Palestine, Syria, Yemen and Bani Saud

Zafar Bangash

Muharram 19, 1437 2015-11-01

Opinion

by Zafar Bangash (Opinion, Crescent International Vol. 44, No. 9, Muharram, 1437)

The Zionists’ intensified attacks against innocent Palestinians at a time when Bani Saud are doing the same in Syria and Yemen should not surprise us. Palestinians have endured Zionist occupation for nearly 70 years. Their land has been stolen, their homes demolished, and millions have been turned into refugees scattered around the world. They continue to suffer the daily humiliation of occupation. People under occupation would naturally struggle to throw off their occupiers.

In Syria, Bani Saud have spread their poisonous propaganda of takfirism (declaring other Muslims as kafirs) resulting in the killing of more than 200,000 people. The takfiris have also indulged in such pre-Islamic practices as organ-eating and cannibalism. The name Hind bint Utbah (wife of Abu Sufyan), is known to Muslims. In the Battle of Uhud, she ripped open the body of the martyred Hamzah, uncle of the Prophet (pbuh), and chewed his liver. Have the takfiris, who claim to be Muslims, not indulged in similar conduct in Syria?

If Bani Saud have financed and armed the takfiri terrorists in Syria, they have unleashed their firepower directly against the people of Yemen. They have relentlessly bombed the entire infrastructure of Yemen destroying power generating stations, water purification plants as well as historic buildings dating back thousands of years. For the Najdi Bedouins, history has no relevance unless it relates to their primitive clan from Dar‘iyyah. After all, Bani Saud have bulldozed all the historical sites of Islam in Makkah and Madinah without so much as a whisper of protest from their court preachers who are quick to scream bid‘ah at anything that does not conform to their primitive views!

When they launched their murderous assault on Yemen last March, they alleged that the Ansarallah fighters in northern Yemen were a threat to Makkah and Madinah and planned to take over these sacred cities. Perhaps they thought the rest of the world is as ignorant of geography as they are. Makkah and Madinah are more than 1000km north of the Yemeni border. The Ansarallah fighters had gone south to Sana‘a and Aden.

The truth is that the Ansarallah/Houthi-led movement in Yemen wants an independent Yemen free from the domineering attitude of their northern neighbor while the Najdi Bedouins want to impose their own puppet on the country. They are unlikely to succeed. The same policy is being pursued in Syria with equally unsatisfactory results. Since Russia’s involvement in the fight against the takfiri terrorists, the US-Saudi-Zionist-Turkish policy in Syria is unraveling.

This leads to the question: why are the Najdi Bedouins are so determined to get rid of Bashar al-Asad in Syria and vanquish the Ansarallah-Houthis in Yemen but have adopted deathly silence over the Zionist killing of Palestinians? They have spent tens of billions in Syria and Yemen but have not given even one riyal to the Palestinians for self-defence.

Some Muslims speculate that Bani Saud are one of the tribes of Bani Isra’il. They have put on the garb of Islam but are in reality not Muslims. We will not indulge in such speculation but narrate instead what the noble Messenger (pbuh) said about the Najdi Bedouins 1,400 years ago.

In a hadith narrated by ‘Abdullah ibn Umar (ra) in Sahih al-Bukhari, the Prophet (pbuh) mentioned the following, “O Allah! Bless for us our Sham [geographical Syria/Levant]; O Allah! Bless for us our Yemen.” They [Muslims in attendance] said, “And our Najd?” He (pbuh) said, “O Allah bless for us our Sham; O Allah! Bless for us our Yemen.” They said, “O Messenger of Allah! And our Najd?” And as if the third time around he (pbuh) said, “There [in Najd] will occur tremors, sedition, and with it shall arise the generation of Satan.”

The words used in the Arabic text are qarn al-shaytan, which are often literally translated as the horn of Satan; in this context, however, the Arabic word qarn refers figuratively to a generation (of people) who would do the bidding of Satan while wearing the guise of Islam. This is further corroborated by another hadith, also from Sahih al-Bukhari, in which Abu Sa‘id al-Khudri (ra) narrates the Prophet’s (pbuh) words about the types of Muslims from the tribe of Bani Tamim who were “obsessed” with the “technical” (ritualistic) performance of salah and siyam but were far removed from the din of Islam. The Wahhabi high priest, Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab was from the tribe of Bani Tamim and his own brother, Sulayman, told him that he was the one being cited as the “generation of Satan,” which the Prophet (pbuh) had mentioned in his hadith.

Do we need to say any more about Bani Saud?

Zafar Bangash is Director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought