Wars on Their Minds

Zafar Bangash

Last month, US President Donald Trump announced, “We’re leaving soldiers [in Syria] to secure the oil… And we may have to fight for the oil. It’s okay. Maybe somebody else wants the oil, in which case they have a hell of a fight.” That “somebody else” is none other than Syria, the legitimate owner of that oil that the US has illegally taken over. But there is more to it than oil. For more than five years, US-created, trained and financed terrorists, Da‘ish (aka ISIS), and Kurdish groups have been smuggling oil to Turkey and into the international market.

Now that the terrorists have been defeated, the US has lost its alibi for staying, hence the pretext of securing oil. There are barely 20,000 barrels/day of oil being produced, hardly the quantity to fight over. The US, however, has deployed armored personnel carriers and other heavy weapons that are clearly meant to wage ground war. So why is the US so keen to start another war in a distant land when Syria poses no threat?

War is profitable business. The American deep state and its corporate allies are heavily invested in war industries. Like the US, its Zionist protégé is also addicted to war. Most Americans, however, are tired of endless wars and want their resources to be invested at home to rebuild the crumbling infrastructure. This is what Trump had promised during the election campaign but has failed to extricate the US from distant wars. He has flip-flopped on Afghanistan and Syria and continues to support the Saudis’ disastrous war on Yemen. The US is also involved in destabilizing Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran. Is it a coincidence that all these are Muslim majority countries?

America’s war on Islam can be traced to the 9/11 attacks that were blamed on Muslims. Its roots can be traced further back into the neocons’ Project for the New American Century and even before that to the scandalous “clash of civilizations” theory floated by the orientalist Bernard Lewis in September 1990.

Lewis’ theory was hailed as a masterpiece that allegedly captured the prevailing global situation accurately. Lewis postulated that a clash between the Islamic and Judeo-Christian civilizations was inevitable. This was a dream come true for the neocons. The demise of the Soviet Union was imminent and new enemies were needed to continue wars in distant lands. Lewis turned the “Red” peril into the “Green” peril. Three years later, Samuel Huntington reinforced the clash of civilizations theory by providing further intellectual impetus. He hypothesized “that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural.”

Lewis and Huntington’s virtually identical theories resulted in the bloody wars on Iraq and Bosnia-Herzegovina from which neither has recovered so far. Millions were killed in Iraq on the pretext of fighting Saddam Husayn. He was their creature and had waged an eight-year-long war on Islamic Iran at the behest of the US, Europe, and the oppressive monarchical regimes in the Muslim East. For failing in his assigned task, Saddam was hanged in December 2006. Bosnia is a fractured state but only last month French President Emmanuel Macron warned about the “danger” it posed to Europe. What possible danger could it pose when Bosnia’s economy is in shambles and there are deep divisions in its governing system? Macron’s fear arises from the fact that Bosnia is a predominantly Muslim state in the heart of Europe. This fact is unpalatable to the Islamophobic West.

The war-mongering narrative would be incomplete without mentioning India that is currently in the grip of Hindu fascists. Fascism, we are told, was defeated in the Second World War. The freedom-loving powers — Britain, France, the US and their allies — fought Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan and defeated them. Nazism and fascism were banished. But were they?

Today, fascism rides supreme in Hindu India. The ruling party and its storm troopers — the RSS, Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad — have made clear that there is no room for religious minorities, especially Muslims, in India. They must either convert to Hinduism or leave. If not, they will be physically eliminated.

Western powers that claim to have fought and defeated fascism in Europe have no qualms about consorting with Hindu fascists. Even worse, many of the unelected potentates in Muslim countries are also in bed with Indian fascists. Some have conferred their country’s highest civilian award on the Muslim-hating prime minister of India, Narendra Modi. Warmongers come in all shapes and forms and colors. Regardless, Muslims are their principal victims.

Zafar Bangash is Director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought (ICIT).

Resistance to Occupation

Zafar Bangash

Resistance to colonial occupation is an inherent right of the occupied, including armed struggle, recognized in international law. Occupiers try to delegitimize resistance struggle by branding the resistors as “terrorists.” Often the oppressors are more successful because they have the propaganda tools denied to the occupied at their disposal.

The struggle of the African National Congress (ANC) against apartheid in South Africa illustrates this point clearly. A tiny minority of white Europeans oppressed the overwhelming majority of blacks. When the ANC launched its campaign to overthrow the racist apartheid system, it was branded a “terrorist” organization. Its leaders were arrested and suffered decades of imprisonment.

Nelson Mandela, later regarded as an icon of resistance and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, was also declared a terrorist! Even when apartheid officially ended, he was on the list of persons banned from entry into the United States. The US State Department had to issue a waiver to allow him entry. This ludicrous ban was finally lifted in 2008.

