Great. now maybe they can give the majority of their citizens their rights. Bahrain population is over 70% shia who are constantly marginilised and discriminated against by a minority sunni government. (iraq ..anyone?) Its a place where foriegners have more rights than the natives themselves. I think its time they looked at the huge elephant in the room and dealt wth it, rather than hopping around on other issues.
Re: Bahrain appoints Jewish woman as ambassador to USA
Great. now maybe they can give the majority of their citizens their rights. Bahrain population is over 70% shia who are constantly marginilised and discriminated against by a minority sunni government. (iraq ..anyone?) Its a place where foriegners have more rights than the natives themselves. I think its time they looked at the huge elephant in the room and dealt wth it, rather than hopping around hopelessly.
Which rights do foreigners have that the natives do not?
Re: Bahrain appoints Jewish woman as ambassador to USA
Read the full article in the guardian, by Ian Black; to find out exactly how the demographics are being changed inorder to undermine the masses of the shia population.
'…Signs of nervousness are clear in a murky story of the naturalisation granted to an unknown number of non-Bahraini Sunnis - as many as 40,000 according to al-Wifaq.
Judicial gagging orders prevent discussion but this is a highly charged issue. The government says it is about importing skills, while critics complain the goal is to alter the demographics to boost Sunni dominance.
Evidence of discrimination is rife. Shias cannot serve in the armed forces and few occupy senior official positions elsewhere. Recently Shias have found they cannot buy land in Sunni areas.
“There is a tendency in the establishment to make sure Sunnis stay on top and keep the Shias down and out of sight,” says one foreign observer.
There is gossip about divisions within the Al Khalifa dynasty, with the crown prince constrained by conservative figures who have the ear of his father. They are influenced by the Saudis, who brook no nonsense from their own Shia minority in the oil-rich eastern provinces across the causeway from Bahrain.
Another article from the Bahraini centre for human rights.
**
Bahrain’s dawn of democracy proves false for Shia**
By William Wallis, Financial Times - May 3 2006 A few blocks away from the new waterfront developments that Bahrain's rulers hope will secure the kingdom's future as a regional banking centre, there are signs of budding revolt.
Wearing balaclavas to mask their identity, young men with no stake in the capital Manama’s rising skyline, spend their evenings burning tyres, hurling stones and blocking traffic into the shabby, outlying villages where they live.
The demonstrations are regular and small - barely 50 Shia protesting against discrimination. But they have been preceded by much larger protests and are symptomatic of steadily rising tensions on an island squeezed between the competing influences of Iran and Saudi Arabia, with close ties to Iraq and income disparities that coincide with a deepening sectarian divide.
While the circumstances driving a wedge between Islam’s predominant sects are particular to Bahrain, the poorest of the Gulf’s oil producers and the only one with a Shia majority, some of the symptoms have blown in from elsewhere: Sunni extremist pamphlets distributed at a school suggesting the Shia are an aberration; newspapers and mosques that interpret events in Iraq from a sectarian perspective; and posters, in the same shabby Shia suburbs, of Iranian clerics calling on the faithful to “defend their beliefs with their blood”.
Bahrain had its “dawn of democracy” in 2001, several years before Washington looked hopefully for a thaw across the Arab world. But for the Shia who make up about two-thirds of the island’s 470,000 native population, it has proved false.
Rather than hastening change, the empowerment of Iraq’s Shia majority and muscular assertion of Iran’s influence in the region have made Bahrain’s ruling Sunni minority more cautious.
After inheriting power in 1999, King Hamad ibn Isa al-Khalifa, Bahrain’s Sunni ruler, released political prisoners and welcomed back pro-democracy activists forced into exile when his father crushed a wave of unrest in the 1990s.
He then invited Bahrainis to vote on a new social contract. But the resulting constitution, with the absolute powers of the ruling al-Khalifa family unchecked by a new and toothless parliament, fell short of expectations the king himself had raised.
As parliamentary elections approach for the second time in four years, hopes for a political system that gives the Shia a fairer share of wealth, land and power have faded and for young Shia, the prospect of earning a decent wage remains bleak.
At current trends, 35 per cent of Bahrainis will be unemployed by 2013 and 70 per cent in jobs incommensurate with their expectations and skills, according to a report by the consultants McKinsey. “It is this and the gap between wages and the cost of living that gives rise to frustration for the layman, more than constitutional issues,” says Abd al-Aziz Abul, a Sunni opposition leader.
The government has started talking about unemployment as a priority, raising the minimum wage and allocating 30m dinars ($80m, €63m, £43m) towards training programmes. But more radical proposals face resistance from elites with a vested interest in cheap imported labour from Asia or income from selling visas, while the most glaring discrimination has been left intact.
