Bahrain has stripped the spiritual leader of the kingdom’s Shia Muslim majority of his citizenship, resulting in protests outside his home and furious threats by neighbouring Iran over the escalating repression.
The move against Ayatollah Isa Qassim comes less than a week after a court banned the country’s main opposition group, al-Wefaq, accusing it of fomenting sectarian unrest and having links to a foreign power – a clear reference to Iran, which is a fierce critic of Bahrain’s Sunni monarchy.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander Gen Qassem Suleimani told Manama that it had crossed a “red line” by putting pressure on Qassim and that the move would trigger armed resistance, the Fars news agency reported.
“Al-Khalifa [the rulers of Bahrain] will definitely pay the price for that and their bloodthirsty regime will be toppled,” warned Suleimani, who heads the Guards’ elite Quds force and is seen as the ruthless face of Iran’s strategic reach across the Middle East.
Bahrain’s BNA state news agency, citing an interior ministry statement, said the cleric had been trying to divide Bahraini society, encourage young people to violate the constitution and promote a sectarian environment.
“Based on that, the Bahraini citizenship had been removed from Isa Ahmed Qassim, who, since he acquired Bahraini citizenship, had sought to form organisations that follow foreign religious and political reference,” BNA said. The ayatollah’s official website says he was born in the kingdom in the 1940s.
Reports quickly circulated on social media of a crowd marching outside Qassim’s house in Diraz, a village west of the capital. Video footage showed dozens of people chanting Shia slogans.
Bahraini media reported last week that authorities had been investigating a bank account of about $10m (£6.8m) in Qassim’s name to examine where it was getting funds from and how they were being spent.
The action spurred a strongly worded statement from senior clerics, including Qassim, against any attempt to meddle with the collection of a tax called khums, which is a pillar of Shia Islam.
The Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (Bird), an exiled opposition group, warned that the move against Qassim would stoke unrest. “We are deeply concerned that these actions will escalate tensions on the streets and may even lead to violence, as targeting the country’s leading Shia cleric is considered ... a red line for many Bahrainis,” said its director of advocacy, Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei.
The US State Department said it was “alarmed” by Bahrain’s action. “We are unaware of any credible evidence to support this action,” said John Kirby, a spokesman for the department.
Bahrain crushed a 2011 uprising by Shia Muslims and others demanding reforms and a bigger voice in the country, a close ally of neighbouring Saudi Arabia and the west, which is home to the US Fifth Fleet and a new British naval base..
The kingdom has stripped dozens of people of their citizenship over the past two years, apparently in a campaign to end opposition. Last month, an appeals court increased from four to nine years a prison sentence imposed on Sheikh Ali Salman, the al-Wefaq leader. Salman was convicted in 2015 of inciting hatred and disobedience, and insulting public institutions.
Growing international concern about the situation was highlighted last week when the UN high commissioner for human rights warned that repression “will not eliminate people’s grievances”. The criticism was flatly rejected by the Bahraini government.
An indefinite ban on gatherings in Manama has been in place since 2012. Dozens of people, including minors, have been prosecuted for participating in protests.
Bahrain is at the heart of the sectarian faultline running across the Middle East, flanked on one side by Saudi Arabia and Iran on the other. Iranian official media was quick to highlight the move against Qassim by what it called the “Bahraini regime”.
The Lebanese Shia movement Hezbollah, which is backed by Tehran, said it “pushes the Bahraini people to difficult choices which will have severe consequences for this corrupt dictatorial regime”. It showed, said Hezbollah, that the Bahraini government had reached “the end of the road” in dealing with what it called a peaceful, popular movement.
On Twitter, one Bahraini individual portrayed Qassim as an insect with a spray can labelled “sectarianism”.
The UK is coming under mounting pressure to act more robustly towards its Gulf ally. In January, the foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, called Bahrain “a country which is travelling in the right direction” and “making significant reform”.
Bird claims that the British government’s interest in Bahrain’s human rights and in promoting political dialogue has “declined precipitously” since a 2014 agreement to construct the Mina Salman naval base. It alleges that UK funding to improve Bahraini human rights institutions since the repression that followed the Arab spring has largely been spent on well-intentioned bodies that have proved not to be truly independent of the government.