Ed Webb Religion & Politics Seminars

the facts of the matter speak for themselves. Corruption, crony capitalism and a lack of transparency add up to uneven development and a vast disparity in wealth. By and large, Bahrain's Shia are losing out in the country's economic boom.What this reflects, to a large extent, is the success of the Bahraini regime's strategy to deal with challenges to its legitimacy by promoting and reinforcing identity politics within a system of privileges where certain groups and individuals are favoured over others. In a word: discrimination.

Continuing a discriminatory tradition set by imperial Britain during Bahrain's time as a British protectorate (when police were recruited from British-colonised India), the regime today relies on defence from imported mercenaries, while Bahraini Shia are denied the right to serve in their own armed forces.

Bahrain's sectarian divide therefore stems from economic disparity and the denial of civil rights.

“I feel that at times I am being followed,” he said. “I definitely feel that all my phone calls are tapped. I feel that my emails are filtered and tapped. I feel like I can’t have a loving conversation with my wife. “My wife and I both feel that way. We feel like we can’t even keep the phone in the room on and have a loving conversation without assuming the FBI is monitoring that conversation. I feel like there’s probably FBI in this room right now.”

in a post-9/11 world, any non-state actor caught throwing a stone, be it the first stone or the thousandth, risks total warfare under the guise of counterinsurgency

The coming constitutional showdown between human law and divine law in the revolutionary Arab states may turn on the question of gay rights and sexual freedom generally

Mass, sustained civil disobedience at the corporate headquarters of insurance 'providers' and banks and petrol companies remains a long way off. Instead, Koch-funded campaigns continue to succeed at electing Republican governors who then refuse federal money to build high-speed rail networks . (See Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida, and more to come. Special shoutout to New Jersey.) When Americans begin to thirst for health care, re-pedestrianised cities, and the return of usury laws with the same fervor that Egyptians have shown in clamouring for democracy and the rule of law, only then will we know the revolution is here.