By Salim Mohamed Badat
“Do you call upon Baal and abandon the Best of creators?”
(Qur’an 37:125)
In the time of the Prophet Elijah (peace be upon him), Baal was the object of devotion among a people who had exchanged moral law for elite authority. Linguistically, the word Baal means lord, master, owner.
It was not merely an idol of stone; it was a system of obedience that demanded loyalty to power while severing people from Allah, the true Lord of creation. The Quran exposes this inversion with surgical clarity: how can a society call upon a false lord while abandoning the One who created them and their forefathers?
Baal, in the Quranic worldview, is not described as Iblis himself. Rather, Baal represents taghut, false authorities elevated above divine law. Lucifer is the source of rebellion; Baal is rebellion institutionalized.
Satan does not always appear as chaos. Often he appears as order without justice, prosperity without accountability, freedom without restraint. This is why Baal worship was always tied to corruption. When desire becomes law and power becomes sacred, the vulnerable are consumed and injustice becomes normal.
That ancient pattern never vanished. It learned to speak a new language.
Today, Baal does not stand in open temples. He operates through systems that exalt immunity over accountability and domination over dignity.
What many now describe as a “New World Order” is not new in spirit. It is Baalism without statues: a transnational structure of power that claims moral superiority while functioning above the law, cloaked in the rhetoric of democracy, rights, and progress.
Recent global exposures have punctured this facade. The Epstein case did not merely reveal one individual; it illuminated a networked culture of secrecy, protection, and impunity among elites.
Allegations that include kidnapping, sexual exploitation of minors, and ritualized abuse, however disturbing, have emerged repeatedly in connection with those who moved freely across borders under political, financial, and intelligence cover.
Documents, testimonies, and investigations have implicated figures across politics, finance, royalty, and culture. Whether every claim survives the courts is not the only question. The deeper question is why such crimes consistently orbit the same centers of power, and why those who lecture the world on women’s rights In Muslim countries and moral values are so often shielded when accused of violating them.
The Quran anticipated this hypocrisy. Allah describes people who speak the language of reform while spreading corruption, who claim virtue while inverting morality.
This is Baal’s signature: evil normalized by institutions that call themselves righteous. The charge is not superstition; it is structural.
In this landscape, Muslims are compelled to reassess alliances and silences. Imam Ali (AS) taught that justice is the axis of legitimacy and that a society can survive disbelief but not injustice. He governed by the principle that power is a trust, not a privilege, and that silence in the face of oppression is itself a betrayal.
This moral inheritance comes into sharp focus when considering Iran’s posture in the modern world. History, in this tradition, is not neutral progression; it is moral recurrence. Karbala is not confined to a date or a place. It is the perpetual confrontation between truth and power, between obedience to Allah and obedience to false lords.
When Imam Husayn (AS) stood against Yazid, he was not opposing a man alone, but a system that demanded submission while violating divine law.
Yazid embodied Baal’s essence: inherited power, moral corruption, elite immunity, and religion reduced to ornament.
From this worldview, resistance is not a political preference; it is a theological duty.
In an age defined by sanctions, proxy wars, media coercion, and moral blackmail, Iran positions itself, rightly or wrongly in the eyes of others, as a state born from refusal to submit to imperial control. Its political language is not derived from Western liberalism, nor from accommodation to global dominance, but from a Karbala centered ethic: injustice must be confronted even when the cost is isolation, pressure, and demonization.
This does not render Iran flawless or beyond criticism. It does, however, explain why it stands where many retreat. To submit to a global order that shields abusers, excuses mass death, and weaponizes morality would be, in this moral grammar, to repeat the betrayal of Karbala.
Baal’s modern agents do not require idols. They function through alliances, institutions, financial systems, intelligence networks, and media empires. They demand obedience while denying accountability, speak of human rights while excusing annihilation, and accuse others of barbarism while protecting the powerful within their own ranks.
Imam Ali warned that the most dangerous injustice is the one normalized under respectable names. In such a world, neutrality is not wisdom; it is complicity. Justice, he taught, must be upheld even if it stands alone.
The Quran offers no promise that those who resist falsehood will be loved. It promises that they will be tested. And it promises that truth, even when isolated, is never defeated.
“Do not incline toward those who do wrong, lest the Fire touch you.”
(Quran 11:113)
The ancient question, therefore, confronts us anew. Do we call upon Baal, whatever form he now takes, and abandon the Best of creators? Do we bow to power because it is powerful, or stand for truth because it is true?
Baal did not die. He adapted. And the Quran continues to expose him, for those willing to see.
Salim Mohamed Badat
Author exploring the intersection of faith, politics and justice
No comments:
Post a Comment