There are other legitimate resistance movements that have been proscribed because they oppose the West or its favorite client regimes. Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Palestine are all branded as “terrorist” organizations although they are liberation movements struggling to overthrow their Zionist occupiers. The Taliban in Afghanistan have been similarly branded although in recent years, the US has been forced to sit with them and negotiate (notwithstanding Trump’s Twitter tantrums that are seen by some observers as a hiccup). Resistance of the Kashmiris against Indian occupation has also been tarnished with the terrorist brush.

In all instances, the occupiers are aided and abetted in their vile propaganda by allies and major media outlets. It is interesting to note that when the Afghans were struggling against the Soviets, they were declared freedom fighters and welcomed to the White House. When they rose up to fight American occupiers, they became terrorists! So, from the West’s point of view, armed struggle per se is not the problem; the real issue is who is being resisted.

International humanitarian law drafted by Western regimes considers wars of liberation as legitimate forms of struggle. It was the victors of the Second World War that drafted laws through such instruments as Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1949. Liberation struggles were declared a protected and essential right of occupied people everywhere.

The time period is important. The war had left the colonial powers exhausted. They could no longer hold on to their colonial possessions in Asia and Africa. Thus it was convenient to declare national liberation movements as legitimate.

Once the West and its client regimes felt comfortable with the post-Second World War order, they began to flex their muscles against liberation movements. This was particularly pronounced in the case of resistance to the Zionist entity, a colonial beachhead in the heartland of Islam.

Since the UN Security Council is dominated by veto-wielding predatory powers, primarily the US, Britain, and France, nothing meaningful comes out of its deliberations. Hence, it is the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) that acts as the collective conscience of the world. It has affirmed that human rights and dignity must be protected through self-determination and independence.

In 1974, when the Palestinian liberation struggle was its peak, resolution 3314 of the UNGA prohibited states from “any military occupation, however temporary.” It was aimed at the Zionist occupation of Palestinian lands.

The resolution not only went on to affirm the right “to self-determination, freedom and independence […] of peoples forcibly deprived of that right, […] particularly peoples under colonial and racist regimes or other forms of alien domination” but noted the right of the occupied people to “struggle… and to seek and receive support” in that effort.

While “armed struggle” was implied without spelling it out explicitly, colonial powers exploited this ambiguity and used it against the oppressed. They resorted to vile propaganda to delegitimize the right of indigenous peoples to overthrow their occupiers.

The occupied and their allies quickly realized the West’s hypocrisy and were determined to confront it. Unlike the Security Council, the General Assembly is an open forum where each country’s equal right is recognized. On December 3, 1982, the General Assembly passed resolution 37/43 removing any doubt about the lawful entitlement of occupied people to resist occupying forces by any and all lawful means. The resolution reaffirmed “the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle.”

This resolution entitles the Palestinians and Kashmiris to resist their occupiers by all means necessary. Despite the occupiers’ attempts to delegitimize their struggle, they have every right to wage armed struggle against their occupiers.

Considering the horrific tactics used by the Zionists in Palestine and Hindu fascists in Kashmir, it is all the more important that they are provided every kind of support to free themselves from the clutches of oppressors.

Zafar Bangash is Director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought (ICIT).

 

Zafar Bangash

The Morning of 9/11

An insider’s account of how Pakistan got sucked into the “War of Terror”

Zafar Bangash

Despite devoting thousands of hours of airtime and acres of newsprint to the official version of 9/11, the list of skeptics is still growing 18 years later. Included in this list are nearly 2,000 architects, structural engineers, demolition experts, airline pilots, and strategic analysts.

The official version is that 19 Arabs who could not fly even a single engine plane straight commandeered four jetliners. Flying them at high speed and performing complicated manuevres that even highly trained air force pilots would find difficult to carry out, they crashed two of them into the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York, one into the Pentagon building in Washington, DC and a fourth crashed in the fields outside Pennsylvania. Three buildings collapsed including Building No. 7 at the World Trade Centre that had not been hit by any object. Further, the two towers collapsed on their own footprint because, we were told the steel used in the buildings “melted” under intense heat generated by the burning jet fuel.

Three other details are relevant. First, Dan Rather of CBS News reported the same day that a “Flying manual in Arabic” was found in the car of one of the “hijackers” at Logan Airport in Boston from where the planes had taken off in the early morning of September 11, 2001. Second, that while heat from the burning fuel was so intense that it “melted” steel, somehow the passport of the alleged ringleader, Muhammad ‘Ata, survived this inferno intact. Why was he carrying a passport if he was supposedly on a suicide mission? Third, the BBC correspondent in New York reported on air that Building No. 7 had collapsed a half hour before the actual collapse!

