Sectarian violence in the Middle East is about to boil over into anarchy after the Wahabi kingdom of Saudi Arabia executed 47 people in twelve different cities, many by that nation’s favorite modus operandi: decapitation.

Among those executed was popular Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. The 56-year-old cleric’s crime? He was a political activist who demanded voting rights for his Shiite minority within the kingdom. Stuff we in America take for granted, but could cause you to literally lose your head in Saudi Arabia.

Since then the Saudi Arabian embassy in Tehran, Iran, has been torched. And the former Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, has ominously predicted that this single execution will be the downfall of Saudi Arabia’s government.

Now brutality is nothing new with the Saudis. My husband once had a colleague who lived as a young woman with her parents in Saudi Arabia, as her father was employed there. One day she went to a market and suddenly found herself swept up in a crowd that was surging towards the market square. She found it was to witness public executions, mandatory in the kingdom. Horrified, she somehow managed to break free from the crowd to flee for home.

What is President Obama’s reaction to the execution of Nimr al-Nimr — Obama, the great sympathizer of Muslim causes? Well, his State Department called upon Saudi Arabia to “respect and protect human rights,” and to permit “peaceful expression of dissent.”

Does anyone think the Saudis will heed those weak-kneed pleas? Anyone, anyone? Bueller, Bueller?