KUWAIT CITY — The wood paneling bearing Quranic verses gleams inside the Imam Sadiq Mosque and the carpeting is soft underfoot for worshipers who come to pray in what is one of Kuwait’s oldest mosques — and the site of the country’s worst militant attack in modern history.
It’s been a year since a Daesh suicide attacker, his explosives’ vest hidden under traditional male white robes, interrupted prayers before blowing himself up.
He killed at least 27 people and wounded 227 in a day of violence during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, a day that also saw shootings on a Tunisian beach resort and an attack on a US-owned factory in France.
The Daesh group later claimed responsibility for the Kuwait bombing, along with the attack in Tunisia.
Since that day of carnage, Kuwait has rebuilt the mosque and flooded billboards and social media with calls for unity in this small nation of 3 million people.
“Kuwait is certainly not immune to the sectarian tension in the area,” Kuwait University political science professor Shafeeq Ghabra said.
The Imam Sadiq Mosque is tucked into the capital’s Al-Sawabir neighborhood on a street of boutique restaurants popular with the emirate’s socialites. It survived Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait and the expulsion of Saddam Hussein’s troops by US-led forces the following year.
All that changed with the June 26, 2015, suicide bombing that struck as worshipers stood shoulder-to-shoulder in group prayer. The powerful explosion tore into the mosque’s ceiling, spread blood across its floors and sent debris flying.
Minutes after the attack, Kuwait’s ruler Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah stood at the site, surrounded by the crowds and ignoring the advice of his security forces to leave.
“Those are my sons,” he said, speaking of the victims, local media reported at the time.
Kholoud Al-Feeli, who lost her uncle in the attack, said the emir's reaction showed that he views everyone as an equal.
“Kuwaitis have always been open toward other beliefs and differences,” she said. “We are a melting-pot nation, with many people of Levantine, Persian, Egyptian and even Indian ties, if not by blood then by marriage.”
Sheikh Sabah paid for nearly all the renovations needed at the mosque, which reopened this month after a remembrance ceremony for those lost.
“The one-year remembrance service held at the mosque is a great example of how Kuwait’s unity and solidarity is unquestionable in times of crises,” said Abdulnabi Al-Attar, a supervisor at the mosque and member of its board.
“Many leading Sunni figures attended the service, headed by the emir of Kuwait himself,” he added.
In the weeks after the bombing, police arrested what they described as a Hezbollah cell with a massive underground ammunition cache. Two of the defendants have been sentenced to death and have appealed their sentence.
Meanwhile, the Daesh group continues its campaign of violence in the territory it holds in Iraq and Syria, as well as calling for lone-wolf attacks across the globe.
Kuwait undoubtedly remains a target, though Al-Feeli and others hope the country will hold onto its unity.
“We as a nation have proved our resilience before, in the 1980s with Saddam’s war against Iran, in the Gulf War, and as close as last year’s ISIS (Daesh) attack,” she said. “I hope that we can come out of this more united.” — AP
