Leader: Hajj, symbol of unity and grandeur of Islamic Ummah

The Leader of Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, has emphasized that the Hajj pilgrimage marks a meaningful example of establishment of Islamic Ummah, raising a huge opportunity for maintenance of empathy and solidarity among Muslims, across the world. In the run-up to the glorious Hajj pilgrimage, the Leader of Islamic Revolution received the officials in charge of Hajj rituals, on Saturday, prior to the journey of Iran’s Hajj convoys to Mecca and Medina.

In this meeting, the Leader of Islamic Revolution referred to Hajj pilgrimage as the guarantor of continuation of the sacred religion of Islam, and a symbol of unity and grandeur of the Islamic Ummah. The Leader put emphasis on concurrent focus on the social and personal aspects of Hajj rituals, while naming the transference of the unifying experience of Iranian nation throughout the Hajj pilgrimage as a factor that leads to reinforcement of solidarity, empathy, and power of the Islamic Ummah.

In the past few years, the World of Islam has faced the conspiracy of the foes of Islam, and the ignorance and prejudice of a number of sects, attributed to Muslims. Meanwhile, throughout these years, the foes of Islam have mainly targeted the solidarity and unity of the Islamic Ummah. Magnification of the ethnic and sectarian prejudices has mainly targeted the unifying nature of Islam, and is one of the main leverages of the enemies in provocation of ethnicities and sects, so that somehow a sense of hatred and discord would prevail in the Islamic world under the pretext of these disputes.

The picture that is current displayed in the majority of Islamic countries doesn’t reflect empathy and sympathy in these communities; while the suspicious groups and outfits which are affiliated to the enemies of Islam, have derailed the attention of Muslims from their arch enemies, including Zionists, in addition to pitting Muslims against each other.

In the view of the Leader of Islamic Revolution, the root cause of failure of some Islamic groups within the Islamic awakening current, in the recent years, has been a lack of a proper identification of friends and enemies. Upon the unwavering financial support of the Global Arrogance; dozens of ideological and political centers in the US, Europe, occupied Palestine, and the related affiliated states are studying Islam and Shia, in a futile bid to identify and activate the causes that counter the awakening and empowerment of the Islamic Ummah.

Meanwhile, the grand Iranian nation has always maintained national unity.

The Iranian nation, throughout the Islamic Revolution and the imposed war, and in the current juncture in time, in which sectarian strife has raged in neighboring countries, has defended its nationality and home country, and has prioritized the ideals of the Islamic Ummah, such as liberation of Holy Qods.

Within the Abrahamic Hajj rituals, Muslims gather and target the symbol of Satan.

Meanwhile, as the Leader of Islamic Revolution rightly pointed out, transference of the unifying experiences of the Iranian nation to other nations throughout the Hajj pilgrimage can foil the plots hatched to somehow sabotage the true image of Islam, and to pit nations against each other.

Palestinian liberation is “key matter of our time,” say Black leaders

The Electronic Intifada

Over the past year, strengthened resilience and joint struggle have emerged between Black and Palestinian liberation movements.

 Tess ScheflanActiveStills

More than 1,000 Black activists, artists, scholars, students and organizations have released this statement reaffirming their “solidarity with the Palestinian struggle and commitment to the liberation of Palestine’s land and people.”

The list of signatories includes scholar-activists Angela Davis and Cornel West, political prisoners Mumia Abu-Jamal and Sundiata Acoli, rappers Talib Kweli, Boots Riley and Jasiri X and Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors. Forty organizations signed, including the Florida-based Dream Defenders and St. Louis-based Hands Up United and Tribe X, which were founded after the killings of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, respectively, as well as the 35-year-old Organization for Black Struggle in St. Louis.

This statement was originally published at blackforpalestine.com and also appears in Ebony. You can also read this statement in Arabic.

The past year has been one of high-profile growth for Black-Palestinian solidarity. Out of the terror directed against us – from numerous attacks on Black life to Israel’s brutal war on Gaza and chokehold on the West Bank – strengthened resilience and joint struggle have emerged between our movements. Palestinians on Twitter were among the first to provide international support for protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, where St. Louis-based Palestinians gave support on the ground.