There are other anomalies in the official version but we will not detain ourselves with such details here. There was one person who was virtually in the thick of events when the 9/11 attacks occurred: General Mahmood Ahmed, at the time serving as Director of Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). He was in Washington, DC on the morning of 9/11 meeting congressional leaders on Capitol Hill.

In December 2018, this writer met General Mahmood at his residence in Lahore (for the record, General Mahmood and this writer studied at the same institution in Pakistan: Lawrence College, Ghora Gali, Murree. He was four years senior to me). Since his retirement from the army, he has joined the Tablighi Jama‘ah, grown a long beard, and prays regularly. When in service, he had the reputation as a tough, “no nonsense” general. My friend and celebrated author and journalist Eric Margolis described him as absolutely “ferocious”!

When asked about his recollection of what happened during his congressional meeting on the morning of 9/11, this is what General Mahmood related (his words have been paraphrased). He had arrived in the US on September 1 and was due to leave on September 10. While he met a number of generals at the Pentagon and CIA officials who had invited him, a few senior figures from the US government or Congress afforded him time. The purpose of his visit was to see if he could get some of the sanctions the US had imposed on Pakistan eased. He had little luck.

On September 10, as he was preparing to leave his hotel for the return flight home, he received a call that Republican Senator Porter Goss and Democratic Senator Bob Graham would like to meet him the following morning for breakfast at Capitol Hill. He immediately accepted the offer, postponing his return flight, hoping to communicate Pakistan’s point of view to the two influential American figures.

At the breakfast meeting, there were six persons from each side. In addition to the two senators, there were four staffers. On the Pakistani side, Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi and the Political Officer at the Pakistan embassy in DC accompanied General Mahmood plus three aides. As they held discussions over breakfast, an aide entered the room and handed the senators a piece of paper and then quickly left. Half hour or so later, another aide came in and handed Goss another piece of paper. He showed it to Graham and then the two senators got up and said, “General, we will have to end this meeting. Something urgent has come up.” They appeared greatly agitated and nervous, according to General Mahmood.

He also said, until then he had no idea what was going on. There was no TV in the room. They learned about the twin tower attacks on their way out when they saw the television screens that people were glued to. They saw the twin towers burning with thick smoke billowing out. All flights in and out of the US were immediately grounded resulting in General Mahmood being stuck in DC for several days.

General Mahmood Ahmed shakes hands with then President Pervez Musharraf, left, in 2001, whom he “engineered” into office but later fell out with due to the latter’s desire to secure American political favors under the rubric of “saving” Pakistan from America’s war against the Taliban.

During his 10-day visit from September 1–10, few American officials had time for him. Following the 9/11 attacks, everybody wanted to see him from the White House staff to the State Department and the Pentagon. On September 12, General Mahmood and Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi had a meeting with members of the National Security Council. There were other meetings with CIA, Pentagon, and State Department officials.

When I asked him about his meeting with the burly Richard Armitage, the former Navy Seal who was then serving as Assistant Secretary of State at the State Department, General Mahmood said he desperately needed Pakistan’s help. I specifically asked him about media reports about Armitage’s threats against Pakistan (in his interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” program on September 17, 2006, General Pervez Musharraf had said Armitage had threatened to bomb Pakistan “back into the Stone Age”).

General Mahmood rejected such assertions. “Despite his massive bulk and his head cocked up because of his oversized neck, Richard Armitage spoke softly and politely. Reports of his threats against Pakistan are completely untrue.”

Scott Conroy’s report on the CBS website (September 23, 2006) corroborates General Mahmood’s position. “On Friday [September 22, 2006], US President George W. Bush said that he was taken aback when he heard the claim [about Armitage’s threats to Pakistan], while Mr. Armitage denied he had ever threatened the use of military action against Pakistan if it refused to join the US-led war on terror after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks,” Conroy wrote.

According to General Mahmood’s recollection, American officials were both nervous and confused. They needed help and they turned to Pakistan. The September 12, 2001 phone call from US Secretary of State Colin Powell to Musharraf is well known. As absolute dictator, Musharraf accepted each and every one of the US demands without consulting anyone or asking anything in return. The rest, as they say, is history.

By surrendering to US demands, Musharraf, hitherto shunned by the West, immediately became the most sought after Third-World ruler. Not only American but European leaders also made a beeline to Pakistan seeking its help in what was going to be a devastating war on the Taliban in Afghanistan. Musharraf thought he had hit a jackpot!

