Posted on 06/22/2009 3:28:41 PM PDT by forkinsocket
MADINAT HAMAD, Bahrain -- On a recent evening, Issa al Jibb climbed the roof of his home and started hurling Molotov cocktails into the adjoining property of the Rawi clan. By the time Bahraini police shot him down with a rubber bullet, Mr. Jibb had managed to burn three cars and part of the building, and inflicted serious burns on two Rawi teenagers.
This was no ordinary feud among neighbors. Mr. Jibb, 46 years old, is a native of this small Persian Gulf kingdom. The Rawis are originally from Syria, were recruited along with thousands of other Arabs and Pakistanis to serve in Bahrain's security forces and eventually rewarded with Bahraini citizenship for their loyalty to the crown.
Hostility between these two communities is on the rise, with several other clashes, car torchings and beatings reported in recent months. "Bahrainis think that we just don't belong, that we're aliens to this area and to this state," says a Syrian-born army officer who lives nearby.
Once hailed for its democratic reforms, Bahrain -- a strategic island-state that serves as headquarters of the U.S. Navy Fifth Fleet -- is increasingly rocked by sectarian and ethnic strife. Though the majority of Bahrain's 530,000 citizens are Shiites, power remains in the hands of a Sunni royal family, the only such minority regime in the Arab world since the downfall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Suspecting its Shiite citizens of loyalty to nearby Iran, the island's former master, Bahrain's royal family has long relied on Sunni mercenaries from countries such as Syria, Jordan, Yemen and Pakistan to staff Bahrain's army, police and security service.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
The writer is wrong. Syria is majority Sunni, but is ruled by minority Alawites. Lebanon is majority non-Shiite, but is ruled by minority Shiites.
If you were throwing firebombs from the top of your home onto your neighbor’s home, do you think the local cops would use rubber bullets?
Do you think your neighbor would?
I visited Bahrain in 1996 - I could hear bombs going off in the distance as I sat at a little Pub owned by an expat Brit...
“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy.
The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.
A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.
Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.
No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.”
— Sir Winston Churchill (The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages 248-50 [London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899]).
Unless they’ve built a second one since 76-77, I’ve been there too. Nice outdoor patio in a u-shaped courtyard.
And aren't the Palestinians a majority in Jordan?
All too true. Journalists come up with the biggest howlers, and few are ever called to the carpet for it.
All too true. But truth has never been an obstacle when a journalist is trying to make a point.
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