Bahrain’s Arab Spring has developed into an ugly sectarian battle, pitting the Al-Khalifa regime, with the support of Saudi Arabia, conservative Sunni clerics and most of Bahrain’s Sunni minority on one side, against activists for the country’s Shia majority on the other. This development has suited the regime.

The Shari’a is largely irrelevant to most important issues of policy and administration in the economy and in government. Its historical and symbolic locus is on family and sexuality: patriarchal rights, segregation of the sexes, enforced female modesty.

Why has the Obama administration been reluctant to intervene directly in the raging Syrian conflict, or even to arm the rebels? Why did the US president refuse to take ownership of the NATO mission in Libya, failing to engage in Tunisia and Egypt? What makes sense of Obama’s strategy towards the greater Middle East?   

A call for foreign intervention is a cry for help by an embattled opposition walking a shaky tightrope with a tough choice ahead.

In the Gulf, it is all too easy to succumb to the temptation of catering to the population’s excessive tendency to consume as opposed to engaging in innovative entrepreneurship with an exportable added value.

This exclusionary cultural gentrification of Muharraq, while holding promising social and identity prospects for a handful, may risk alienating many locals.

Although conservatives within the ruling establishment will go to considerable lengths to ensure Shiite political movements are kept at bay, expect them to be equally relentless in ensuring an uncontested domination over its core Sunni constituency.