Riyadh, Saudi Arabia - Saudi police have clashed with Shiite pilgrims over several days near a cemetery in Islam's second-holiest city, leading a Shiite cleric to appeal to the king to put a stop to the "insults" of the religious police.
Relations are tense between Saudi Arabia's majority Sunnis and the Shiites, who make up a small minority of the country's 22 million people. Shiites, who are considered infidels under the Wahhabi interpretation of Islam widely followed in the kingdom, routinely complain of discrimination. Outspoken Shiite critics have been jailed, and many Shiites claim to have been banned from such jobs as the religious police and teaching religion classes.
Shiite witnesses said the first clash took place Friday evening after religious police, who enforce the country's strict interpretation of Sunni Islam, filmed female Shiite pilgrims outside the al-Baqee Cemetery in Medina, which contains the graves of revered imams.
When five male relatives of the women demanded the police turn over the tapes, there was a scuffle and the men were arrested, according to a witness who refused to be identified for fear of being punished.
Afterward, hundreds of pilgrims gathered outside the cemetery, demanding their release. Riot police used batons to disperse the crowd, said the witness.
According to Medina's police, however, the five were arrested and charged with causing a disturbance at the cemetery gate after being told visitation hours were over.
On Monday night, another confrontation took place when the religious police banned female Shiite pilgrims from visiting an area reserved for them outside the cemetery overlooking the graves, according to the same witness. In Saudi Arabia, all women are banned from visiting cemeteries so special viewing areas are created for them.
The witness said police used batons against the angry Shiite crowd, which he estimated at 3,000-4,000. Sunni onlookers also joined the fray, attacking Shiite pilgrims.
On Tuesday, when police once again prevented people from entering the cemetery, the pilgrims drew knives and attacked, injuring two policemen, according to a security official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak to the media.
A member of the crowd was taken to the hospital, the official said.
The Shiite pilgrims were at the cemetery to mark the anniversary of the Prophet Muhammad's death _ an occasion not observed by Sunnis in Saudi Arabia.
In an appeal posted Monday on his Web site, Sheik Hassan al-Saffar, a prominent Shiite cleric, said the treatment of Shiites at the cemetery violates "Islamic morals and human rights" and the tolerance called for by an interfaith conferences hosted by the king a few months ago.
When contacted by The Associated Press, al-Saffar's office confirmed the statement.
"Visitors are generally harshly treated ... and prayer books are confiscated," said al-Saffar, adding that this makes pilgrimages and religious visits "subject to sectarian tensions."
The Al-Madina newspaper on Tuesday quoted Medina's governor, Prince Abdul-Aziz bin Majed, as saying that authorities are questioning "those behind the chaotic events" in al-Baqee. He did not elaborate.
Yasser al-Matrafi, head of public relations at the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice which runs the religious police, told Al-Madina that the religious police had no part in al-Baqee events.