The escalating sectarian rift in recent years is also one of the deepest fractures since the original schism between Sunnis and Shiites, nearly fourteen centuries ago, shortly after the death of the Prophet Muhammad.
The hospital became a symbol of the state's repression and its widening sectarian rift, between the Sunni ruling monarchy and Bahrain's Shiite majority, which has long complained of a withering official discrimination.
He and other fighters in Tripoli said that Hezbollah had been pushing the sectarian rift since it declared that its fighters who died killing Sunnis in Syria were performing jihad.
That is presumably why the Shia-dominated "cannot-haves" of the anti-government, pro-reform crowds appear to have crossed the sectarian rift and drawn in Bahrainis from a range of political platforms including liberals, secularists and human rights activists.
Nicholas Pitts, an ISC spokesman who lives in Hong Kong, explained a Tibetan government-in-exile decree in 1996 banning the practice of Shugden had laid sowed the seeds for the sectarian rift within the Buddhist community.
ISIS's swift advance has exposed the state's structural and institutional weaknesses, as well as a deep ideological and sectarian rift in society.