Soon after the Americans launched their war on Afghanistan (October 7, 2001), General Mahmood was relieved of his responsibilities as Director ISI. He resigned from the army and went into retirement. The two generals — Musharraf and Mahmood — were quite close and had worked together for decades. Now they had a falling out over the manner in which Musharraf threw in his lot with the Americans against the Taliban.

It needs recalling that General Mahmood was one of the main organizers of the coup that overthrew Nawaz Sharif and brought Musharraf to power in October 1999. The other was General Muhammad Aziz Khan, then Chief of General Staff but it was General Mahmood who played the key role. As Commander 10 Corps to which the 111 Brigade belongs, it was General Mahmood who ordered the 111 Brigade to arrest Nawaz Sharif and take over Pakistan Television Station (the 111 Brigade is tasked with carrying out coups!).

In his long and distinguished military career, General Mahmood, an artillery officer, had also served as Director Military Intelligence. He was unhappy with the manner in which Musharraf had abandoned the Taliban. The Americans clearly wanted him out of the way. Musharraf could not resist US pressure and caved in. It also served Musharraf’s purpose in other ways. He did not want powerful generals around him that could challenge his authority (in its inner workings the Pakistani military is quite democratic; generals and even junior officers speak their mind freely). Removal of General Mahmood earned Musharraf brownie points with the Americans.

The US conduct toward Pakistan once the Taliban were ousted from power vindicated General Mahmood’s position. The Americans are again asking Pakistan to help “extricate” their forces from Afghanistan, as Donald Trump stated during his White House meeting with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan on July 22. There are few people in Pakistan who harbor any illusions about US duplicity. Once the US is able to safely withdraw its forces from Afghanistan, Pakistan would again be ditched. It cannot be ruled out that the US may even reimpose sanctions on Pakistan.

 

Zafar Bangash

Tanker Tensions in the Persian Gulf

Zafar Bangash 

Tiny poverty-stricken Britain pompously calls itself “great” Britain. It often tries to punch above its weight in global politics. Its latest foray on the world stage occurred on July 4 when it illegally seized the Iranian oil tanker, Grace 1, as it was entering the Mediterranean Sea. Britain claimed it acted at the request of Gibraltar, a tiny island with a total population of 300,000. Britain’s illegal occupation of the island is contested by Spain.

Naturally, Iran was upset at what it described as Britain’s “maritime piracy.” It demanded the tanker, which was carrying two million barrels of oil, be immediately released. Britain alleged the oil cargo was destined to Syria that is under unilateral European Union (EU) sanctions. Tehran dismissed the allegation saying the Syrian port of Baniyas cannot accommodate a tanker of this size. Even Carl Bildt, the former Swedish Prime Minister pointed out that since Iran is not a member of the EU, it is not obliged to abide by EU sanctions. Britain is trying to enforce extraterritorial jurisdiction on another country.

Iran not only demanded the immediate release of its oil tanker but also warned that should Britain persist in its belligerent act, undertaken at Washington’s behest, Tehran would be forced to take retaliatory steps.

This is what happened on July 19 when Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) impounded the British-flagged tanker Stena Impero in the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran said it took the action because the British vessel was violating international maritime rules. It had turned its transponder off as it sailed through the exit and not the designated entry point of the Strait of Hormuz. Both are illegal acts since they pose serious risk to maritime shipping. It “collided with a fishing boat on its route and, according to law, after an accident it is necessary that the causes are investigated,” said Allah-Morad Afifipoor, head of Ports and Maritime Organization in Iran’s southern Hormozgan Province.

Despite the fishing boat contacting the British vessel it did not receive any response. So the boat crew informed the Hormozgan maritime organization “according to legal procedures.” When IRGC naval units arrived, they also discovered the British tanker was spilling oil residues in the Persian Gulf waters, causing environmental pollution.

Such illegal conduct is all too common among Western regimes that dump their pollutants in other countries’ waters or poison their soil by dumping depleted uranium. But dumping toxic waste is only one aspect of the West’s atrocious conduct. Britain, which has been acting at the behest of its US master, is trying to box in Iran in its own neighborhood. And the US in turn is under total Zionist domination. The Arabian statelets of the Persian Gulf are too insignificant to matter — although they fork out hundreds of billions of dollars to the US and Britain as protection money for security guarantees.

The tanker crisis in the Persian Gulf is the direct result of US aggression against Iran. While never on good terms since the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, tension escalated further since Washington’s unilateral withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal. The US has also imposed illegal sanctions on Iran in complete violation of all international norms. Donald Trump and his minions have vowed to bring Iran’s oil exports to zero. In other words, they want to force Iran to surrender.

