Legal Framework On Freedom Of Religion And Actual Application
Bahrain is a kingdom located in the Persian Gulf ruled by the Sunni Al Khalifa dynasty. Article 2 of the 2002 constitution states: “The religion of the State is Islam. The Islamic Shari‘a is a principal source for legislation.” Article 6 declares: “The state safeguards the Arab and Islamic heritage.” The constitution guarantees the right to express and publish opinions, provided these do not infringe on the “fundamental beliefs of Islamic doctrine.” According to Article 18, “There shall be no discrimination among [citizens] on the basis of sex, origin, language, religion or creed.” Article 22 guarantees that “freedom of conscience is absolute. The state guarantees the inviolability of worship, and the freedom to perform religious rites and hold religious parades and meetings in accordance with the customs observed in the country.”
Bahrain is party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. But freedom of religion, family rights, and equality between men and women should not be “affecting in any way” the prescriptions of Shari‘a.
Conversion from Islam to another religion is not explicitly forbidden by law, but the social and legal consequences of doing are considerable, according to Church sources (unidentified for security reasons). Converts from Islam lose any inheritance rights and are cast out of their family. Non-Muslim missionary activities among Muslims are not allowed, and the personal consequences for the missionaries are severe.
Showing disrespect to recognised religions is punished under the Bahrain Penal Code. Article 309 imposes fines and prison “upon any person who commits an offence by any method of expression against one of the recognized religions [or] sects, or ridicules the rituals thereof.” Article 310, among other things, reserves the same treatment for “any person who commits in public an insult against a symbol or a person being glorified or considered sacred to members of a particular sect.” Article 311 also imposes a fine or prison on “any person who deliberately causes disturbance to the holding of religious rituals by a recognised sect or to a religion’s ceremony or […] destroys, damages or desecrates a place of worship or a recognized sect or a symbol or other things having a religious inviolability.”
Although Bahrain is the only Gulf country where Ashura (tenth day of the month of Muharram) is a government holiday, it was not until 2019 that Shi’as were allowed to publicly commemorate it.
To operate in the country, non-Muslim religious groups are required to register with the Ministry of Labour and Social Development (MOLSD). Altogether, around 20 non-Muslim religious groups are registered, including Christian Churches and a Hindu temple.
Bahraini citizens represent less than half of the population, and of these citizens 99.8 percent are Muslim. Although there are no official figures for the Shi’a population, it is estimated to be between 55 and 65 percent, and in absolute numbers they represent the double of the Sunni population. Bahrain, one of the few Gulf countries to have non-Muslim citizens, counts a small number of Christians, Jews, Baha’is, and Hindus with Bahraini citizenship.
Most Bahraini Christians are descendants of immigrants who came between 1930 and 1960 and were eventually granted Bahraini citizenship; the majority were originally Arab Christians from the Middle East, although a few are from India. Christians, both local and migrants, number 200,000 of which 80,000 of them are Catholic; approximately 80 percent belong to the Latin Rite, while the rest adhere to the Eastern Rite.
Approximately 19 churches are registered. American missionaries built the first one in 1905 and the National Evangelical Church began offering services a year later. Catholics can use three churches: the Our Lady of Arabia Cathedral, situated at Awali, the Sacred Heart Church in Manama (built in 1939) and a smaller house of worship shared with Anglicans in Awali.
There is a small Jewish community, mostly descendants of families who came from Iraq, Iran and India and settled in the island kingdom in the early 1900s. They have their own synagogue which has recently been restored and cemetery and enjoy a certain social, political, and financial status. The Jewish community has a representative in the 40-member Shura or Consultative Council, the appointed upper chamber of Bahrain’s bicameral National Assembly. The community was first represented by Ebrahim Daoud Nonoo, and subsequently by his niece, Houda Ezra Nonoo, a businesswoman who was the first non-Muslim woman to head a human rights organisation and the first female Jewish lawmaker in Bahrain. The Nonoo family remains very active both in Bahrain and in the United States. Nancy Khadhori is the current Jewish member of the Shura Council. The community has recently expanded following the Abraham agreements.
Incidents and Developments
According to the US Department of State, in 2021, 26 individuals were investigated for defamation of religions, two were condemned for inciting religious hatred and sectarianism and one for blasphemy. At the end of 2021, 15 other cases were still being investigated.
In January 2021, two independent councils were created to manage Sunni and Jaafari (Shia) endowments. These have authority over endowment assets, including revenues and places of worship, and depend on the Ministry of Justice, Islamic Affairs, and Endowments (MOJIA). Iran’s exiled Shia cleric Sheikh Isa Qassim qualified this decision as “illegitimate” and “hostile” to Jaafari jurisprudence.
According to Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB), the family of imprisoned Shia cleric Zuhair Jasim Ashoor, also known as Sheikh Zuhair Jasim Abbas, released a statement in January 2021 in which it described the torture and inhumane treatment he suffered in prison.
In February 2021, the Association of Gulf Jewish Communities (AGJC) was created. It covers the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia and it is based in Dubai. Rabbi Elie Abadie became its senior rabbi, and its president is Bahraini citizen, Ebrahim Dawood Nonoo.
Prisoners from Jaw Prison started a hunger strike in August 2021; the inmates protested the prison conditions including religious discrimination. According to the government, however, there are special rooms for prisoners to worship and pray regardless of religious affiliation. This was confirmed by the National Institute for Human Rights (NIHR), though NIHR has been criticised by for being too closely connected to the government.
