Page 33 - Records of Bahrain (7) (i)_Neat

Disturbances and strikes, 1953-1954 19

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I do not think anyone was expecting trouble this year}
several of the natives with whom X have discussed the
affair hove said they were greatly surprised, and it la
obvious that the police were taken by surprise, I have
no doubt that you hove heard numerous theories to

aocount for the outbreak •? including instigation by foreign
Shiites from Persia, Iraq and Hasa, and even by the
British, These theorioo merely bilk the unpleasant foot
that there ia sufficient ill-feeling between 'Baharina'

and 'Arabs' to cause a riot when passions aro excited,
A more interesting remark that has been made to me by a
native Sunnite ia that the people of Bahrain, through
increased contact with the rest of the Middle East and

through the influence of irresponsible and inflammatory .
publicity of the sort that keeps the idle crowds oT the
great Arab towns in a state of excitement, are lasing
the languor and placidity that seem to have characterized

them since the pacification of the Gulf in the last
century. The same person also observed that the
division botwoon Sunnite and Shiite, which has always in
Islam tended to follbw the lines of racial or political
fission, is becoming, in Bahrain, a social division as
well. The Shiite, perhaps, hasalwayo looked upon
himself as the original owner of the land - he is the

"Bahrnni" and he calls the Sunnites '"Arab", but he
now sees his community as a dispossessed class and on
the whole, a depressed one, consisting In the main of

the poor, and ruled by a government of alien origin and
different rite which, he thinks, discriminates against
him. On this supposition - and broad as the •
generalization is, I think It contains some truth - the

/religious • • •