By Mustafa Al Shakhoori
MANAMA: “If the oppressed do not tend to their wounds, they will become oppressors, striking in the name of their pain.”
This sentence distills a recurring psychological and historical tragedy: a person consumed by the experience of victimhood until it transforms from a legitimate feeling into a chronic state, then into a driving force for vengeance—devouring the self, fracturing society, and destabilizing civilization.
Victimhood is a primal and authentic reaction to injustice. But when it ceases to be a temporary experience and solidifies into a permanent identity—what might be called a victimhood psychology—it mutates into a worldview. In this mindset, all interactions are filtered through the lens of wounds, and others are judged solely by how much they affirm or invalidate one’s pain.
The past holds the present hostage. Hope is ridiculed as naivety. Reconciliation is condemned as betrayal.
Lebanese writer, intellectual, and philosopher Ali Harb observed that many Arab intellectuals have abandoned the production of knowledge in favor of cultivating a discourse of victimhood – one that deepens intellectual paralysis and blocks renewal. A person trapped in this mental state lives in a closed circuit of isolation and despair. Opportunities pass not because they are absent, but because they are distrusted. Even the light at the end of the tunnel is seen as a trap.
He resides in a psychological ghetto, where constructive initiatives are dismissed as clever ruses by old enemies. He fails to build, and blames the world for what remains unbuilt.
History is full of movements born in the name of justice that, upon gaining power, reproduced the tools of injustice—often in even more grotesque forms. This reversal is not merely a betrayal of ideals; it is the consequence of an untreated psyche, one that remained mired in anger and obsessed with retaliation. Religious factions once marginalized became ferociously intolerant when dominant. Former dissidents against dictatorship became mini-tyrants, basking in power, presiding over ruin.
Here, the transition from oppressed to oppressor is not a tragic accident of politics, but the logical outcome of a structural flaw never confronted in weakness and thus weaponized in strength.
The oppressed psyche often leans toward hypercriticism—amplifying every flaw, centralizing every grievance, interpreting all failure as conspiracy or betrayal. While this criticism may begin as an honest diagnosis of reality, it frequently halts at deconstruction and avoids the burden of offering alternatives. When such individuals assume power, they remain locked in the posture of opposition, still critiquing others instead of governing with responsibility. They become a permanent protest movement, not a viable project for reform.
Here lies the deepest paradox: The oppressed who once rose for justice squander it when it is within reach. The reformer who demanded freedom marginalizes others when he gains control. The revolutionary who dreamed of a better world extinguishes those dreams before they even take form.
What is the solution?
First, we must reframe oppression as a lived experience—not a lasting identity.
Second, we must convert the wound into a platform for growth—not an alibi for failure.
Third, we must train ourselves to transition from critique to contribution, from reaction to deliberate action.
Fourth, we must build an inner structure strong enough not to be blinded by victory, nor broken by defeat.
It is time we distinguish between those who endured injustice, but chose to elevate society—and those who, burdened by their pain, inflicted it upon others.
Perhaps the most urgent question we must now ask is “Are you still oppressed or have you, without realizing it, become the oppressor you once resisted?”
Mustafa Al Shakhoori is a Bahraini journalist and commentator