According to an Iranian news site, heavy measures were taken by the government ahead of the August 2021 Ashura ceremonies. These measures included important restrictions on assembly, forbidding the use of black flags that Shia’s raise every year to express grief over the martyrdom of the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, and an intensified security presence. Similar restrictions were alleged to have taken place again in 2022.
On 24 August 2021, supporters on Twitter stated that officials had summoned Shi’a chanters Mohamed al-Gallaf, Salih Sahwan, Hasan Norooz, Mahdi Sahwan, and Sayed Ahmed al-Alawi for religious songs they sang during Ashura, and clerics Abdelmohsin al-Jamri, Mohamed al-Rayyash, Hani al-Banna and Aziz al-Khadhran for sermons they gave during Ashura. They were released shortly afterwards without charge.
As part of the Abraham Accords (September 2020), Bahrain normalised ties with Israel. The renovation and reopening of the synagogue in Manama, destroyed in 1947, allowed the tiny Jewish community to hold its first Sabbath in the synagogue in August 2021, after 74 years. In October 2021, the first Jewish wedding in more than 50 years was celebrated in Bahrain.
In August 2021, King Hamad’s son, Shaikh Nasser bin Hamad Al Khalifa, participated in the celebration of the Hindu festival of Onam.
In October 2021, the King Hamad Global Centre for Peaceful Coexistence chairman Shaikh Khalid bin Khalifa Al Khalifa attended the commemoration of the centenary of the passing of Abdu’l-Baha, founder of the Baha’i Faith.
According to different sources, pressure on Shi’a clerics, activists, or citizens increased during the period under review and in certain cases led to detention; incidents of Shi’a arrests and detentions were criticised by Human Rights groups.
In December 2021, the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) published a report in which it described the Ashura commemorations as being “rooted at the community level and bear religious, social, and political meaning”, as the Shi’a population is almost the double of that of the Sunni. “[…] what lies at the core of the dispute between the Sunni regime and Shiite citizens is Ashura’s political potential.” It recorded 84 repression events targeting Ashura-related rituals, which represent almost half of all repression events recorded in the country between January and October 2021.
In December 2021, the Cathedral of Our Lady of Arabia was consecrated. It is the largest Catholic church in the Arabian Peninsula and the first new cathedral to be built in the region in 60 years. Situated in Awali, some 20 kilometres from Manama on land donated by the King of Bahrain, Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, it has a capacity of 2,000 people. It includes a residential area for the episcopal curia, a guest house, and educational facilities. It is intended to serve as the main church for the Catholic Apostolic Vicariate of Northern Arabia (AVONA), which includes Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. In the same month, new land was allocated by the government for a Christian cemetery in Salmabad. At the end of 2021, the municipality of Awali had not yet approved the construction of three further proposed Christian churches.
On 13 December, the magazine Vice published an article in which it outlined how the government was reluctant to rebuild 38 Shia mosques destroyed during the 2011 uprising. The Bahraini government replied to the editors explaining that “all 30 unlicensed […] structures used for religious purposes referred to in your inquiry have been regularized and rebuilt to the standards of other Muslim places of worship in Bahrain (over 1,456 mosques and 625 matams), except for three which remain under study.”
In November 2022, Pope Francis visited Bahrain. During the historic visit, considered as a very positive step for interreligious dialogue, the pope spoke of the importance of freedom of religion being put in practise “so that religious freedom will be complete and not limited to freedom of worship; that equal dignity and equal opportunities will be concretely recognized for each group and every individual; that no forms of discrimination exist; and that fundamental human rights are not violated but promoted.” Pope Francis further insisted that “it is not enough to grant permits and recognize freedom of worship; it is necessary to achieve true freedom of religion.”
A few days before the visit, Houda Nonoo, niece of Rabbi Ebrahim Dawood Nonoo and former Bahraini Ambassador to the United States, praised “Bahraini’s commitment to coexistence”. Following the visit, a communique regarding the official launch of ‘The Bahrain Declaration’ promoting interreligious dialogue and peace among religions, was announced. The event is anticipated to be held in Rome in February 2023.
In March 2023, three members of Al-Tajdeed Society, Jalal Al Qassab, Mohammed Redha, and Redha Rajab were jailed — convicted under a law preventing “ridicule” of Bahrain’s recognised religious texts (i.e., the Quran and the Bible) — for participating in a discussion on Islam. The Al-Tajdeed Society is a Shi’a religious and cultural society that advocates open discussion of Islamic issues. NGOs criticised the condemnation and appealed for their release with analysts stating that the ruling was applied due to their appeal for reform.
In the same month, the Bahrain based International Peace Institute (IPI MENA) organised an interfaith roundtable conference on “Interfaith Solidarity & Global Challenges to Peace”. A dozen of religious leaders or representatives participated to the event.
In May 2023, the Second Bahrain-EU Conference on Freedom of Religion and Belief took place in Manama. The first conference was held in May-June 2022.
Prospects For Religious Freedom
Generally, non-Shi’a religious minorities enjoy a certain degree of freedom of religion and belief.
The same cannot be said about Shi’as, who numerically are larger than any other religious community in Bahrain. Although improvements have been achieved, governmental and non-governmental rights organisations continue to deplore the sustained pressure on this religious community. As religious and political affiliations are often closely linked, it is difficult to categorise all the reported incidents as based solely on religious identity.
There is reason for hope following the improvement of relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and that this may positively influence the situation of Shia’s in the country. Currently, due to the ongoing discrimination against the Shi’a, prospects for freedom of religion remain poor.
Bahrain