Earlier this week I chatted by phone with Nina Shea of the Hudson Institute. Shea had been instrumental in leading the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) effort on evaluation of the Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA) Islamic studies texts that has become, as Jim Lafferty of the Traditional Values Coalition remarked: ‘a hot potato’. Shea was in the midst of another project directed at the Saudi Wahhabi hate texts. During the conversation she remarked about what the Saudi King Abdullah was up to holding a high profile gathering of Muslims scholars, both Sunni and Shia, in the holy city of Mecca. This Financial Times article about Abdullah’s ‘dialogue initiative with the major sects in Islam, as well as, outreach to Christians and Jews, presented an interesting tableau of what occurred last week:

A photograph of King Abdullah, Saudi Arabia’s ruler, walking through a palace in Mecca flanked by two other notables was no doubt exactly the type of image the kingdom’s leaders hoped to portray. Clearly, too, it was one intended for both internal and external consumption.

To the king’s right was a beaming Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al al-Sheik, Saudi Arabia’s top Sunni religious leader, while to his left was Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president of Shia Iran. Together the trio represented the Middle East’s powerhouses – two nations with a history of fraught relations but that lay claim to leadership roles for the Sunni and Shia communities respectively.

The snap was taken at a conference in Islam’s holiest city this month that brought together some 500 Muslim leaders and scholars from around the world. The meeting was intended to assemble often fractious groups and present a united front.

Getting disparate wings of contentious Islam in one place, let alone Mecca, is not an easy task by any measure. Especially from a Saudi King whose political fortunes are in lockstep with strict normative values of the Wahhabi doctrine that rejects the ‘other’, whether Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Shinto or the deviant sects of Islam; Shiism, Sufism, Ahmadiyya, Ismali Alevi, etc.

Abdullah according to the Financial Times article on this historical gathering suggest the following motivation:

Some analysts suggest there is a degree of regional rivalry in the different initiatives as states jostle for influence and Saudi Arabia, buoyed by the unprecedented oil boom, tries to consolidate its status as a regional leader. Until now, however, the kingdom’s religious reputation and the restrictions imposed by its brand of Islam have kept ­Riyadh from attempting interfaith initiatives. Many Wahabi clerics not only are intolerant to non-Muslim faiths but also deem other sects of Islam, such as Shia, Sufi and Ismaili, as heresy.

But in King Abdullah’s mind “there is a misconception of what the Wahabi movement has meant and he thinks it is misunderstood”, the Saudi official says.

Indeed, observers say a crucial factor behind his push for dialogue is to dilute the influence of the more radical elements of Wahabism. The kingdom has waged its own battle against Islamist extremists linked to al-Qaeda and bent on overthrowing the al-Saud royal family. The Saudis have attempted to counter the threat via security measures, including waves of arrests, but have also turned to ideological means that include rehabilitation programmes and a more tolerant government discourse.

Moreover, the king – who met Pope Benedict at the Vatican last November – at home introduced a “national dialogue” that brings together Saudis from different segments of society to discuss issues ranging from education to women’s rights and the place of the Shia community, which complains of widespread discrimination. There are estimated to be 1.5m-2m Shia in the kingdom, mainly in the oil-producing east. Jafar al-Shayeb, a Shia political activist, says the dialogue could help “because here the religious establishment consider themselves above all other Muslims”.

The tricky thing is for the authorities directly to take on powerful clerics, he adds. “Having the international dialogue will influence some of the radical positions here which cannot be dealt with directly because they [Wahabis] are powerful and socially rooted.”