Page 207 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

‘Disorder’, political sociability and the urban public sphere 187

they envisaged was exclusive to Arabs. Persian Shi‘is, for instance, boy-

cotted the movement on the grounds that al-Ha’yah had betrayed its

claims to patriotism (al-wataniyyah) by supporting the supremacy of the

Arabs as a political community (al-qawmiyyah). The secular Arabism

advocated by al-Bakir was inevitably a narrowly defined discourse of

political emancipation which serve to trigger the emergence of competing

ideologies. This is also suggested by the evolution of the ma’tams, whose

followers provided their own religiously oriented interpretation of
Arabism as a struggle against oppression (zulm) informed by divine jus-
tice. Some Shi‘i factions which operated within al-Ha’yah even came to
political maturity under a splinter group called the National Pact shortly
before the disbandment of the organisation. 96
In the age of nationalist upheaval Persian Shi‘is formed their own
societies and political organisations. Clubs and football associations
emerged after World War II under the umbrella of the Iranian Union
School. The Firdawsi club, established in 1946, continued its relentless
promotion of Iranian culture and maintained strong connections with the
oil company, which absorbed the largest proportion of the Persian labour
force. 97 An underground organisation influenced by the Iranian
Communist party (Tudeh) started to operate in Manama under the
name of Hizb-i ‘Adalat in the early 1950s, while pictures of Musaddiq
were displayed in the shops in support of the nationalisation of the Iranian
oil industry. By 1956 community leaders were petitioning Belgrave for
permission to form their own national committee modelled on al-
Ha’yah. 98
The nationalist press also provides evidence of the exclusive nature of
the political discourse propagated by the intelligentsia of the national
movement. Images of aloof but threatening Persians, Indians and Jews
featured prominently in editorials and cartoons. After the establishment
of Israel the position of many Jews became precarious, both socially and
economically, and in 1947 protesters had targeted the Eastern Bank,
which employed many members of the community. 99 Indians, who rep-
resented a large proportion of the professional and clerical classes by the
96
Interview with ‘Ali Akbar Bushehri, Manama, 20 April and 15 September 2004; Khuri,
Tribe and State in Bahrain, p. 209.
97
Constitution of the Firdawsi club, 17 June 1946, BA; Khuri, Tribe and State in Bahrain,
pp. 177–8.
98
Interview with ‘Ali Akbar Bushehri, Manama, 20 April and 15 September 2004; Belgrave
to Political Agent Bahrain, 17 February 1948, R/15/2/485 IOR; Qubain, ‘Social Classes
and Tensions’, 275; Belgrave Diaries, 4 September 1956, AWDU; Beiling, ‘Recent
Developments in Labor Relations in Bahrayn’, 157.
99
Belgrave Diaries, 2 December 1947, AWDU.