Articles

Watching events unfolding in Lebanon over the last month, it has been impossible to avoid a sense that we have seen it all before, that what is now happening is merely a replay of what we have seen so many times already. Lebanon’s modern history has been dominated by Israeli attacks and interference, most notably in 1982, when the Israeli military devastated the country with air strikes and occupied Beirut itself.

In previous columns, we have examined the methodology of the Islamic Revolution and movement; now we must move to questions concerning the very survival of the Islamic Revolution and movement. As this column is written, the zionist military machine is launching wave after wave of air-raids and naval bombardments on the northern part of the Holy Land – Lebanon.

The Hizbullah, which is now under intense attack in Lebanon from Israel, emerged as an Islamic movement representing Lebanon’s ordinary Muslims after the Israeli invasion of the country in 1982. Eighteen years later, in 2000, Hizbullah’s resistance led to a stunning victory when the Israelis were forced to withdraw from territories they had occupied in the 1980s. Here we reprint an analysis of Hizbullah’s rise and modus operandi by Khalil Osman, first published in September 2000 to mark that triumph.

Speaking shortly after the Israeli attacks on Lebanon began, Shaikh Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah, the Secretary General of the Hizbullah spoke on the nature of the zionist problem and the importance of resistance, addressing the Lebanese people, the resistance fighters, and zionists and the wider Arab world separately. Here we publish a translation of his speech.

Malaysia is a Muslim country with substantial non-Muslim minorities. Although it cannot be considered an Islamic state, Islam plays a large part in its public life. ABDAR RAHMAN KOYA discusses Christian and Hindu attempts to “de-Islamise” it.

Qana has become synonymous with Israeli crimes. On July 30 the zionists repeated an outrage they perpetrated ten years ago by firing missiles into buildings where families were sheltering from just such bombing attacks. At least 54 civilians, 37 of them children, were murdered in the latest outrage; one of the dead was a baby girl only a day old. Several buildings were completely destroyed.

Israel's assaults on Ghazzah (starting on June 28) and on Lebanon (since July 12) have nothing to do with the capture of three Israeli soldiers, one by the Palestinians and two by Hizbullah. The demand for their release was merely a pretext to launch a war that had been planned in conjunction with the US several months ago.

Ethiopia – which has been amassing forces along the border with Somalia while secretly maintaining some inside – openly sent troops on July 20 to the town of Baidoa. This move was made not only to protect the Somali transitional government there against the advancing militias of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), but also to take a leading role in the US's ‘war on terrorism' in the "failed state".

The current invasion of Somalia by Ethiopian troops – armed and funded by the US, which has military and intelligence units placed in neighbouring Djibouti – has already rekindled Somali fellow-feeling and pride in Islam. The result is that the people of Somalia are now united in strong support for the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) and opposition to the almost vanished transitional government in Baidoa.

While ignoring Palestine and Lebanon reeling under the barbaric onslaught of the zionists, the UN Security Council still found the time to talk about Afghanistan. Tom Koenigs, the UN envoy for Afghanistan, warned on July 27 that the Taliban were rediscovering their strength and that the fighting in Afghanistan now had to be called an insurgency, rather than just “isolated acts of terrorism”.