MANAMA (Dispatches) -- 
Bahrain’s most senior Shia religious authority, Ayatollah Sheikh Isa Qassim, issued a sweeping rejection of the ruling establishment’s recent decisions on Monday, declaring them void under Islamic law and asserting that believers will respond with a single, unified voice.
In a statement carried by the opposition outlet Al-Ahed, Qassim said the measures issued by “the human authoritarian political authority in Bahrain” are “rejected on the scale of divine guidance,” and that the response of the faithful is “one answer: the word of monotheism, ‘There is no god but God’”. 
The cleric’s declaration describes the government’s actions as a direct assault on divine sovereignty. 
“There is no legislation for the servants of God except from God,” the statement reads, adding that the position expresses “strong opposition and irreconcilable confrontation.”
The timing coincides with a legislative and regulatory offensive that has swept Bahrain’s Shia religious establishment since the outbreak of regional hostilities in early 2026.
On September 3, the Official Gazette published a series of decree-laws issued by King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, including amendments to the Passports Law, the Governorates System, and the Municipalities Law. 
A separate royal order on September 17 delegated Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad to exercise royal authority during the king’s absence abroad.
Running parallel was a significant expansion of the state’s licensing regime for religious speech. 
In early September, the Ministry of Justice announced that permits for preaching and guidance would now encompass khatibs (preachers), munshids (reciters), and associated religious gatherings. 
The regulations impose a “good conduct and behavior” condition requiring a security certificate from the Ministry of Interior — a provision rights groups say is designed to exclude clerics who dissent from government policy .
The regulatory squeeze has been accompanied by judicial escalation. On September 9, a Bahraini court sentenced Sheikh Abdulnabi al-Nashaba, a prominent Shia cleric, to one year of discretionary imprisonment and ordered the confiscation of his mobile phone. 
Al-Nashaba had been arrested on August 19 without a judicial warrant.
Interior Minister Rashid bin Abdullah has framed the prosecutions around allegations of allegiance to Iran’s “Velayat-e Faqih” doctrine, accusing detained scholars of seeking to “dominate Bahrain’s Shia street and infiltrate state institutions”. 
Opposition figures and human rights organizations describe the charges as pretextual, characterizing the campaign as a sectarian war against authentic religious belief.
Qassim, a marja’ al-taqlid (source of emulation) for many of Bahrain’s Shia majority, has long been a central figure in the kingdom’s opposition movement. 
Bahrain’s Shia community, which constitutes the majority of the population, has faced structural discrimination in political, economic, and religious life for decades. 
The crackdown has drawn repeated condemnation from international human rights bodies, which have documented arrests without warrants, denial of legal counsel, and the criminalization of religious practice.