by Abu Dharr (Guest Editorial, Crescent International Vol. 41, No. 1, Rabi' al-Thani, 1433)
Have you ever stepped back and looked at the crumbling regimes in the Arab East? If you did, have you realized they are republics and not monarchies; not that there is much of a difference between the two but the hype in the corporate media is about freedom, rights, dignity, democracy, and the rest of this political litany that is well-known. And if we were to stick to this line, then surely the people most deprived of these freedoms, rights, etc. are the people who live under such despotic rulers as the Saudi royals where criticizing the king is tantamount to kufr!
It is against the law to hold a demonstration in American-managed Saudi Arabia. It is against the law for a woman to drive a car in American-supervised Saudi Arabia. It is against the law to allow Muslims to meet in Makkah and Madinah so they can express their ideological mind and Islamic conscience about such uniting issues as the liberation of Palestine and other American occupied territories. And it is an unwritten law that forbids the establishmentarian journalists and the salaried academics from highlighting the anti-democratic and pro-chauvinist nature of the kings and princes of Arabia. It is called “self-censorship.”
And if the woes of the Peninsula were limited to Arabia then it could be argued that it is up to the Arabians of Arabia to fix their own house. One Saudi lady, complaining out loud a few weeks ago after noticing other men in other countries standing up and sacrificing life and limb for their principles, is quite right when she said that Saudi men have lost their testosterone. To which we add: they have misplaced it; they let go of it in brothels instead of building it up in boot camps. But, alas, the evils of that kingdom are directed into other Islamic regions, particularly into the lands that are fired up by the “Arab Spring.”
With American and Israeli guardianship, the Arabian mushrik monarchs were thrown the Libyan bone. They sensed victory was in the air. And, thus, they turned their fury against Syria. Syria has become the political Maginot Line for Riyadh and its Gulf Cooperation Council offshoots (Bahrain, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and ‘Oman). Syria in and of itself would be of no concern to these moneyed mushriks. [Mushriks, we say, because they have correlated Allah’s (swt) power and authority with that of the imperialists and Zionists]. But Syria is the untested link between a future groundswell of popular determination to liberate Palestine that is centered on Islamic Iran and extends all the way to the Mediterranean Sea. The Americans and Israelis played their hand against Islamic Iran in Iraq, first via Saddam’s regime and lost, and then via the current regime in Baghdad and lost again. The Israelis and Americans tried their hand against Hizbullah and Hamas and lost yet again. The only thing left now is to sabotage the Syrian connection by breaking Syria up.
And to do this the Israelis and the Americans will need their trump card: the Saudi brand of Islam. The Saudi brand of Islam, which considers [Zionist] Jews and [imperialist] Christians to be “Ahl al-Kitab” and considers ‘Alawi Muslims and Shi‘i Muslims to be kafirs, heretics, and unbelievers, is a godsend to the American and Israeli policy-makers at this critical moment in the world-shaking developments in the Muslim realm. The political slaves of Arabia who were never liberated by the Qur’an and the Sunnah are taking orders from America and not from the Almighty. We can without much imagination see how desperate and hopeless the master in Washington is when he speaks to his slaves in Riyadh, and how inferior the slave who obeys a toothless master must be. Uncle slave-master Sam nervously watches the 19 Americans to be tried in Egypt by, of all people, the Egyptians who were also the political slaves of the US just last year. Three US senators have gone to Cairo to “extradite” these 19 Americans from the US embassy where they have been fugitives from the law for the past couple of weeks. John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Joe Lieberman are probably expressing dire threats in diplomatic language to diffuse this new low in American prestige overseas. And the Egyptian officials (if we read them correctly) will either release the 19 without due process to gain brownie points with their yesteryear masters, or will promise the senators their eventual release after a theater of due process so as to avoid the wrath of Egyptian public opinion.
The price of oil is climbing because Israel wants its Euro-American allies to put the pressure of sanctions squarely on the people in Iran. Prices have already hit $120 a barrel after the Islamic Republic cut off oil sales to the Israeli political subsidiaries of France and Britain. The more the Israelis and Americans become nervous the more their Saudi subordinates feel the pressure to “do something about it”.
Enter al-Qaeda. How about that? Al-Qaeda has found common purpose with its arch-enemy, the US, in targeting the heretic ‘Alawis in Syria! How about that for a Saudi feat? An al-Qaeda leader somewhere to the east or south of Tora Bora is rediscovered by the media and his video-taped message to all al-Qaeda units in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey becomes a news sensation. Don’t be fooled by this yet again al-Qaeda-fits-all-occasions scenario. It is not al-Qaeda that is on its way to kill, blowup, assassinate, or commit acts of violence and terror is Syria. It is the Special Forces of the US, Britain, and Zionist Israel who are about to enter the fray in Syria. You can be sure that when the specter of al-Qaeda is flashed to the general public, it means that Navy Seals, Army Rangers, intelligence agents under deep cover, and black-ops personnel are being positioned to execute their orders which will prove the Saudi propaganda correct: kill the Syrian heathens (minority Muslims) and thank Ahl al-Kitab Sam and Ahl al-Kitab Moshe for being on the orthodox side in this intra-Islamic strife in war-torn Syria!
The Syrian-Saudi sectarian strife is only one chapter, as important and dangerous as it is, in the ongoing three decade confrontation between the US and Israel on one side and the Islamic Republic of Iran on the other.
All these details aside, the maturing political Muslim must understand that the corporate and capitalist war against Iran with all its ruling classes around the world is what defines the reactions of such regimes as the Saudi and other Arabian ones. The Syrian people are oppressed like other peoples in that castaway part of the world. The Syrian people deserve a representative government like all other peoples in that region and in the world. That, though, does not mean that the Israeli-American-Saudi troika should be given the opportunity to play off their antagonism toward Islamic Iran riding on the waves and lives of the Syrian people. How hypocritical and misleading can an American regime be when it is shedding crocodile tears on those killed in Homs while the same American regime committed atrocities in Fallujah across the border in Iraq — that in comparison would make the Syrian regime look quite civilized? When were the American and Israeli officials so concerned with Syrian lives? When were the Saudi royals themselves concerned with Syrian lives?
The Saudi brainsick rulers will not listen to advice. They have attached themselves to the US and thus to Israel beyond any quote from the Qur’an and citation of the Sunnah. They can’t see that Israel is positioning the Iron Dome defense batteries around Tel Aviv in preparation for war. This fortification of Israeli urban centers will continue in the coming weeks. Israeli schools are holding what they call earthquake exercises. Israeli police are running drills in what they tell us are scenarios of Palestinian mass riots and attempts to storm across the borders from all directions. This may be in reference to this year’s mass mobilization of a peoples movement to cross into occupied Palestine from Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria.
The noose is tightening around the war criminals in their racist enclave. The wars that have been imposed on the Muslims all over the world amount to an unintended military basic training exercise. The US and Israel along with their Saudi sidekick have militarized the Islamic world. And if they want to light the match they should know very well that their corporate and transnational interests will go up in flames. People will fight on their own turf for however long it takes to free themselves of invasions and occupations.
History 101: there has never been an invading force that has indefinitely conquered another people against their own faith and will. Will the Muslims identify who the other Muslim is before it is too late? Will the Muslims distinguish between Ahl al-Kitab and the Zionists and imperialists before it is too late? “O our Sustainer! Bestow on us Your eminent grace, and endow us, whatever our [outward] condition, with consciousness of what is right” (10:18).
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