Last November, a delegation of Palestinian students visited Black organizers in St. Louis, Atlanta, Detroit and more, just months before the Dream Defenders took representatives of Black Lives Matter, Ferguson, and other racial justice groups to Palestine. Throughout the year, Palestinians sent multiple letters of solidarity to us throughout protests in Ferguson, New York and Baltimore. We offer this statement to continue the conversation between our movements:

On the anniversary of last summer’s Gaza massacre, in the 48th year of Israeli occupation, the 67th year of Palestinians’ ongoing Nakba (the Arabic word for Israel’s ethnic cleansing) – and in the fourth century of Black oppression in the present-day United States – we, the undersigned Black activists, artists, scholars, writers, and political prisoners offer this letter of reaffirmed solidarity with the Palestinian struggle and commitment to the liberation of Palestine’s land and people.

We can neither forgive nor forget last summer’s violence. We remain outraged at the brutality Israel unleashed on Gaza through its siege by land, sea and air, and three military offensives in six years.

We remain sickened by Israel’s targeting of homes, schools, UN shelters, mosques, ambulances, and hospitals.

We remain heartbroken and repulsed by the number of children Israel killed in an operation it called “defensive.”

We reject Israel’s framing of itself as a victim. Anyone who takes an honest look at the destruction to life and property in Gaza can see Israel committed a one-sided slaughter. With 100,000 people still homeless in Gaza, the massacre’s effects continue to devastate Gaza today and will for years to come.

Israel’s injustice and cruelty toward Palestinians is not limited to Gaza and its problem is not with any particular Palestinian party. The oppression of Palestinians extends throughout the occupied territories, within Israel’s 1948 borders, and into neighboring countries. The Israeli occupation forces continue to kill protesters – including children – conduct night raids on civilians, hold hundreds of people under indefinite detention and demolish homes while expanding illegal Jewish-only settlements.

Israeli politicians, including Benjamin Netanyahu, incite against Palestinian citizens within Israel’s recognized borders, where over 50 laws discriminate against non-Jewish people.

Our support extends to those living under occupation and siege, Palestinian citizens of Israel and the 7 million Palestinian refugees exiled in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Palestine. The refugees’ right to return to their homeland in present-day Israel is the most important aspect of justice for Palestinians.

Palestinian liberation represents an inherent threat to Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid, an apparatus built and sustained on ethnic cleansing, land theft, and the denial of Palestinian humanity and sovereignty. While we acknowledge that the apartheid configuration in Israel/Palestine is unique from the United States (and South Africa), we continue to see connections between the situation of Palestinians and Black people.

Israel’s widespread use of detention and imprisonment against Palestinians evokes the mass incarceration of Black people in the US, including the political imprisonment of our own revolutionaries.

Soldiers, police, and courts justify lethal force against us and our children who pose no imminent threat. And while the US and Israel would continue to oppress us without collaborating with each other, we have witnessed police and soldiers from the two countries train side-by-side.

US and Israeli officials and media criminalize our existence, portray violence against us as “isolated incidents,” and call our resistance “illegitimate” or “terrorism.” These narratives ignore decades and centuries of anti-Palestinian and anti-Black violence that have always been at the core of Israel and the US.

We recognize the racism that characterizes Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is also directed against others in the region, including intolerance, police brutality and violence against Israel’s African population. Israeli officials call asylum seekers from Sudan and Eritrea “infiltrators” and detain them in the desert, while the state has sterilized Ethiopian Israelis without their knowledge or consent. These issues call for unified action against anti-Blackness, white supremacy and Zionism.

We know Israel’s violence toward Palestinians would be impossible without the US defending Israel on the world stage and funding its violence with over $3 billion annually. We call on the US government to end economic and diplomatic aid to Israel. We wholeheartedly endorse Palestinian civil society’s 2005 call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel and call on Black and US institutions and organizations to do the same. We urge people of conscience to recognize the struggle for Palestinian liberation as a key matter of our time.

