Fundamental realities of the situation now facing Muslims

Empowering Weak & Oppressed

Abu Dharr

Ramadan 08, 1427 2006-10-01

Guest Editorial

by Abu Dharr (Guest Editorial, Crescent International Vol. 35, No. 8, Ramadan, 1427)

OVERVIEW

The Islamic Uprising in Iran a quarter of a century ago is too important and too special for Muslims to simply watch it wander from its original and true course. We remember all too clearly the impact this breakthrough had on Muslims everywhere. For the first time in modern history, Muslims had risen against a corrupt government and its imperialist and zionist sponsors, and were able to take control of their own country, and begin to show the rest of us how things should be done.

Of course, the road forward was not likely to be smooth. The sponsors of the Pahlavi regime could not be expected to sit and watch a people shape their own future on the basis of their Islamic faith and commitment. Throughout the last 25 years, America and Israel have been working to bring the Islamic government in Iran to its knees, with the support of their Western allies, Iran’s pro-Western neighbours and even supporters within Iran. Iran’s borders amount to some 8,000 kilometers; American troops are now based across six thousand kilometers of this border. This grim scenario has been gradually built over 25 years, and has passed almost unnoticed by most Muslims, and even most Iranians. There has never been any cessation of hostilities between the followers of the line of Imam Khomeini (r.a.), who refuse to compromise when it comes to the independence and sovereignty of the Islamic state, and the numerous other interests wanting to shape the state on their terms.

Part of our object in this new column is to look at some of the gaps that have developed since the passing of Imam Khomeini (r.a.), many of which are rooted in earlier events, and how these gaps have caused serious problems about which we can no longer remain silent. But before we walk into this sensitive area, one point needs to be made absolutely clear. This is that none of the points we make are intended to express any criticism of Imam Sayyid Ali Khamenei, the successor to Imam Khomeini (r.a.) as Rahbar of the Islamic State. Many of the points we make will be highlighting natural processes in the evolution of post-Revolutionary state and society. Others will indeed involve criticism of errors and failures in Iran, mainly on the part of those who have been responsible for aspects of Iranian government and policy at the executive level. It was inevitable that such errors and failures should emerge over a quarter of a century in an unprecedented and highly-pressured historical situation; unfortunately they have contributed greatly to what many now see as the Islamic experiment’s current stagnation.

Sometimes frank statements of truth can be bitter pills to swallow; we hope no-one will consider this column to be too bitter a pill. We say what we say only to express our honest understanding of the issues. If we are correct, we appeal earnestly to Allah to accept our humble words to our humble readers. If not, we request Allah’s forgiveness and correction from anyone able to do so; without, we hope, descending into personal issues or hidden agendas. Ameen.

Consider the following: the recent confession by an Israeli general that Israel dropped more than 1.2 million cluster bombs on Lebanon during the recent war; an American columnist saying "Israel is doing the Lord's work"; the head of the American Republican National Committee saying "Today we are all Israelis"; the reinforcement of Euro-American military forces in occupied Afghanistan; the positioning of foreign military forces inside of a ‘sovereign' Lebanon; and the intensifying daily reports of explosions, slaughter, and death squads in American-occupied Iraq. Bearing all this in mind, why do so many in the Islamic movement find it so difficult to understand fundamental truths and realities about our West-dominated situation?

The following are a few reminders to those Muslims who were once dynamically committed to the movement, but have found‘liberal', ‘rational', ‘civilizational', or even ‘national' or ‘sectarian' ways of avoiding the harsh realities of the Islamic justice-centered and revolutionary mindset.

1. Coercion and control are the real policy of imperialists and zionists. In diplomatic circles they hide behind "international law" and among corporate priorities. Peoples and populations are dispensable if their national security is ‘threatened.' Wars of any kind, they think, make the Islamic ‘terrorists' recoil but allow them to pose as defenders of freedom and guardians of civilization.

Their policies of warfare and exploitation threaten the lives of tens of millions of Muslims and fill with distaste hundreds of millions of people around the world; no wonder the US and Israel have become pariah states from the Pacific Orient to the Atlantic Hispanic. The enemies of Islamic self-rule call Muslims "terrorists" and "nihilists" and employ racist and defamation caricatures of Rasulillah (saw). Meanwhile the media-minding Muslims worry about charges of "terrorism" and "anti-Semitism" when they should be explaining a simple fact behind the events that have become media flashes: the simple truth of Islamic self-determination, the values that go with that and the conspicuously reprehensible American and Israeli policies that have stolen our motherlands, occupied our Holy Lands, usurped our qiblas (i.e. Makkah and al-Quds), and confiscated our natural resources and wealth with the savagery of the Crusaders and the Conquistadors.

