Apartheid in Bahrain

Apartheid in Bahrain refers to the systematic discrimination practiced by the Sunni dominated government of Bahrain against the Shia majority of the country's citizens.
Origins of the aprartheid system in Bahrain
The majority of the population of Bahrain are Shia Muslims. Among the Shia are the Baharna, the ancient, indigenous people of the land. Other Shia have arrived more recently. The ruling Al Khalifa family arrived in Bahrain from Kuwait at the end of the eighteenth century.
In Chapter 1 of his book, Reaching for Power:The Shi'a in the Modern Arab World, (Princeton University Press, 2006) Yitzhak Nakash, Professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Brandeis University the Shia of Bahrain, the indigenous people of the island, describe the in invasion and conquest by the Al Khalifa family in 1783 as illegitimate, and the family's rule as an illegitimate occupation of Shia land. They allege that the Al Khalifa have failed to gain legitimacy in Bahrain and that the family and its Sunni supporters have established a system of "political apartheid based on racial, sectarian, and tribal discrimination."
This has resulted in a system that Ben Cohen calls "apartheid" because "Bahrain is a society where inequality is ethnically rooted, and then buttressed by the denial of civic and political freedoms."
Writing in the International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice , Professor Staci Strobl of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice om the describes the demonstrators as "protesting an apartheid system that denies them opportunities equal to those of their Sunni
neighbors."
Operation of the apartheid system in Bahrain
The Christian Science Monitor describes Bahrain as practicing
According to the Bahrain Center for Human Rights

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