Iran is not prepared to do so. It has made clear that if it cannot export oil, nobody else would be allowed to either. Iran completely controls the Strait of Hormuz. Based on maritime law, Iran allows passage to friendly vessels that pose no threat to its interests. Neither British nor American vessels can be considered friendly. Their hostility threatens Iran’s very survival. Under such circumstances, the Islamic Republic is left with no choice but to defend its interests by whatever means necessary.

Iran occupies the entire length of the Persian Gulf’s east coast. Security and stability are of vital importance to Tehran. British and American intrusion in the region, coming from thousands of miles away, is a source of great instability. It is further aggravated by the Western sale of hundreds of billions of dollars worth of weapons to illegitimate Arabian regimes.

The situation in the Persian Gulf is fraught with grave danger. If it escalates to a shooting war, the US, Britain, and their allies would be entirely responsible. As several Iranian officials have warned, “the US may start a war, it will be Iran that will end it.” And it cannot be ruled out that the entire region will go up in flames with such illegitimate regimes as the Wahhabis in Arabia and the Zionists in Colonized Palestine being consigned to the dustbin of history.

American warmongers, beware!

Zafar Bangash is Director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought (ICIT).

 

Zafar Bangash

Who Should Administer the Haramayn?

“No politics” for Muslim hujjaj but politics as usual for Bani Saud

Zafar Bangash

As millions of Muslims converge on Makkah for the annual pilgrimage of Hajj, the question of the purpose and meaning of this important Islamic duty once again comes to the fore. Since Bani Saud occupied and usurped control of the two holy cities of Makkah and Madinah (together known as the Haramayn) through British intrigue — yes Muslim affairs are determined by non-Muslim colonialists — the Najdi Bedouins have turned them into their private real estate. They have assumed that they can do what they like in these two sacred cities. Muslim indifference and lack of understanding is also to blame. Bani Saud have destroyed Islam’s historic sites; they unilaterally decide who can and cannot perform Hajj and what is or is not permissible at the time of Hajj.

Since Bani Saud’s control of the Haramayn, they have assiduously peddled the notion that they would not allow “politics” in Hajj. “Politics,” however, remains undefined but what they insist on is that there should be no criticism of Zionism and imperialism at the time of Hajj. Muslims should perform the rituals of Hajj and then leave immediately. In recent years Hajj has also been priced out of the range of most Muslims.

Do the Saudis’ arbitrary policies conform to the teachings of Islam and are the Najdi Bedouins consistent in the application of restrictions they have imposed? Let us turn to the noble Qur’an and consider what Allah (swt) commands the Muslims to do at the time of Hajj,

And a proclamation from Allah and His Apostle [is herewith made] to all mankind on this day of Hajj, “Allah disavows all who ascribe divinity to any beside Him, and [so does] His Apostle…” (9:03).

A brief historical background to the revelation of this ayah that forms part of a cluster of ayat from Surah at-Tawbah is necessary. When these ayat were revealed in the ninth year of the Hijrah, Muslims from Madinah were already on their way to Makkah for Hajj. Abu Bakr al-Siddiq(ra), one of the close companions of the Prophet (pbuh), led the Muslim Hajj caravan. The noble Messenger did not wait until the Muslims had performed Hajj and returned to Madinah to apprise them of the new Qur’anic injunctions. Instead, he dispatched his cousin and son-in-law, ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib (a) immediately to Makkah to publicly proclaim these ayat at the time of Hajj.

These are referred to as the bara’ah or disavowal ayat and declare in unambiguous terms the Muslims’ disassociation from the mushriks at the time of Hajj. Yet Bani Saud insist that Muslims must not do so. Who should we obey: Allah (swt) and His Apostle (pbuh) or the Bani Saud?

Setting aside all other considerations, let us look at the Najdi Bedouins’ conduct relating to Makkah. Do they abide by the rule, “no politics” in Hajj or Makkah? The “no politics” order is itself political in nature; it is meant to prohibit censure of two of the most oppressive regimes in the world: Zionist Israel and imperial America. Why are Bani Saud defending the enemies of Allah (swt) by openly violating divine commands?

Let us consider some recent events in Makkah to highlight the contradictions in Bani Saud policies. At the end of May, beginning of June, the Saudi regime convened three conferences in Makkah. One was an emergency meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, Arab League, and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). What was the emergency? The May 12 attacks on four oil tankers, two of them Saudi oil tankers, in the UAE port of Fujairah by unknown assailants. The Saudi aim was to line up fellow Arabian regimes to first blame and then condemn Iran for these “attacks.”