2. The hoarded wealth of petro-dollars in Western banks fuels imperialism and zionism. Let us take the case of Saudi Arabia only. This regime is pumping out around twelve million barrels of oil each day. It is selling each barrel at about US$70. Simple arithmetic leads us to conclude that the king of Arabia and his family are selling an Islamic commodity to oil-companies that are the lifeline of the industrial imperialist and zionist west for about $840 million each day. If we add the imperialist-zionist loyalists in the Persian Gulf, along with their counterparts in other oil producing countries in the course of one year, we may be looking at a revenue of close to one trillion dollars going from Muslim countries through oil conglomerates into the coffers of imperialists and zionists each year. It is these rulers who are fueling American imperialism and zionist occupation. Saudi money and American investment legalese has enabled Israel to destroy the infrastructure of Lebanon. The governments in Washington and Tel Aviv have nothing to lose from the price of petroleum going up because the monies paid are conveniently recycled into the war-chests of the Pentagon and the IDF (the so-called Israeli Defence Force).

3. As Hizbullah's experience in Lebanon illustrates, conventional military forces alone cannot defeat those who are fighting for a cause, waging a war for principles, and pursuing a jihad without compromise. What does it mean when the Israeli-American media say they are using "precision bombing" when they bomb a whole country back into pre-modern times?

4. Liberal, national, democratic and sectarian "Muslims" have not managed to curtail or repel a single attack or war against the West's victims. No one wants to listen to Muslims who are defenseless. No one wants to speak to Muslims who are fleeing their homelands. No one is interested in a dialogue of cultures, religions, or civilizations in which Muslims are powerless and helpless. But when Muslims stand their ground, deal with their enemies as equals, and fight until the bitter end for their rights and for justice to be done, at that time we will have governments at full attention to speak to these Muslims: Muslims who are Hizbullahi in the fullest sense of the word.

5. With the open mind and heart that independent and autonomous Muslims have, we learn that imperialist and zionist enemies have no such thing as an open mind. This Islamic self-assertion has been in progress for at least a quarter of a century now, and the academic forums, the governmental institutions, the economic establishments and the prestigious think-tanks have not had the moral courage nor the intellectual honesty to initiate a meaningful dialogue with Muslims who believe in their self-determination and in their freedom from imperialists and zionists.

6. Since its creation, Israel has been in a state of perpetual belligerence. The zionists and their imperialist masters thought that Muslims would remain their social and political slaves. These manipulators in the American and zionist hierarchy of power assumed that Muslims will remain in their international scheme, playing by their rules of the game, and then trying to confront them on their own terms. The sirens have gone off in Iraq and Lebanon, and the tyrants and usurpers are having a rude awakening.

7. War after war, Israel's bloodline and lifeline are exposed. The future jihad against Israelwill eventually peel away its imperialistic layers. Israel acts as the first, not last, American state. It commands an army that has the US establishment on its knees when it comes to re-supplying, logistics and R&D. Financed and trained by the US, Israel fights wars with a military technology against any possibility of Islamic political and ideological revival in the Islamic East. As a zionist base of operations, Israel has "Jewish" dual-loyalists in most of the positions that count within the American government. These types of zionist loyalists in American disguise would sacrifice the "American national security" for which the US is at war against Islamic political resurgence whenever they feel the need to. A zionist entity thousands of miles away from the US has a cadre of loyalists who are acting like a state within a state in America, and leading the US into an indefinite war with the Muslims of the world.

The Islamic revolutionary heart must never let the zionist-American agenda influence the course of events. This has been a century when we, the committed Muslims, should remember, with revulsion, that there are violent governments in occupied Palestine andAmerica. These warlike and war-ridden governments are not interested in weak Muslims who are talking about a dialogue of civilizations or a conversation of cultures. Their bullets in Palestine and Afghanistan and their bombs in Iraq and Lebanon are louder than their honeyed words in the UN and elsewhere. The realization of this fact may one day unite the Muslims who are oppressed and other oppressed peoples of the world.

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