Three suicide attacks in Saudi Arabia Sunday night, including one near a holy Muslim site, followed a bloody week of attacks in Bangladesh and Turkey during Ramadan. U-M experts are ready to discuss.

Ronald Suny, professor of history, is an expert on nationalism and genocide. He is the author of “A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire.”

“As ISIS loses ground on the ground in Iraq and Syria, it is striking out using its web of international agents in various parts of the world. In the last week it has targeted Islamic states—Turkey, Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia—which, it has concluded, have become enemies of the self-proclaimed caliphate,” he said. “These vicious attacks are signs of weakness and desperation, propaganda of the deed, to inspire young people around the world to join the jihadist movement.

“The most important development recently has been the defection of governments that had either supported or tolerated the violent Islamist movements like ISIS in their own interests, either in the case of Turkey to aid the struggle against the Kurds or in the case of Saudi Arabia to weaken the Shi’i alliances forged by Iran. These attacks mark a turning point, the creation of a more determined front against ISIS.”

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Juan Cole, professor of history, studies the ongoing political change in the Arab world.

Cole wrote on his blog Informed Comment: “The bombing likely attempted to underscore that King Salman and Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Nayef are not actually very good servants of the two holy shrines, being unable to protect them. It is not completely impossible that the Daesh thinks visiting the tomb of the Prophet is a form of idolatry and that the pilgrims should be punished. Some Daesh extremists may go so far as to want to destroy the Kaaba, the cube-shaped shrine in Mecca around which pilgrims circumambulate, seeing even it as idolatrous.

“The three attacks in Saudi Arabia, then, were symbolically orchestrated to cause maximum tension in the kingdom and to deny the Saudi monarchy its honored position as servant of the two holy shrines, as a firm U.S. ally and as dominant over the Eastern Province where the oil that makes Saudi Arabia an important country comes from. The bombings played on the key fissures within Saudi society.”

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