No proof was offered, none was deemed necessary since the Washington war hawk John Bolton had blamed Iran for the tanker attacks. That was good enough for the Saudis. King Salman, suffering from severe dementia and unable to remember what he had said even a few moments earlier, still blasted Iran for what he called its “naked aggression” against the region’s “stability and international security.” What regional stability or international security is Salman talking about? His own regime is involved in a vicious war on the hapless people of Yemen since March 2015. At least 60,000 Yemeni civilians have been killed and more than a million children are afflicted by cholera. Some 22 million out of 24 million Yemenis are on the verge of starvation. That does not sound like supporting “regional stability,” nor does unleashing takfiri terrorists on Syria, who have now been dealt a severe blow thanks to the valiant efforts of the resistance front.

“International security” is another buzzword that is used to protect the illegitimate interests of predatory powers like the US and Zionist Israel. The US has more than 800 military bases worldwide, at least 42 of them around Iran. Iranian forces or naval vessels are not present in the Gulf of Mexico like American warships are in the Persian Gulf. Iran has not murdered Israeli nuclear scientists unlike Zionist Mossad agents who have murdered Iranian scientists. Iran is not threatening the world with nuclear weapons as are the US and Zionist Israel. So what “international stability” is Salman, with one foot in the grave, talking about?

Makkah, the birthplace of Islam, was at the end of May turned into an arena to advance Wahhabi, Zionist, and imperialist propaganda against Islamic Iran. Not surprisingly, Tehran rejected the accusations, calling them baseless. Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Saudi Arabia had joined Israel and the United States in a futile attempt to mobilize regional opinion against it.

Iran’s position was vindicated by what Qatar’s Foreign Minister Shaykh Muhammad bin ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Thani told al-Jazeera on June 2. The summits “adopted Washington’s policy toward Iran and not one that takes the neighborhood into consideration.” The Qatari foreign minister also said his government had reservations about hardline statements on Iran made at emergency summits in Makkah organized by Saudi Arabia, “The statements condemned Iran but did not refer to a moderate policy to speak with Tehran.”

There were other contradictions in the Saudi position, as noted by Qatar’s top diplomat. It talked about “Gulf unity” yet the two-year-long blockade of Qatar continues. “The Makkah summit ignored the important issues in the region, such as the Palestine issue and the wars in Libya and Yemen,” Qatar’s foreign minister told the UK-based broadcaster, al-Araby. Adding insult to injury, the Saudis had prepared the conference declaration ahead of time without consulting other participants. They were simply told to approve it.

There was also another summit in Makkah held under the auspices of the Saudi regime. Some 80 Muslim scholars were gathered from around the world to discuss “The Value of Moderation in the Qur’an and Sunnah.” The theme was admirable except that there was little moderation at the conference. It was an attempt to create a body of Saudi-sponsored muftis to dish out fatwas to rubberstamp Bani Saud policies.

The Saudi version of “moderation” means surrender to Zionist Israel and US imperialism. There is no “moderation” toward or dialogue with kafirs as commanded by the Qur’an, “Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah; and those who are [truly] with him are unyielding toward the deniers of Allah’s power presence, [yet] full of mercy toward one another” (48:29).

Aware that the overwhelming majority of Muslims worldwide reject normalization of relations with the Zionist usurpers of Palestine, Bani Saud want a religious cover for what is essentially a policy of surrender.

The “imam” of the Haram, ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Sudays, is demanding allegiance to a crown prince who is most likely guilty of murder, embezzlement, terrorism, cozying up to the arch enemies of Islam, and persecuting a class of scholarly colleagues that the shaykh once proudly belonged to.

Even al-Masjid al-Haram, the most sacred of Islam’s masjids, has not been spared the indignity of Bani Saud’s dirty politics. “Shaykh” ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Sudays has used the minbar (pulpit) of the Haram to demand that everyone pledge allegiance to the murderous Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman who has rightly earned the epithet “Mr. Bone Saw” following the brutal murder and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi last October.

‘Abdullah al-‘Awdah, son of the imprisoned moderate scholar, Salman al-‘Awdah pointed out in an article in TRT World (June 11, 2019),

The summit was held mere kilometres from the Dhahban prison in Jeddah, where symbols of moderation in the Muslim world such as my father, Salman al-‘Awdah, and others (three of whom — including my father — the prosecution demanded the death sentence for) are being held.

While lauding the values of the conference “such as refusing violence, intimidation campaigns using Islam, racism and human rights violations” he pointed to the contradictions in practice, “These great principles were however recited only a couple of kilometres from the infamous Dhahban prison, where the real symbols of moderation tell a different story.”

