Opposition Shiite Muslim clerics who have set up their own council do not consider it a sectarian body, despite the rejection of their move by the authorities in Sunni-ruled Bahrain, a cleric close to the council said.
The Islamic Ulema (Scholars) Council formed a week ago "is not a body for the Shiite community alone but for the whole country", the cleric told AFP, requesting anonymity.
The council "aims to play a religious and social role in the first place and provide services to people irrespective of their sectarian affiliation", he said.
Al-Wasat newspaper said Wednesday that the Shiite clerics had refused to meet with Islamic Affairs Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Khaled al-Khalifa after he declared that their council "violated the constitution" and invited them to join instead the government-controlled Higher Council of Islamic Affairs.
The clerics believe that meeting with the minister would be tantamount to "dealing with the Higher Council of Islamic Affairs", the daily said.
Shiites form a majority in Bahrain, but prominent clerics representing the community refused to join the Higher Council of Islamic Affairs when it was set up in the mid-1990s.
A number of pro-government Shiite clerics however sit on the council alongside Sunni counterparts.
The cleric close to the new Islamic Ulema Council told AFP it had been formed around a week ago by some 80 Shiite clerics who elected Sheikh Issa Kassem, a prominent Shiite religious leader, as president.
But the Islamic affairs minister has said the council was unconstitutional and sanctioning it would "undermine national unity and (negatively) affect inter-denominational rapprochement".
In a statement issued after a meeting chaired by the minister late Wednesday, the Higher Council of Islamic Affairs voiced "regret" that the Shiite clerics had refused to attend the meeting, which was aimed at discussing the issue in the interest of "closing ranks and preventing divisions among Muslims and members of the same nation".
While affirming that "the invitation still stands," the statement reiterated that the council formed by the Shiite clerics was unconstitutional and illegitimate.
Sunnis make up 40 percent of Bahrain's 378,000 natives, and Shiites the rest, according to unofficial estimates. Bahrain's total population stands at around 650,000.
Shiites were involved in unrest between 1994 and 1999, when King Hamad rose to power and set the Gulf archipelago on a path of democratic reform, reinstating the elected parliament scrapped in 1975.