According to the now banned Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, only 18 per cent of senior public sector and government positions are held by Shia. Shia are in effect barred from the security services, while the ranks of the police and army are filled by Sunni recruits from Yemen, Jordan, Syria and Pakistan. Shia and Sunni opposition leaders believe the practice of awarding these immigrants nationality as a means of altering Bahrain’s demographics continues.
They also complain that gerrymandering has made it impossible for the main Shia-backed el Wefaq National Islamic Society to win a majority in the elected lower house despite their numeric advantage. This was one of several reasons el Wefaq boycotted the last elections in 2002.
The most senior Shia cleric, Sheikh Issa Qassem, has urged his followers to use peaceful means of protest. But, allied to him, the youthful and moderate Islamist cleric, Sheikh Ali Salman, who has led el Wefaq into an alliance with other opposition including leftists and Sunni, says the lack of results is driving growing numbers of young Shia towards more radical agendas.
Borrowing a proverb from Yemen, he says the government has lifted the muzzle from Bahraini mouths but placed it instead on their own ears. “We are free to speak now but there is no real dialogue, no real change,” he says.
The likelihood that el Wefaq will nevertheless participate in elections this year - partly, some members say, to counter Sunni fundamentalists in parliament - has divided the opposition.
Harakat Haq, a new, mostly Shia, group, questions the legitimacy of the ruling Khalifa family. Some activists now openly espouse republican ideals.
For hardliners in the royal family, who have argued since the Iranian revolution that Bahrain’s Shia would take a mile if given an inch, this hardening of dissent validates a more ruthless approach to preserving the status quo.
For moderates - both Sunni and Shia - concerned with preserving the kingdom’s stability through gradual change, these are worrying signs that the opportunity for compromise is slipping away.
Re: Bahrain appoints Jewish woman as ambassador to USA
Bahrain has that much politics going on? The whole place is size of a large neighborhood in Karachi or Lahore. Never knew such a tiny place could have such huge issues.
Re: Bahrains Treament of Shias [split: Bahrain appoints Jewish woman ...]
All Middle east is rife with similar problems and almost identical population distribution. Shia revolution is inevitable.
Re: Bahrains Treament of Shias [split: Bahrain appoints Jewish woman ...]
^ i agree. saudi, kuwait, bahrain, tajikistan, uzbekistan, etc. ...they have a similiar oppressive mentality everywhere. This mentality has filtered through to grass roots, and seeped through to other places including the UK. I guess with so much hatred, its only a matter time before they burn themselves out. :-/
Re: Bahrain appoints Jewish woman as ambassador to USA
Bahrain has that much politics going on? The whole place is size of a large neighborhood in Karachi or Lahore. Never knew such a tiny place could have such huge issues.
Tiny small big or huge - where there's a bunch oif religious nuts to divide people up, there is politics. Just be glad they haven't gone to. the stage of bombing each others mosques up as in other places
Islam was supposed to be a unifying force but has become the opposite
Re: Bahrains Treament of Shias [split: Bahrain appoints Jewish woman ...]
Great. now maybe they can give the majority of their citizens their rights. Bahrain population is over 70% shia who are constantly marginilised and discriminated against by a minority sunni government. (iraq ..anyone?) Its a place where foriegners have more rights than the natives themselves. I think its time they looked at the huge elephant in the room and dealt wth it, rather than hopping around on other issues.
:)** Ma Mooli Bhai Sahib..........................**
Does Iran tolerate Sunni's.................I do not see any Sunni Scholars in the Iranian Govt?.................:(
Re: Bahrains Treament of Shias [split: Bahrain appoints Jewish woman …]
Me2:(
Sunion ko tu buniyadi insani huqooq bhi hasil nahi Iran main:crying:
Re: Bahrains Treament of Shias [split: Bahrain appoints Jewish woman ...]
:)** Ma Mooli Bhai Sahib..........................**
Does Iran tolerate Sunni's.................I do not see any Sunni Scholars in the Iranian Govt?.................:(
you mean you're trying to justify the behaviour of the the bahraini gov, because of your percieved injustice on minorities in iran...? is that the logic your trying to follow...?
Re: Bahrains Treament of Shias [split: Bahrain appoints Jewish woman ...]
you mean you're trying to justify the behaviour of the the bahraini gov, because of your percieved injustice on minorities in iran...? is that the logic your trying to follow...?
I do not think he is trying to justify it, just calling attention to other instances. Also its interesting that you say it is perceived...is it not really the case with Iran and its Sunnis?
