Ayatullah Sheikh NimarBaqir al-Nimar, Shia Muslim Leader was born Al-Awamiyah, Qatif, Saudi Arabia in 1959 married Muna
Jabir al-Shariyavi (died 2012) He will Killed 02 January 2016.
Nimar Baqiral-Nimar, who tried to grow up in poverty in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province,
at the time of his death he was a hero among young Shia Muslims, both men and
women, who demonstrated in their thousands after his execution by the kingdom's
authorities on 2 January.
Born in
Al-Awamiyah, Al-Qatif region of Saudi Arabia. Al-Nimar, who had the title of sheikh
and the rank of ayatullah, Stirred hearts and minds by calling on his followers
to resist police bullets with “the roar of the word”, A charismatic preacher,
he told them nevertheless that “the art of good hearing and listening” was
often more important than declamation. His “petition of honour and
dignity”, asking for freedom of belief for the Shia, who are considered
heretics in Saudi Arabia, with its strict Wahhabi version of Sunni Islam, was
composed in 2007 and handed to the local governor. Al-Nimar 2007 petition was
considered by his supporters to be “a brave and honest model, and an approach
to be followed in demanding rights.”
As well as
religious freedom, he sought liberty for Shias in the justice system and in
education, including schools for girls, as well as the establishment of local
government committees, and access for Shias to selection for higher status
jobs. He knew it was added, “That the Saudi government would not take
these demands seriously and practically. However, he proposed them in the
context of a gradual political project so he would establish proof against this
tyrannical regime in the subsequent steps of his political activity. “He had
already been briefly arrested by Saudi authorities in 2004 and 2006. 
In 2009, he
delivered a speech which took the Saudi authorities' irritation with him to a
new level, accusing the religious police of targeting the Shia community after
Shia pilgrims clashed with police and security forces at Al-Baqi cemetery in
Medina. When, two years later, four Shias were shot dead during protests in
Eastern Province in November 2011, al-Nimar called for the release of all those
who had been detained, as well as for all prisoners of conscience, both Shia
and Sunni, to be freed. IN 2012, by which point the Saudi authorities had
become seriously concerned about his influence across the kingdom, as well as
his sway in neighboring Bahrain, a video was posted on social media in which
al-Nimar was seen celebrating the death, in June that year, of the Saudi
interior minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud. His message, “Let the
worms eat him”, reached millions – and further enraged the Saudi Arabian
authorities.
A critic of
the ruling Sunni families both of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, al-Nimar had, in
2009, called for the secession from Saudi Arabia of the Qatif and Al-Ahsa
governorates of Eastern Province, where Shias are in the majority, to be united
with Shia-majority Bahrain. He also warned the Saudi royal family that if
bloodshed was not stopped, they risked being overthrown. His was arrested after
a car chase in 2012 – and lost blood after being shot several times in the
thigh. His brother, Mohammed al-Nimar, who was himself arrested immediately
afterwards, told shocked followers that al-Nimar was this time accused of
sedition, specifically “foreign meddling”, disobeying the rulers, and taking up
arms against the security forces.
Sympathy for
al-Nimar grew when it became known that his wife, Muna Jabir al-Shariyavi, had
died, after his arrest, in a hospital in New York.
In prison, he
began a hunger strike, and was thought to have been tortured. An appeal against
his death sentence failed, and he was one of 47 killed on the same day across
Saudi Arabia, sparking worldwide protests. The human rights group Amnesty
International said: “The death sentence against Sheikh Nimar Baqir al-Nimar is
part of a campaign by the authorities in Saudi Arabia to crush all
dissent.”
After his
death, Iranian authorities compared the Saudi rulers' act in executing him to
the atrocities of Isis. He is also mourned by the Yemeni insurgent Houthi
movement, and in his home province an eight-year-old boy was among people
injured as security forces reacted to protests after the execution. The Iraqi
Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr also protested his death.
Nimar Baqir
al-Nimar was born in 1959 in the village of Al-Awamiyah in the Al-Qatif region
of Saudi Arabia. After elementary schooling he left in 1979 to study at a
seminary in Tehran, Iran, and then in Syria. His schools are listed as Mohammed
Hussaini Shirazi, and Mohammed Taqi al-Modarresi. He is said to have become
close to Iran's ruling establishment.
He returned to
Saudi Arabia in 1994, and gathered an enthusiastic and youthful following for his
sermons as imam in Al-Awamiyah. The Saudi authorities detained him for the
first time in 2003, for leading public prayers in the village.
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