The Saudi-sponsored ‘ulama’ conference was held to create a body that would have monopoly over fatwas. The final article of the conference declaration reads, “No one can consent the Islamic Ummah’s affairs and speak in its name on its religious affairs and anything connected to them except its ‘ulama’ who are established in an association such as the association of this document…”

At a stroke, the Saudi-sponsored group of 80 ‘ulama’ —and they may be learned scholars — have dismissed other Islamic scholars worldwide. Again, under the guise of organizing a religious conference, the Saudis have indulged in crass politics to find a religious crutch for their policy of appeasement to Zionism and imperialism, right in the heart of Makkah.

Bani Saud get away with such crimes because Muslims elsewhere, barring a few exceptions, are not paying adequate attention to these developments. For all practical purposes, Makkah and Madinah are as much under Zionist occupation as al-Quds (Jerusalem).

 

Zafar Bangash

India’s Persecuted Minorities

Zafar Bangash

On June 23, India’s NDTV channel broadcast a video showing the lynching of a 24-year-old Muslim man, Tabrez Ansari, in Seraikela in the Indian state of Jharkhand. Tied to a pole, Hindu terrorists continuously beat him with sticks for 12 hours. With broken bones and bleeding, instead of taking him to hospital, the police dragged him to a police station for interrogation and held him for several hours. Later he was taken to a hospital where he died on June 22. He was to be married soon.

Lynching of Muslims has become all too common across India. Self-styled cow vigilantes have taken it upon themselves to prevent the slaughter of cows they consider to be their mother — yes, you read that correctly — for which they kill Muslims. Eleven state governments in India have banned cow slaughter but that has not prevented Hindu businessmen from running slaughterhouses. India rakes in $4 billion annually in beef exports, mostly to the Muslim East. Cow vigilantes do not go after Hindu businessmen; their wrath is reserved only for defenceless Muslims. Even the police join in Muslim lynching, or do nothing when Hindu mobs go on a rampage.

India has always been a deeply divided society along religious, ethnic, and caste lines. Religious minorities — Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians — have faced systemic discrimination despite token positions in government to hoodwink the rest of the world about Indian secularism. The Hindu caste system, a blot on the conscience of the world, has consigned hundreds of millions of people to lower castes suffering humiliation and degradation.

At the lowest rung of the caste pyramid, the Dalits constitute more than 200 million people. They are prohibited from eating in the same plate, drinking from the same glass, or even drawing water from the same well as upper caste Hindus. The caste system is religiously sanctioned apartheid yet such racism has escaped the world’s attention and opprobrium. This is deliberate. India is seen as a potential market of 300 million middle class people.

Such anachronistic policies were papered over under the rubric of Indian secularism. But the mask has finally come off India’s ugly face since the rise to power of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2014. Led by Narendra Modi, a hard-core Hindu fascist who presided over the slaughter of more than 2,000 Muslims in 2002 when he was the chief minister of Gujarat state, Hindu mobs have unleashed terror on defenceless Muslims.

Although there are 190 million Muslims in India, representing 16% of the total population of 1.2 billion, the ruling BJP does not have a single Muslim member of parliament. This is unprecedented in Indian history. Muslim representation in parliament has declined to a mere 3.7%. They were already discriminated against in the bureaucracy, police, army, and other governmental services. Now they have no voice in parliament either.

India has carefully cultivated its image as the world’s “largest democracy.” In technical terms, this may be true. In the April–May 2019 general elections, of the 900 million eligible voters, nearly 600 million cast ballots but does that make India a democracy?

Leading stalwarts of the ruling BJP including Modi have emerged from the ranks of the RashtriyaSwayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hiterlite organization that openly promotes Hindu fascism. It has more than six million members that receive military training. BJP President Amit Shah has called Muslims “termites.”

Despite presiding over a state polity that openly promotes racism and discriminates against religious minorities, Modi is welcomed and feted in Western capitals. There was a break from this craven policy of appeasement of Hindu fascism when the US State Department in its 2018 Report on International Religious Freedom was forced to shine light on India’s horrible mistreatment of minorities. Citing reports by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), the US report makes grim reading. It said, “The government sometimes [sic] failed to act on mob attacks on religious minorities, marginalized communities, and critics of the government.”

Without naming them, the report further said, “Some senior officials of the Hindu-majority Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) made inflammatory speeches against minority communities. Mob attacks by violent extremist Hindu groups against minority communities, especially Muslims, continued throughout the year amid rumors that victims had traded or killed cows for beef. According to some NGOs, authorities often protected perpetrators from prosecution. As of November, there were 18 such attacks, and eight people killed during the year.

