Bahrain party
Al-Wefaq National Islamic Society
جمعية الوفاق الوطني الإسلاميةBahrain's largest Shia opposition political society. Won 17 of 18 contested seats in 2010 before boycotting subsequent elections over the 2011 uprising crackdown. Dissolved by court order in July 2016; its leader Ali Salman is serving a life sentence.
Dissolved by Bahrain's Court of Cassation on 2016-07-17 on grounds of "endangering national security"; the dissolution was widely criticized by international human-rights bodies including the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
- Founded
- 2001
- Dissolved
- 2016
- Current leader
- Ali Salman (imprisoned)
- Founders
- Ali Salman and others
Position — compass as of 2026-06-08
First-pass hand-coded estimate; pending second-pass external review. See methodology for the rubric.
Across the dataset
Open full comparison →Nearest
Closest by average Euclidean distance across all axes.
Most divergent
Farthest by the same metric. Useful for "anti-axis" framing.
Position — all axes
Briefs about Al-Wefaq National Islamic Society
Comparative political-science briefs pairing this party with others. 1 brief on file.
Members & affiliated figures
Politicians currently identified with this party — leaders, ministers, MPs, and other active figures. All affiliated politicians →
Recent events
Political events involving this party — formations, mergers, leadership changes, designation shifts. All events at /pulse →
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Ali Salman sentenced to life
Al-Wefaq Secretary-General Ali Salman, originally detained in 2014, was sentenced to life in prison on 2018-11-04 on espionage charges. He remains imprisoned. The 2016 court-ordered dissolution of Al-Wefaq itself was a separate proceeding.
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Bahraini uprising and Saudi/UAE intervention
A Shia-majority popular uprising at Pearl Roundabout began on 2011-02-14 demanding political reform. Saudi Arabia and UAE intervened militarily in March 2011 under the GCC Peninsula Shield Force to suppress it. The crackdown has shaped Bahraini politics since; Al-Wefaq was dissolved in 2016.
Source documents
Texts the scoring pipeline reads — manifestos, speeches, platforms. Each document's verbatim content backs the position score above; the model cites specific phrases from these texts when scoring. All documents →
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Press release English 2013-02-01 Al-Wefaq National Islamic Society — written evidence to the UK House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee (Bahrain inquiry), February 2013
Al Wefaq National Islamic Society is Bahrain's largest opposition party. Al Wefaq is characterized as the moderate opposition force, looking to reform the current system to create a genuine constitutional monarchy and a…
Sources
Per-field citations for the verified claims above. Other fields (notably the compass scores) remain hand-coded priors and are marked unverified until they pass the methodology pipeline — see methodology.
- dissolved_year www.ohchr.org 2026-06-06 OHCHR statement on the dissolution
- founded_year en.wikipedia.org 2026-06-06
- current_leader_text en.wikipedia.org 2026-06-06 Sentenced to life in 2018
How to cite
Each record carries a retrieval date because the dataset is live — individual entries update as verification deepens. Use the per-record citation when referencing this specific profile; use the dataset citation below when referencing the project as a whole.
In-text: (Gara, 2026)
Per-record citation
APA 7Reference list · academic default
Gara, T. (2026). Al-Wefaq National Islamic Society [Party profile]. Tayyar: A MENA political-position dataset. Retrieved June 21, 2026, from https://tarekgara.com/tayyar/p/al-wefaq
Chicago author-dateCommon in political-science journals
Gara, Tarek. 2026. "Al-Wefaq National Islamic Society." Party profile, Tayyar: A MENA political-position dataset. Accessed June 21, 2026. https://tarekgara.com/tayyar/p/al-wefaq.
BibTeXFor LaTeX / Zotero / reference managers
@misc{tayyar-al-wefaq,
title = {{Al-Wefaq National Islamic Society}},
author = {Gara, Tarek},
year = {2026},
publisher = {Tayyar: A MENA political-position dataset},
type = {Party profile},
url = {https://tarekgara.com/tayyar/p/al-wefaq},
urldate = {2026-06-21},
note = {First-pass entry; second-pass external review planned before publication.}
} Dataset / working-paper citation
If you're citing Tayyar as a project rather than this individual record.
APA 7Preprint
Gara, T. (2026). Tayyar: A MENA political-position dataset [Preprint]. Retrieved June 21, 2026, from https://tarekgara.com/tayyar/paper
BibTeXPreprint
@unpublished{tayyar-preprint,
title = {{Tayyar: A MENA political-position dataset}},
author = {Gara, Tarek},
year = {2026},
type = {Preprint},
url = {https://tarekgara.com/tayyar/paper},
urldate = {2026-06-21},
note = {Living document, regenerated from the live dataset on page load.}
} First-pass entry; second-pass external review planned before publication.