A2 · Elementary
8 min
religiongulf politicsshia islamcivil libertiesmiddle east
You Can Grieve, But Not for Him
Llorar está prohibido
Bahrain's government has banned its citizens from mourning the former Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei during Ashura. Fletcher and Octavio go deep on what Ashura actually is, why a government would ban grief, and how Shia religious identity has become the most combustible political force in the Gulf.
El gobierno de Baréin prohíbe el luto por el líder iraní Ali Jamenei durante las conmemoraciones de Ashura. Fletcher y Octavio exploran qué es Ashura, por qué Baréin tiene miedo del duelo, y cómo la religión chií se convierte en política en el Golfo Pérsico.
6 essential A2-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| luto | mourning | La familia está de luto. |
| duelo | grief / duel | El duelo dura muchos días. |
| prohibido | forbidden / prohibited | El ruido está prohibido aquí. |
| mayoría | majority | La mayoría de la gente habla español. |
| religioso | religious | Ashura es una ceremonia religiosa importante. |
| identidad | identity | La lengua es parte de nuestra identidad. |
Bahrain's government just banned its citizens from mourning a dead man.
Not from protesting, not from waving flags.
From grieving.
At a religious ceremony.
And I've been sitting with that all morning.
Sí.
Yes.
El gobierno dice: no lloréis por Jamenei.
The government says: do not mourn Khamenei.
Right.
Ali Khamenei, the former supreme leader of Iran, died earlier this year.
And Bahrain has now said that during Ashura, the holiest mourning period in Shia Islam, public grief for Khamenei is off the table.
Ashura es muy importante para los musulmanes chiíes.
Ashura is very important for Shia Muslims.
Walk me through it, because a lot of listeners may not know what Ashura actually is.
Es el día de la muerte de Hussein.
It is the day of Hussein's death.
El nieto del profeta Mahoma.
The grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.
And Hussein died in 680 AD, at the Battle of Karbala, in what is now Iraq.
He and a small group of followers were vastly outnumbered and killed.
And for Shia Muslims, that moment is not ancient history.
It is present, it is personal, it is grief you carry in your body.
La gente llora.
People cry.
Camina.
They walk.
Reza.
They pray.
Es muy serio.
It is very serious.
There are processions.
In some communities, chest-beating, self-flagellation.
Black banners everywhere.
And the sermons, the elegies, the poetry of Karbala, they go on for days.
I covered a ceremony in southern Lebanon once, years ago, and the weight of it is hard to describe.
Ashura no es solo religión.
Ashura is not just religion.
Es identidad chií.
It is Shia identity.
That's the core of it, isn't it.
And that's what makes Bahrain's ban so loaded.
Because who is Bahrain?
Baréin tiene una familia real sunní.
Bahrain has a Sunni royal family.
Pero la mayoría del pueblo es chií.
But the majority of the people are Shia.
Roughly sixty to seventy percent Shia population, governed by a Sunni monarchy, the Al Khalifa family, which has been in power since the eighteenth century.
That gap between who governs and who is governed, it has been a source of tension for decades.
En 2011, muchos chiíes protestan en Baréin.
In 2011, many Shia people protest in Bahrain.
Quieren más derechos.
They want more rights.
The Arab Spring.
And the Bahraini government crushed those protests with help from Saudi troops who crossed the causeway.
I remember watching that unfold from Beirut and thinking, this one is going to get buried.
And it largely did, in terms of international attention.
Baréin tiene miedo de Irán.
Bahrain is afraid of Iran.
Irán habla para los chiíes del mundo.
Iran speaks for Shia Muslims around the world.
That's the political architecture underneath this.
Iran positions itself as the protector of Shia communities everywhere.
Not just inside Iran.
In Lebanon through Hezbollah, in Iraq through various militias, in Bahrain through...
well, through Ashura sermons, through religious networks, through the very act of mourning.
Entonces llorar por Jamenei es político en Baréin.
So mourning Khamenei is political in Bahrain.
Exactly that.
And here's where it gets philosophically interesting.
The government isn't banning Ashura.
They're not touching the core ceremony.
They're saying: you can mourn Hussein, you cannot mourn this specific dead man.
Which draws a line between legitimate religious grief and what they consider political demonstration.
Pero para los chiíes, Jamenei es también una figura religiosa.
But for Shia Muslims, Khamenei is also a religious figure.
That's the thing you can't separate out neatly.
Khamenei was both.
He was a marja, a source of religious emulation, for millions of Shia Muslims worldwide.
So when Bahrain says don't mourn him, are they making a political call or a theological one?
Because for the people in those mosques, it might feel like the same thing.
Es muy difícil.
It is very difficult.
La religión y la política son la misma cosa aquí.
Religion and politics are the same thing here.
