9. The Politics of Reform

T

he Imam Jafar al- Sadiq Mosque is one of the oldest in Kuwait,

with a moss- green dome covered in eight- pointed stars and a

coating of orange dust. Bracketing the dome is a pair of balco-

nied minarets that rise among the aging skyscrapers in the old heart

of Kuwait City. The mosque, named for a Medina- born Islamic jurist

descended from the Prophet Muhammad, is a favored house of worship

for Kuwait’s large Shia population. Since Kuwait lies adjacent to deeply

Shiite southern Iraq and western Iran, Shia have long constituted a

significant minority. But unlike in some of the other Gulf monarchies,

Shia enjoy deep integration and prominent roles in Kuwaiti society.

Worshippers frequenting the Imam Jafar Mosque include many Hasawi

Shia, so named because they migrated in the late nineteenth and early

twentieth centuries from the al- Hasa oasis in what is now eastern

Saudi Arabia.

On June 26, 2015, during the holy month of Ramadan, two Sunni

Muslim men challenged this relatively harmonious state of affairs.

The pair— Fahd al- Gabaa and Abdulrahman Sabah Saud— sat in a car

outside the Imam Jafar Mosque as the imam’s Friday sermon blared

out over the parking lot. Al- Gabaa, a twenty- three- year- old Saudi with

a bushy beard and intense eyes, sat in the passenger’s seat. He wore a

bomb taped to his chest and clenched a detonator in his fist. Saud, a