Bahrain Mirror: The problem with former Labor Minister Abdulnabi Al-Shula is that he wanted to become a "thinker" when he retired. This seems to be a growing Bahraini tradition; ministers becoming "thinkers" and "philosophers" once they retire. But as the saying goes, learning in adulthood is like engraving on water. Al-Shula strived to be a thinker, but to no avail. He has been a loyal employee of the authoritarian regime for 30 years, and his disastrous policies were one of the main reasons for the 1994 uprising, when the unemployment rate reached 15% in his era. Instead of giving us a book about this story of utter failure, and his testimony on its causes, he decided to give us intellectual sermons on Mahatma Gandhi's experience in India and the issues of nonviolent struggle. The book "Gandhi and Arab and Muslim Issues" was launched at the "financial harbor" in the presence of a group of ministers and bourgeois thugs, and since then he became a regular preacher and writer. 

When the wing he belongs to became weak, he chose to establish a newspaper in which he publishes his great intellectual views, becoming one of the philosophers of the newspaper in a country where press has disappeared and turned into mirrors of a single publication, and a Shiite preacher who re-establishes the history of his sect. From this moment on, he became a historian and a scholar on the Shiite situation. As said in sociology literature, "The sect is the last refuge of the bastard". Al-Shula started to explore ways to connect him to his sect after he reached his 70s and no longer has a wing in the government. That's why we started to read "Ashura in Bahrain", "Arab Shiites", "The Ambassador of Imam Al-Motazar in Bahrain", "Shiites and the Palestinian Cause" and "Religious Reference". He also promised us with more books. "I am currently preparing to produce a collection of books inspired by this issue," he said in one of his interviews.

We have a successful thinker now. A full-fledged thinker strikes at all four sides and is covered by the government's one-opinion press machines. He speaks of business, commerce, politics, the state, labor policies, history and thought, philosophy and journalism. The mind of the philosopher has been completed and all we have to do is keep up with his scraps so they don't get lost. The result of this was his second book, "My Experience with the Pen" in which he presented himself as a thinker on global issues, history, art and facts, and to serve as an incentive to encourage young pens to produce and contribute to the accumulation of knowledge and culture. There is no escape from this "philosopher", who tells us in one of his previous conversations, "I have completed 68 years and I am still young".

However, Abdulnabi Al-Shula, whatever his level of claim and narcissism, remains the "visa trader". His name remained in the local national memory until he became one of the most prominent circulated jokes, and so he will stay an old name for human trafficking, who flooded the country with cheap bulk labor and "gained from the effort of miserable workers". Today, Al-Shula delivers lectures on the dangers of the labor market situation due to the "flexible visa" system, as if his long and old trade in "visa" business was a mere joke. A closer look at his company "Al-Fanar Investment", which includes twenty companies in the sector of trade, publishing, industry and private medicine, shows that his companies are full of Indian and Asian, regular and irregular, workers and gives you a sufficient idea about his views. "We should not rule out the possibility of settling and granting citizenship to a large number of them voluntarily or forcibly, and it is better to choose the voluntary option," he said.

Avoid his miserable reading about "Shiites and the Palestinian Cause", as it is one of the "philosopher's" stages after retirement and after the "colonel has no one left to write for". During 1994 protests, the BBC called on him to comment on accusations against the Bahraini government of discriminating against Shiite citizens by refusing to hire them in the military. His answer was that this was not true and that they were the ones who were reluctant to apply for the BDF because their homes are located in remote areas. This joke is still repeated as an example of a minister who lies a lot. The one who said this false comment is the same one who now tells us about the relationship of the Shiites of Bahrain with the Palestinian cause, which began as he claims only with the Iranian revolution. We have to believe now that the homes of Bahrain's Shiites were far from the BDF and that the Palestinian cause only appeared after the Iranian revolution. He also wants us to believe that the photo of Hajj Ahmed bin Khamis with his companions holding a rifle "We, Bahrainis, sacrifice our lives for Palestine, the Arabs and even all Muslims", is nothing but a photo to entertain his grandchildren and to post after 50 years on Facebook.

It is difficult to believe that the former minister has actually become a thinker and that the "visa trader" is now a writer. Abdulnabi Al-Shula will always remain deceitful.   

Arabic Version