Hazem Saghiyeh

No one with a decent and coherent view can support all the Arab uprisings except for the Bahraini one. In the same way, no one ought to support the Bahraini uprising alone while opposing all the others.
Either you support all of them or you oppose all of them.

The author of these lines supports all of them, including the Bahraini uprising, and he condemns all attempts to crush them, including the attempt in Bahrain. As for the flaws of the Bahraini uprising, they are present in all the uprisings, even if the proportions differ – and these flaws do not justify opposing the uprisings.

The fact that the “Shia color” predominates in the Bahraini uprising means the same thing as the predominance of the “Sunni color” in the Syrian uprising and that of the eastern regions in the Libyan uprising. In all cases, this is due to historical reasons. Some of these reasons lie in our culture and inherited group structures, while others lie in the classism of the ruling regimes and their chronic discrimination, which revived local and sectarian identities among the most persecuted.

It is said that there is “Iranian penetration” of the Bahraini uprising, and perhaps there is much truth in such an accusation. This would not be a surprise from an expansionist, ideological regime that began its life with the theory of “exporting the revolution.” Its public Islamism does not stop it from holding “reservations” regarding the territorial status of three Arab islands that Tehran occupied in the Shahanshahi era.

However, discrimination, repression, deprivation, death sentences, violations of private property and insults to religious creed – all occurring today in Bahrain – are not the ideal methods for curbing Iranian influence. In fact, they are not the ideal methods for any noble act to begin with. More frankly, this discriminatory behavior toward Bahrain’s Shia is the fastest way to put them all in the Iranian pocket and to choke the patriotic, rational and moderate people among them. We should expect the worst, since humans are like dynamite: The greater the pressure, the faster they explode.

The truth is that broad trends in the predominant Arab political culture are working today, with a blend of fanaticism and backwardness, to separate the Shia from their national identities and give them – as individuals and groups – to extremist radical forces such as Hezbollah, and thus to Iran.

Recent events in Bahrain and the way its uprising has been treated separately from the others demonstrate the spread of intolerance in Arab life. This intolerance is reaching a point at which there is no dialogue or communication – a point at which there will be no politics.
This development is painful and grievous. Moreover, it destroys what is left of the fabric of Bahraini national unity. Remaining silent about this is complicity in a crime.