As the BDS movement grows, we offer G4S, the world’s largest private security company, as a target for further joint struggle.

G4S harms thousands of Palestinian political prisoners illegally held in Israel and hundreds of Black and brown youth held in its privatized juvenile prisons in the US. The corporation profits from incarceration and deportation from the US and Palestine, to the UK, South Africa and Australia. We reject notions of “security” that make any of our groups unsafe and insist no one is free until all of us are.

We offer this statement first and foremost to Palestinians, whose suffering does not go unnoticed and whose resistance and resilience under racism and colonialism inspires us.

It is to Palestinians, as well as the Israeli and US governments, that we declare our commitment to working through cultural, economic and political means to ensure Palestinian liberation at the same time as we work towards our own.

We encourage activists to use this statement to advance solidarity with Palestine and we also pressure our own Black political figures to finally take action on this issue.

As we continue these transnational conversations and interactions, we aim to sharpen our practice of joint struggle against capitalism, colonialism, imperialism and the various racisms embedded in and around our societies.

Towards liberation,

View the list of signatories

• Black Lives Matter 
• Black Liberation 
• Black for Palestine 
• Cornel West 
• Angela Davis 
• Ferguson 
• G4S 
• Patrisse Cullors 
• St. Louis 
• Dream Defenders 
• Nakba 
• BDS 
• police brutality 
• US aid to Israel 
• Africans in Israel 
• anti-black racism 
• mass incarceration 
• Gaza 
• political prisoners

Malaysian Sunni Scholar: Arab lies against Iran cannot stop it from progressing

• Source : al-Mayadeen, Tr by rasa

The secretary of the Association of Muslims Scholars of Southeast Asia stated that Iran has progressed due to the efforts of its “wise leader” and that "the lies spread by some Arab countries against Iran cannot prevent it from progressing."

Ahlul Bayt News Agency - In an interview with Lebanese television station al-Mayadeen, Shaykh Abdul-Ghani Shamsuddin, the secretary of the Association of Muslims Scholars of Southeast Asia, stated in response to a question about the causes of insecurity and killings throughout the Islamic world that there are many Quranic verses and narrations and statements by great Muslim scholars about the importance of thought and wisdom.
 
He stated that the increased knowledge of Islam is one of the ways of spreading awareness and consciousness of about pure Islam among the people. He stressed the necessary of reviewing and being aware of the current events and problems of the Islamic world and warned that Muslims must be vigilant. “With full awareness of the realities of the region, Muslims can adopt an appropriate position and stance,” he said.
 
The Malaysian Sunni scholar stressed that if Muslims do not examine the history and realities of the past, there will be dire consequences.
 
Shaykh Shamsuddin said that the cause of division between Muslim communities and the scholars is due to differences in knowledge and the various understandings of Islam and said that increased awareness of the future and detailed planning for the future will lead to an increase in knowledge and solve some of the problems of the region, which include extremism. The concept of ‘resistance scholars’ must be made clear so that we know what we want in the future.abna24.
 
The secretary of the Association of Muslims Scholars of Southeast Asia stated that another way of resolving conflicts in the Islamic world is for Muslims to participate in the decisions affecting them. He added that the Islamic Revolution led by Imam Khomeini (RA) led Iran from away from tyranny and allowed the people to participate in government decisions at the highest levels for the first time ever.
 
His Eminence said that the system of the Islamic Republic of Iran which is based on wise leadership, placing scholars at the head of government, consultation based on Islamic principles, freedom of expression, and the preservation Islamic identity have been the source of blessings and divine mercy for Iran. “The lies spread by some Arab countries against Iran cannot prevent it from progressing,” he said.
 
Shaykh Shamsuddin stressed the need for human development with culture and the world, saying: “Unfortunately, due to the schemes of imperialistic countries and the Arab world’s support of these schemes, the future of the Islamic world is very vague. By strengthening ourselves and preserving our independence we can resolve most of our problems.”

What Does Israeli Regime Seek in the Caucasus?