And context matters enormously right now.
We're in the middle of what everyone's calling the 2026 Iran war.
Iran has been firing missiles at Israel.
The ceasefire is shaky.
And in this environment, Bahrain, which hosts the U.S.
Fifth Fleet, is in a very particular position.
Baréin es amigo de Estados Unidos y de Arabia Saudí.
Bahrain is a friend of the United States and Saudi Arabia.
Deeply in that camp.
And when Iran fires missiles and the region is on edge, the last thing Bahrain wants is its Shia majority holding public ceremonies that could function as a show of solidarity with Tehran.
That's the calculus.
Pero la prohibición crea más tensión, no menos.
But the ban creates more tension, not less.
That's a real question.
Because when a state tells people they cannot perform a religious ritual in a particular way, it doesn't extinguish the feeling.
It can crystallize it.
Make it sharper.
Sí.
Yes.
Y Ashura recuerda a la injusticia.
And Ashura recalls injustice.
A Hussein que muere solo.
Hussein who dies alone.
That's the theological resonance that makes this so combustible.
The whole narrative of Karbala is about a righteous minority crushed by an unjust power.
If you are a Shia Bahraini who feels politically marginalized, that story is not abstract.
It lands very close to home.
Hussein es el símbolo de sufrir por la justicia.
Hussein is the symbol of suffering for justice.
And that symbolism has been instrumentalized by different groups at different times.
Iran under Khomeini built its entire revolutionary identity around Karbala.
Every martyr of the Iran-Iraq war was framed as Hussein at Karbala.
The ayatollahs understood the political electricity in that story.
Por eso Baréin tiene miedo.
That is why Bahrain is afraid.
La ceremonia puede ser un mensaje político.
The ceremony can be a political message.
And historically, it has been.
In the 1990s in Bahrain, Ashura processions became flashpoints for political unrest.
The government has been reading these ceremonies as dual-use for a long time.
The question now is whether that reading is correct or self-fulfilling.
Si prohíbes el llanto, la gente está más enojada.
If you ban the crying, people are more angry.
That is a very clean way to put it.
And I think about the long view here.
Bahrain has been managing this tension for generations.
The Al Khalifa family knows how to read the pressure gauges.
But with the Iran war in the background, with missiles in the air, those pressure gauges are reading higher than usual.
Y el mundo no habla mucho de Baréin.
And the world does not talk much about Bahrain.
Es un país pequeño.
It is a small country.
Tiny.
About the size of a medium American city in terms of land area.
But it punches way above its weight strategically.
It's a financial hub.
It has that U.S.
naval base.
And it normalized relations with Israel under the Abraham Accords in 2020.
Which, among Shia communities in Bahrain, did not go over quietly.
Muchos chiíes en Baréin no aceptan Israel.
Many Shia people in Bahrain do not accept Israel.
Es complicado.
It is complicated.
Deeply complicated.
And that's the thing about this story.
On the surface it looks like a news item about a mourning ceremony.
Underneath it's about legitimacy, about who gets to define what a religious act means, about the limits of what a government can contain when the people it governs carry a different story about power and suffering.
Es la historia de muchos países del Golfo.
It is the story of many Gulf countries.
No solo Baréin.
Not only Bahrain.
Saudi Arabia has a significant Shia minority in its eastern province, sitting on top of most of the oil.
Kuwait, the UAE.
The whole Gulf has this demographic and political undercurrent that rarely makes it into Western coverage.
And then something like this surfaces and it's a reminder of what's always been there.
Oye, Fletcher.
Hey, Fletcher.
¿Tú sabes la diferencia entre 'luto' y 'duelo'?
Do you know the difference between 'luto' and 'duelo'?
I was waiting for you to find a way to make this a vocabulary lesson.
Luto I know, it means mourning, you're in luto, you wear black.
But duelo, I always hesitate.
Isn't that also a duel?
Like two men at dawn with pistols?
Sí, 'duelo' tiene dos significados.
Yes, 'duelo' has two meanings.
El luto y el combate entre dos personas.
Mourning and a fight between two people.
The same word.
How does that happen?
Son dos palabras latinas diferentes.
They are two different Latin words.
Pero en español, las dos son 'duelo'.
But in Spanish, both became 'duelo'.
Es curioso, ¿no?
Curious, isn't it?
That's actually a perfect coincidence for today's episode.
Because what's happening in Bahrain is both things at once.
It's a duelo in the mourning sense, and it's a duelo in the confrontation sense.
The government and its Shia citizens, facing each other across a ceremony.
Sí, Fletcher.
Yes, Fletcher.
Hoy tienes razón.
Today you are right.
Las dos cosas.
Both things.
Mark the date.
Octavio agreed with me.
And I didn't even mispronounce anything.