For months, the most important cleric among Bahrain’s Shiite majority has stayed home, threatened with deportation by the kingdom’s ruling Sunni minority under a 2016 order revoking his citizenship.

Simmering political tensions in Bahrain over that order escalated abruptly on Monday with news that the cleric, Ayatollah Sheikh Isa Qassim, is in the midst of a health crisis.

Human rights activists said Ayatollah Qassim, the spiritual voice of Bahrain’s Shiites, required urgent hospitalization for an emergency operation to repair a hernia.

It was unclear, however, if that will happen. His supporters say the deportation order has effectively kept the cleric under house arrest.