Mohamed Ousman
The comments that apparently attracted US fury was his description of President Donald Trump mobilizing along the lines of racist supremacism—white of course—while projecting them as ‘victims’ in his quest to make America great again.
Reacting to this, some people—Muslims and non-Muslims—have chosen to politicize the issue due to partisan political affiliations as well as for other reasons.
As a result, people have expressed shock, disbelief or confusion.
What has been lacking is a principled approach that is cognizant of the larger dynamics.
It is important that the matter be clarified from the perspective of the Islamic Movement.
A year ago, a former Minister of International Relations and Cooperation was emphatic that the African National Congress (ANC) and its government believe that the only vehicle through which change must occur is the United Nations, nowhere else.
Article 41 of the Geneva Convention on Diplomatic Relations is clear about non-interference in the internal affairs of a host/receiving country.
A seasoned politician from the ANC who is also one of its policy writers has, in diplomatic words, vindicated the expulsion and thrown Mr. Rasool under the proverbial bus.
Since the ANC is not a revolutionary party, this politician is merely reiterating the party stance regarding the world order.
Hence, there is no reason for anyone to be shocked.
In 1993, 750 co-opted delegates who were not representative of the Muslims but who had the means and the connections, met at the National Muslim Conference in Cape Town and broke away, in an institutionalized manner, from the Islamic and Prophetic revolutionary spirit.
Many of these delegates found favor and positions within the new/post-1994 SA government.
The expelled Ambassador has never been a friend of the Islamic Movement.
Throughout the recent Israeli genocide of the people in Palestine he posed with then US President Joe Biden, and upon his redeployment, he posed with US President Trump.
He had previously posed with President Barack Obama, another war criminal.
Of course, his defenders will not tire to remind us that as ambassador, protocol requires that he show up at events at which photo shoots are inevitable.
The question that needs to be asked is whether diplomats of today, especially Muslim ones, have the revolutionary fervor and courage to speak to the contemporary Pharoahs in the way Prophet Musa (as) spoke to the historical Pharoahs?
Similarly, as part of his previous official roles in SA, he was required to show up for events at the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) and further a number of social ills ranging from the interests of the alcoholic industry through issuance of liquor licenses to encouraging investment in gambling cartels as part of developing the Cape Town economy to the legalization of abortion.
Unbelievably, he still probes the despicable position regarding a negotiated settlement with the colonizers of Palestine entertaining hopes that the colonizer and the colonized can be equal citizens in a unitary, democratic, secular, non-racial and rights-based state.
Sadly, many Muslims are not sufficiently familiar with contemporary affairs because they are not schooled in the Qur’an.
This leaves them confused.
These types of Muslims may as well go the whole nine yards and sing the praises of Saddam Hussein, Muammar Qaddafi, etc. if they want to sing praises of the expelled ambassador who like the aforementioned seems to have exhausted his usefulness.
Based on his track record, it is unlikely that he was expelled for any meaningful pro-Palestinian or pro-Islamic position.
Had that been the case, he would not have been deployed to the US ambassadorial role in the first instance.
The expelled envoy is not known for taking any pro-Islamic revolutionary positions.
It is more than likely that the US-SA relationship requires a neo-colonial type of ambassador that will push for the secession bid(s).
It is remarkable to note that the expelled ambassador, who is not a novice nor a revolutionary, would disregard Article 41 of the Geneva Convention on Diplomatic Relations about non-interference in the internal affairs of a host/receiving country and comment the way he had.
Perhaps he was naïve to believe that freedom of speech existed in the so-called bastion of democracy!
But as a seasoned diplomat and one who should know better, it seems that his redeployment and this undiplomatic behavior may have a more sinister motive which has been planned and orchestrated to feed into the growing Islamophobia narrative in South Africa.
It may be timely to recall that during the height of the Israeli genocide of the people of Palestine, the hate speech bill was assented to by the President, that the chief Rabbi has invited an international panel to investigate anti-semitism in South Africa; that it faces financial aid cuts for the so-called existential threats that white farmers face and that South Africa is facing the possibility of sanctions regarding its “support” for Palestine.
Yet South Africa has done nothing of substance for the people of Palestine.
The ICC and ICJ court cases have been ineffective and even the memory is fast fading away.
In the meantime, South Africa’s double-standards were again exposed as it continued/s to strengthen Israel, as it has done throughout the genocide.
Its supply of coal to Israel’s war machine allows Israeli war criminals to freely pass in and out of South Africa.
Muslims need to be wary of the narrative that is being spun by the zionist Jews and zionist Christians that Muslims are a liability for South Africa.
The question being posed via soft power and propaganda goes as follows: is it in the interests of South Africa that, for the sake of these Muslims, it should cut economic relations, diplomatic relations and thus have un-necessary tensions with the Israeli Jews and the Imperial Christians?
It is within this larger context that this ambassador had not only accepted his re-appointment but added fuel to the fire by making exactly these type of comments that do nothing fruitful other than raise the level of Islamophobia in South Africa.
“And Musa chose out of his people seventy men to come [and pray for forgiveness] at a time set by Us. Then, when violent trembling seized them, he prayed, ‘O my Sustainer! Had You so willed, You would have destroyed them before this, and me [with them]. Will You destroy us for what the weak-minded among us have done? [All] this is but a trial from You, whereby You allow to go astray whom You will, and guide aright whom You will. You are superbly near to us: grant us, then, forgiveness and have mercy on us — for You are the best of all forgivers!’” (The Ascendant Qur’an, Surat Al A‘raf, verse 155).
Donald TrumpIslamophobiaJoe BidenSouth AfricaZionist IsraelEbrahim Rasoolwhite supremacists
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