On June 22, two Uttar Pradesh police officers were charged with culpable homicide after a Muslim cattle trader died of injuries sustained while “being questioned in police custody…”

When more than 40% of the 543-members in India’s parliament face criminal charges — some as serious as murder and rape — lawlessness is bound to spread across the country. Muslims are its biggest victims as the horrific lynching of Tabrez Ansari showed.

India is not a democracy; it is a country ruled by gangsters, rapists, and mass murderers.

Zafar Bangash is Director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought (ICIT).

 

Zafar Bangash

Al-Masjid al-Aqsa Under Threat

Zafar Bangash

Since US President Donald Trump illegally declared Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel and opened the US embassy there more than a year ago, tensions have escalated in the city. During the month of Ramadan, Palestinian worshippers below the age of 55 have been prevented from entering the city to pray in al-Masjid al-Aqsa. The Zionists not only have military checkpoints but a separation wall is also being erected, à la the West Bank, to prevent Palestinians from outside Jerusalem to enter the city.

The entire Haram al-Sharif that comprises al-Masjid al-Aqsa, the Dome of the Rock, and several madrasahs and zawiyahs, is under threat. Aggressive Zionist settlers have made no secret of their desire to bring down the Haram al-Sharif to build their mythical “third temple” there. While Rabbanical law expressly forbids Jews from setting foot on the holy sanctuary lest they desecrate it — and there is a board outside the Maghribiyah gate declaring this prohibition — such religious/legal rulings are no bar to the fanatical Zionist squatters.

It is not just the squatters; the Zionist regime is also pushing furiously to empty Jerusalem of its Palestinians inhabitants. Several policies are being pursued. Since Israel’s colonial occupation in 1967 of East Jerusalem that houses the holy sanctuary, Palestinian residents have not been issued permits to build or even repair their houses. Palestinians applying for a permit to build have to pay a fee of US$40,000 — an astronomical figure for most Palestinians. Even if a family manages to raise such funds, there is no guarantee that a permit would be issued. Their money is gone; it is larceny on a grand scale! Palestinians who repair their houses without a permit face Israeli bulldozers tearing them down. Adding insult to injury, the municipality charges the family for bulldozer fees. Palestinians are turned into refugees and forced to live in tents, but must pay for it.

Turning to al-Haram al-Sharif, the Jordanian Waqf that manages the Aqsa compound, reopened Babal-Rahmah, one of the accesses to al-Haram al-Sharif on February 13, 2019. The colonial Zionist regime had shut it down in 2003, alleging that the Waqf had links with Hamas and the Islamic movement.

The Zionists responded to the Waqf’s move of opening the gate by chain-locking it. This sparked a furious reaction from Palestinian worshippers; hundreds have since been arrested, including head of the Waqf Shaykh ‘Abd al-‘Azim Salhab, and his deputy. Many others have been banned from accessing the Aqsa compound. The Magistrate’s Court of Jerusalem extended the closure of the masjid for another 60 days on March 17, fueling further escalation of tensions.

Zionist extremist groups that need little prompting were emboldened by the court’s decision and the government’s moves. One of these groups is the Temple Mount Faithful, which on its website proclaims as its goal “the liberation of the Temple Mount from Arabic [Islamic] occupation.” These extremist groups have been provoking Palestinians for many years, storming the Aqsa compound in groups under the protection of Israeli soldiers, openly violating the ban on Jewish prayer on the site and constantly harassing Palestinian worshippers. They are now calling to lift the ban on Jewish prayer and even the construction of a synagogue!

These developments should cause alarm bells to ring in the capitals of the Muslim world. The pathetic Arabian rulers, far from showing any concern for the first qiblah of Muslims, are busy falling over themselves to kiss the feet of the Zionist colonizers. They have openly declared that Palestine and al-Masjid al-Aqsa are not their priorities; and that Zionist Israel is not their enemy, rather Islamic Iran is.

Under the rubric of Trump’s “deal of the century” — essentially selling out the Palestinians to make Zionist Israel supreme, another sinister plot is underway. The management of al-Haram al-Sharif is being handed over to the Saudis. They are clearly seen as even more subservient than the Jordanians who still display some modicum of self-respect. Add to that the announcement by the head of the World Muslim League that Israeli rulers will be invited to visit Saudi Arabia in 2020, one can begin to see what is afoot.

With these developments in mind, it becomes clear why the worldwide Quds Day rallies are so important. These rallies draw attention to the criminal conspiracy underway to destroy al-Masjid al-Aqsa so that Zionist control of the holy sanctuary can be made permanent.

Committed Muslims of the world, beware. There will be little to gain by crying afterward. The time for solidarity with the oppressed Palestinian people and standing up to save al-Masjid al-Aqsa is now!

Zafar Bangash is Director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought (ICIT).

 

Zafar Bangash