Re: Bahrains Treament of Shias [split: Bahrain appoints Jewish woman ...]
Not really, that is not the case for iranian sunnis and never has been. But that doesnt stop the ignorants from bringing it up inorder to deflect from the opressive sunni regimes, which lets face it, is pretty huge in comparison.
Re: Bahrains Treament of Shias [split: Bahrain appoints Jewish woman ...]
Lo another shia sunni bang bang.
Even dubya has learnt to say shia and sunni yell scratch fight bomb kill each other! One of the reasons to say hell with you religions!
Re: Bahrains Treament of Shias [split: Bahrain appoints Jewish woman ...]
Not really, that is not the case for iranian sunnis and never has been.
I don't know if I'd go that far.
Despite being about 10% Sunni, Tehran has no Sunni masjid (Sunnis generally pray at the Pakistani embassy)...nor have they been allowed to build one. This in a city that has synagogues, churches, Zoroastrian temples, even a gurudwara...even though the entire non-Muslim population of Tehran is a mere fraction of the Sunni population. There definitely is institutionalized discrimination against them...though I do agree its not on the same level as that faced by Shias in places like Bahrain, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, etc...
Re: Bahrains Treament of Shias [split: Bahrain appoints Jewish woman ...]
I had my dude working in bahrin commandos.
He told me they used to beat up shia all the time.
Govt. wanted them to do so.
Bahrins whole SSG is from pakistan.
Re: Bahrains Treament of Shias [split: Bahrain appoints Jewish woman ...]
I had my dude working in bahrin commandos. He told me they used to beat up shia all the time. Govt. wanted them to do so. Bahrins whole SSG is from pakistan.
That is a darn shame. You almost seem proud of that. I'd agree with above post that a shia uprising is inevitable. All the gulf countries have large shia populations with no representation at all. A new york times article highlighted that fact last year I think and coined the term SHIA CRECENT in teh middle east. Ironically, shia folks are the poorest in the gulf region, and are concentrated everywhere there are oil fields. They are the laborers that supply the world with oil. Lord knows what would happen if they uprise against oppression. They should be given their rights. **** like that makes me so nervous man.
Re: Bahrains Treament of Shias [split: Bahrain appoints Jewish woman ...]
The thing about Bahrain which makes it different to the other Gulf countries with Shia populations, is that in Bahrain Shias are the majority, but political and economic control are in the hands of the Sunni minority.
Comparisons to Iran are partially valid, because Sunnis are the minority there.
Which puts Bahrain's sunnis in a conundrum. If they give up control of power, they risk being sidelined and even opressed like Sunnis in Iran are.
This is a very real risk because 2 years after Iran's revolution, Bahraini Shia militants linked to Iran's government tred to overthrow the Bahraini government to implement a state modelled on Iran's. The risk is still there now because all 73 people arrested in the coup attempt were pardoned 20 years later and are now still active players in Bahrain's political Shia Islamist movement, which wins the most seats in bahrain's toothless parliament.
If they wanted to make an Iranian modelled state 20 years ago.... they probably still want to now. And Bahrain's sunnis can see how sunnis are treated in Iran, so what incentive do they have to loosen their hold on power?
Re: Bahrains Treament of Shias [split: Bahrain appoints Jewish woman ...]
How does Bahrain make money anyways? They must have some guaranteed source of income. They seem to live a lavish lifestyle. A small place like that, I bet everyone knows each other, or at least has a passing reference, kind of like desi communities here in the West.
Re: Bahrains Treament of Shias [split: Bahrain appoints Jewish woman ...]
If they wanted to make an Iranian modelled state 20 years ago.... they probably still want to now. And Bahrain's sunnis can see how sunnis are treated in Iran, so what incentive do they have to loosen their hold on power?
You sound too naive. Bahraini sunnis don't let anyone, especially the majority, hold on to power because THEY want the power. I do not know where Iran comes into play.
And even if they did revolt, they must have had some good reason. Oppression by the ruling government perhaps.
Re: Bahrains Treament of Shias [split: Bahrain appoints Jewish woman ...]
You sound too naive. Bahraini sunnis don't let anyone, especially the majority, hold on to power because THEY want the power. I do not know where Iran comes into play
Of course they want to hold on to power. That's why even the Sunni populace at large in Bahrain is denied full political power.
My point is that unlike other dictatorships, Bahrain's rulers don't just have power to lose. If they loosen their grip on power they run the risk of not just being regular people like other fallen dictators. Instead, they risk being oppressed.
The Iran link is valid because the inspiration for the most popular opposition movement, the Shia Islamists, is the Iranian governmental system, which oppresses the sunni minority.