Alwaght- Jewish political tradition is based primarily on a realistic school of thought.  Israeli regime has derived its three underlying principles of foreign policy from this school which are: to focus on survival among hostile neighbors, to seek power, and to form alliances. Israeli regime's foreign policy has also close ties with its longstanding historical traditions.

 

The Alliance of the periphery or the Periphery Doctrine is one of these traditions which was established in the 1950s. It is a foreign policy strategy that called for Israeli regime to develop close strategic alliances with non-Arab Muslim states in the West Asia to counteract the united opposition of Arab states to the existence of Israeli regime. It was employed chiefly towards Turkey, and pre-revolutionary Iran. But, the conditions have changed. In Tel Aviv's perspective, Ankara at best is an unfriendly government and Tehran constitutes an inauspicious threat. In addition, rise of ISIS and Islamist sentiments have challenged the regime's position in the region. The Periphery Doctrine which seemed to have been abandoned, is once again on the agenda of the Israeli regime. But this time, it has targeted an area which feels the dynamism of the West Asia, and yet it is able to make use of the geopolitical lever in its northern part: the Caucasus.

 

Tel Aviv's intervention increased in the Caucasus in the late 2000s, when the ministry of foreign affairs established the special departments of Caucasus and Central Asia. Regime's policy during the relatively short period of "focusing more resources on the region" has gone through two major stages. The first stage took place before 2008 and focused on Georgia. Israeli regime attempted to train the Georgian army and allowed Israeli private sector companies to equip the military of Georgian with drones and advanced equipment. After the South Ossetia war in 2008, Zionist regime reduced its visible presence in Georgia in order to avoid provoking the hostility of Moscow. In order to compensate for its reduced presence in Georgia, Tel Aviv expanded its in presence in Azerbaijan.

 

In the second stage of Israeli regime's intervention in the Caucasus, the trade between the two countries amounted to four billion dollars. In addition to buying oil from Azerbaijan, Zionist regime has made plans to import twelve billion cubic meters of gas over the next decade, from this Caspian Sea littoral state. Most importantly, according to the former President of Israeli regime, Shimon Peres, "Azerbaijan is the key to counter the influence of Iran in the Greater Middle East." The well-known list of the complaints Baku and Tehran have raised against each other includes four major differences: the legal regime of the Caspian Sea, the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and Iran's pro-Armenian position (according to Azeris), the purported issue of the Iranian Azerbaijan, and the presence of twenty million Azerbaijani citizens in Iran, and the last one is of religious nature: Baku claims that Iran provokes radical sentiments in Azerbaijan, a secular country with a Shiite majority.  Given such circumstances, the Israeli regime, gives a central role to the Republic of Azerbaijan in its strategy of besieging the Islamic republic of Iran. Despite a number of constraints such as Turkey, anti-Semitism and relations of Azerbaijan with the Palestinians, it is fully embedded in the strategic plans of Tel Aviv to form alliances against Iran (this time with Azerbaijan).

 

On the other hand, Israeli regime will continue to follow the tradition of supporting the Jewish people of the world. This part of Israeli regime's foreign policy has seriously been pursued in the Caucasus. According to official statistics in 2012, 3540 Jews lived in Georgia; however, unofficial figures suggest there are eight to twelve thousand Jews in Azerbaijan. The number of Jews in the Republic of Azerbaijan is not clear and varies from nine thousand to sixteen thousand. In many cases, particularly in Georgia, Jewish citizens have taken up key positions in the government and commercial sectors. This condition can provide a better opportunity for intense political and economic involvement of Israeli regime in the region.

 

In brief, Zionist regime's interests in the Caucasus have three main dimensions: the Caucasus is strategically serving as a tool to besiege Iran as a regional power. Besides, in the medium term the Caucasus is seen as a region to supply energy needs of Zionist regime, and in the short term as a market for the sale of advanced arms and ammunition. These three dimensions, challenge the three traditional actors of the region, namely Russia, Turkey and Iran, which have no desire to see any foreign country to maintain its presence in the region.