The Arab Agenda

Chapter 7

Al Wefaq

Dr Al Jowder wrote a very important article on Al Wefaq which will try to answer very important questions about the recent crisis in Bahrain.

Was Al Wefaq - an Islamic Shiite opposition group in Bahrain - originated by natural political dynamics? Was its birth a national demand? What is the relationship between Al Wefaq with the movements of the Islamic Haq and Wafa?

To answer these questions, we have to go back in history to show the stages before, during and after the birth of the Islamic Society of Al Wefaq.

We begin the historic account during the fifties, particularly in 1957 when the Iraqi Dawa Party was established. The mission of its establishment was to preserve the identity of the Shiite Islamist currents influenced by communism, socialism, and nationalism. Al Da'wa party was founded by Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, who was executed in 1980; he had a major role in its inception and leadership.

A lot of Shiite Bahraini students were studying Islamic theology in Najaf "Hawzas" and religious sciences at the University of Baghdad in Iraq at that time.

Many were influenced by Al Da'wa party, and one of the most prominent Shiite religious elders who have been affected by its ideologies are Sulaiman AlMadani, Abdul Amir Jamri, and Issa Qassim.

Al-Jamri had a central role in the events of nineties in Bahrain, while Qassim became the religious supreme icon of the opposition with regards to February events.

As the Khomeini revolution took place in Iran in 1979, an internal conflict occurred between the members of the Dawa Party. The supporters of clerical rule which was introduced by Khomeini "Wilayat-el-Faqih" clashed with those who supported the people's rights. The conflict ended with the dismissal of all those who opposed the Wilayat-el-Faqih clerical rule, and hence the Dawa Party adopted Khomeini's line of Velayat-el-Faqih, along with its followers - including Bahrainis. [Read more about Iran's religious political system in "Iran the Rise and Fall of an Empire" in bahrainviews.com]

Wilayat-el-Faqih, which literally means, "guardianship of the jurisprudent", is a Shiite branch that believes that "Shi'i jurisprudents (fuqaha, plural of faqih) are the successors of the Imams, and thus of the Prophet. A branch fathered by the leader of the Iranian Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini which put an end to the modernized views of Shah Pahlavi of Iran. "Muslim society, he argued, requires a state that is guided by Islam and that enforces Muslim law. Any other form of political organization is illegitimate". The Faqih is obeyed blindly since he represents the Prophet, who represents God, gaining unlimited power and submission.

During the mid-90's, violent incidents erupted in Bahrain which was later called the "uprising of the 90's". In its initial stages, it started as demands for better standard of living and to curb unemployment, but its real goal was to create an unrest that would ultimately result in a coup. The Secretary General of Al Wefaq, Ali Salman, had a field role in these events; where he led a group to attack a sports race in one of the areas in Bahrain. One of the main leaders of the events was Abdul Ameer Al-Jamri, mentioned above, who believed in Al Da'wa ideology but later changed into a strong follower of Khomeini's movement and became pro-Wilayat-al-Faqih in Bahrain.

After the death of the former Emir of Bahrain, Sheikh Isa bin Salman Al Khalifa in 1999, his son, Sheikh Hamad bin Isa took over the reins of government. The Shiite movements which were inspired from Iran's Khomeini's revolution found that the only solution to take over the country and gain power was through politics. They learned that using street violence to pressure the government did not produce any result.

They ordered their followers to vote and approve the National Action Charter in February 2001. A new chapter offered by the new ruler which set new parameters of democracy for the people of Bahrain, reducing the amount of power to the Monarch (98.4% of Bahrain voted 'Yes'). And so the Wilayat-el-Faqih movements began setting their political arena in the form of association systems in Bahrain.