How the Islamic state and movement must respond to the US threat

Empowering Weak & Oppressed

Abu Dharr

Safar 01, 1427 2006-03-01

Guest Editorial

by Abu Dharr (Guest Editorial, Crescent International Vol. 35, No. 1, Safar, 1427)

There are less than three years left for the US's neo-conservative leaders – the current set of pro-Israeli decision-makers inWashington – to make their mark on history. They have had five years in power and the only rallying cry they have produced was 9/11. But the returns from 9/11 have dwindled to a trickle. Even in the time-warp that is the Washington, DC beltway, the imagery, the sensationalism and the hype that ruled after 9/11 are now a faint memory that can no longer rationalize the decisions and sustain the policies of the Bush White House. President Bush had his Mussolini moment after the invasion of Iraqand the bombardment of Baghdad. With Israeli-zionist advisers and lobbyists around him, whispering instructions and planting false intelligence to spur him to take up the “white man's burden” of spreading democracy in the Middle East, his ego got the better of him. He was and is being set up to deliver for the people of Afghanistan and Iraq (for starters) a Straussian "new world order," in which ‘democracy and freedom' define peoples' cultures and political choices.

No Muslim with a political conscience can forget Donald Rumsfeld's arrogant and belligerent demeanor in his tirades against “al-Qa‘ida" and "Islamic terrorism." Now, whenever he appears before the cameras he cuts a sorry, dejected figure, as though he has run out of gas, and knows he is a figure of fun among many who once hung on his every word. Little wonder that his appearances on television have declined; four years ago he was on the air almost daily, as one of the main spokesmen of the government; now we see or hear from him only once every couple of weeks, if that. The former secretary of state, Colin Powell, meanwhile, has cut and run, and now snipes at this thinskinned government in the media. Not even a career in the US military could battle-harden his conscience enough for him to accept a subordinate role in an administration dominated by an agenda that he did not share; although he lasted long enough to be remembered forever for his performance in the United Nations when he read the world a script written by his masters about Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction, which he must have known was little more than a pack of lies.

Now this previously solid clique is being rocked by internal scandals: DeLay's corruption under the nose of his Bible-belt constituents, Abramoff's racketeering from Capitol Hill to Indian reservations, Scooter Libby's loose mouth trying to sink Democratic rivals and, looming above the whole Washington enterprise, the pending investigation of Karl Rove (described by some as Bush's brain), the current status of which is a mystery to everyone. All this is on top of the uneasy awareness of the body bags being discreetly shipped home from Iraq every week, as well as the war-wounded; over one hundred thousand since Bush's military adventures began. Suddenly the picture looks bleak indeed for the current incumbent at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC.

As for the American political clock: it is t-i-c-k-i-n-g. The mid-term elections will be held in November, and the Republican Party, which currently controls of both Houses (the Senate and the Congress), may suffer a reversal of fortune when the American people use their votes to express their disapproval of the way the ‘compassionate conservatives' are prosecuting an aggressive war that was based on a battalion of lies cooked up by intelligence chefs coming directly from Ariel Sharon's kosher kitchen.

So what are the implications of this grim American scenario for the central Islamic authority, the Islamic State in Iran, the global Islamic movement and the oppressed peoples of the world? The problem is that the imperial high-hats in the military-industrial-banking complex running through Washington, London and Tel Aviv find themselves desperately needing some way of distracting attention from their dead-end adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is the inescapable background to their mounting political and military pressure on Islamic Iran and their political scheming to subvert and tame Islamic movements. The stirring of the oppressed peoples in Latin America is going to have to take third place in their attentions for the time being.

This, therefore, is the time to call their bluff. It is going to require, among other things, the deployment of multiple and parallel counter-strategies by Iran, the front-line Islamic state, and the Islamic movement. The first shot has already been fired – the scurrilous caricatures of Allah's Messenger (saw) fit into this master-script by raising tensions between Muslims and the West, and so preparing the political ground for military hostilities against Muslims from Palestine, to Iran, to Pakistan and to other parts of the Muslim world. It is essential that active and committed Muslims who have "diplomatic" status pursue this issue in bilateral and multilateral meetings, in the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), and in regional organizations such as the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and the Arab League. Experience tells us nothing worthwhile will come of this, but the effort has to be made for the record. Then it falls upon the Islamic state in Iran to marshal a united front of Islamic organizations, parties and movements all over the Muslim world to coordinate contingency plans, so that when the US and Israel launch their first missiles, they receive a fitting response from Jakarta to Tangier, and anywhere else that these enemies of Allah's Prophet (saw) are found. On another level, there has to be a broad political front of anti-zionists and anti-imperialists who will have the political courage to stand up against the US and Israel when they go on the offensive against Muslim countries and peoples that are minding their own business.

The Islamic State in Iran is the only genuinely independent state in the world today, the only state that aspires to reflect and represent the Islamic faith and values of its people, and those of the global Muslim Ummah. It is thus the only hope that the Muslims and the oppressed have of a future without US domination. There can be no ambiguity on this point. The time has come for the Islamic state to take up its God-given responsibilities in its three overlapping spheres: its geographical sphere, its Islamic sphere, and its "third world" sphere. At the same time, Muslims and every other decent and law-respecting citizen of the world must realize that they have a responsibility to respond when the US and/or Israel launch their aggression against Islamic Iran; and that if that response plunges the world into dark days, freezing winters, and smoldering summers because of the disruption of petroleum supplies, the attacks on oil-fields and the breakdown of international law and order as we know it today, the responsibility will lie with the aggressors, the US, Israel and their allies, not with those who seek only to defend themselves from that aggression.

Israel and the US both have massive military superiority over Islamic Iran, not least in terms of the atomic weapons that they accuse Iran of trying to develop, but their experience in Iraq and Afghanistan should have taught them the limits of military power. All their atomic bombs, and all their political and institutional power in terms of the UN and other world bodies, and their hegemony over Muslim states, will not avail them if and when they go so far that the wrath of their victims is aroused globally. Even without the use of nuclear weapons, the fall-out if the US and Israel decide to attack Islamic Iran will be global, and the consequences incalculable.

As the politicians in the Washington beltway plan the next moves in their selfish and ruthless political games, these are considerations that they cannot afford to ignore.

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