The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) stressed that the religious freedom for the majority-Shi’a community deteriorated, stating that there was a sharp increase in the number of interrogations, arrests, convictions, and arbitrary detentions of Shi’a Muslim clerics, in particular most senior Shi’a cleric in Bahrain, Sheikh Isa Qassim, whose citizenship was arbitrarily stripped by authorities in June.