When a senior commander with Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, was assassinated in Syria last month, few Kuwaitis expected any ramifications in their tranquil Gulf state.

Yet the drama that erupted with the car bombing in Damascus stirred up worrying emotions among Kuwaitis, illustrating that Kuwait is not immune to the sectarian tensions that have dogged the Middle East since the US invasion of Iraq.

For Kuwaitis, the saga began after it emerged that a group from the country’s large Shia minority – including two members of parliament and several former MPs – had gathered to mourn and eulogise Imad Moughniyah, the slain Hezbollah commander.

Some Kuwaitis saw Moughniyah as a terrorist, an extremist alleged to have been involved in the 1988 hijacking of a Kuwait Airways aircraft and the killing of two Kuwaiti passengers. When their Shia compatriots were seen to be paying homage to the militant, sparks began to fly.

Some Sunni called for the MPs – now accused of being members of a Kuwaiti “Hezbollah” – to be prosecuted and they were expelled from their parliamentary bloc. There have also been calls for their parliamentary immunity to be lifted so they can be prosecuted.

Three or four other Shia were detained and there were rumours that the government had, or planned to, expel foreigners who had attended the mourning ceremony at a Husseiniya, a Shia community building.

“It split the country and for many Kuwaitis it stepped on our nerves – Sunni and most Shia,” says Abdullah Alshayji, a politics professor at Kuwait University. “It gave hardline Sunnis a good excuse to jump on the bandwagon and talk about affiliation and the loyalty of the Shia. It really was a polarising atmosphere.”

Kuwait’s Shia – some of whose roots can be traced to Iran – are estimated to account for between 25 per cent and 30 per cent of the indigenous population, but the communities have lived in relative harmony since the Iranian revolution raised tensions across the region in the 1980s.

Many blame the government for its belated reaction. It only spoke on the issue days after the affair.

In one of the more sensationalist reports, one newspaper quoted “sources” as saying there were sleeping cells in the country trying to undermine national security.

Still, Kuwaitis say their state does not have the kind of problems seen in other Gulf countries with large Shia populations, such as Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

In Kuwait, two cabinet ministers are Shia and four of 50 elected MPs are Shia. There are also prominent Shia families among the wealthy merchant class.

While few seek to play down the impact of the incident, Kuwaitis also say the two MPs who eulogised Mr Moughniyah represent only a small fraction of the wider Shia community. They point out that Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait helped bond the two communities and forge a sense of national unity.

“They are part of the system and they have been here for ages and showed their allegiance to the country during the Iraq occupation,” Mr Alshayji says.

But the Moughniyah incident indicated that some Sunni need little prompting before raising the spectre of a Shia “fifth column”, said one diplomat.

Masoumah al-Mubarak, a Shia political scientist at Kuwait University who was also the first female cabinet minister, says some elements in both the Sunni and Shia communities sought to exploit the affair.

“It’s like Swiss cheese, everybody wants to put their finger in the hole and of course this is not in favour of the stability of Kuwait,” she says.