting the culture of coexistence and building a solid society that cannot be affected by sectarianism. He also called for the intellectuals' active participation, which prompted Saudi activist Muhammad Saeed Tayyeb to caution that the intellectuals to whom Al-Harithi was referring were the ones who did not carry patriotic outbidding in the name of politics or religion (i.e. independent intellectuals). As for Emirati national Saeed Hareb, he compared the current situation to a reflecting mirror, asking that the historical heritage restraining all the sides be eliminated to allow the overcoming of the past and the changing of the future with hope. This was almost similar to the vision of Mu'jib al-Zahrani who stressed the necessity of using modern concepts to handle emerging problems, in order to resolve the various issues. Saudi Shiites also attended the sessions with papers calling for nationalism firstly and criticizing sectarianism, including Toufik al-Saif, Jaafar al-Shayeb and Muhammad Mahfouz. In one of his interventions, Al-Saif even refused to compare what happened in the eastern part of the Kingdom to what had happened in Bahrain and other countries, considering that it was a simple issue with available solutions. The sessions also witnessed calls on the intellectuals to act independently from the clerics and politicians, to get rid of the burdens of sectarianism, denominationalism and bigotry, deploy positive participation and distance themselves from the exploitation of plurality for political purposes, considering that this would lead to the detonation of the conflict between the sects and weaken loyalty and belonging to the nation. What is certain is that plurality is an advantage with which the Arab Gulf states should coexist and which they should celebrate. The differences can be handled through the channeling of political, intellectual, social and legal work toward the enhancement of the values of citizenship, by building states of institutions and laws and excluding the causes of rifts and the elements of strife.
