To the Muslims, Be Ready Here We Come!


News:

  • An Egyptian court sentences Mohammad Morsi, the only freely elected president in the history of Egypt, to death.
  • Three Egyptian judges shot to death and three others injured in the Sinai desert.
  •  Secretly recorded conversations between top Egyptian generals unveil conspiracy to overthrow the Morsi government, a conspiracy bank-rolled by the Persian Gulf countries.
  • U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry issues a statement (August 1, 2013), while on a visit to Pakistan, supporting the coup-d’état in Egypt.




Keep those news items in the perspective and see Egypt’s agony pulsating in front. Its future is being written in blood, by script writers beyond its borders, in which the Egyptians, as usual, are silent onlookers. Military dictatorships in the Muslim World have had a morbid influence on society in general but in Egypt it has an extra dimension. In every country the military is maintained with money and resources to fight wars when ordered by the government. Some militaries are motivated by ideological or patriotic fervor to fight and put their lives on the line but most do so because they are paid. They have no choice in this respect but what if the military itself is the controlling authority and there is an absence of commitment to any cause; when it has the opportunity to loot the nation’s resources, relinquish warfare and create a safe haven for itself? Reason dictates that it would avail itself of this opportunity. In Egypt this is exactly the case. It wipes out conflicts by making friends with the existing and potential enemies. If you look at the history of the performance of Egyptian generals in each of its wars, you are left with no doubt that they are ever so eager to seek shelters.

 The global war between sects, which we had previously labeled as looming, has now begun to incinerate reason. Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and the countries of the Persian Gulf are already inflamed. The fire is beginning to consume not only bodies but souls. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 had fired the imagination of even sleeping minds amongst Muslims and had ushered in a new era of Islamism, reviving the dreams of Jamaluddin Afghani, Hassan Al-Banna and Abul-Ala Maudoodi --- Imam Khomeini’s references to these dreamers would support the assertion. Except for a few individuals in the Sunni World, notably in Saudi Arabia, the majority of Sunnis never gave a second thought to the sectarian divide and supported the Revolution wholeheartedly, whereas the Islamic Republic of Iran supported Islamic causes all over the world including Palestine, Kashmir, Philippines, Bosnia and Kosovo. In fact Bosnia owes its existence to the material support provided by Iran. That was then, what of today? Today, it seems that we have woken up from a dream. There isn’t much of pan-Islamism in the air. Iran is reverting back to sectarian nationalism and the waters of the Persian Gulf are parted like the Red Sea at the hand of Moses, between Persia and Arabia. This dichotomy, reminiscent of the times of the Safawis: Shah Ismail and Shah Abbas is catastrophic, to say the least. Iran and its post-Khomeini clergy are determined to see Bashar Al-Assad survive even if the whole of Syria is turned into a wasteland. The reason, as we understand is to protect the conduit of arms to Hezbollah. (This illogically presupposes that a representative government in Syria would be hostile to Iran). In doing so Iran has, in a big way, contributed to the defeat of the “Arab Spring”, which the coming generations of Arabs will neither forget nor forgive. Not even this! Iran’s flawed diplomacy has contributed to its own myriad problems. It is unbecoming of the head of the government to talk about Holocaust, an utterly unnecessary diatribe, notwithstanding the merits and demerits of the case.  In civilized societies such issues are left to one or two chattering politicians or academics and not to the president of a country with a glorious history of sophisticated civilization.

The Takfiri destructiveness born and bred in the unscholarly madrasas of Pakistan and Afghanistan, which manufacture murderers, is on the other side of the picture. These demons kill and kill and kill, in mosques, in churches, in schools in busses and everywhere. There is no respite from their ghoulishness in spite of the presence of one of the largest armies in the world enjoying its perks and devouring the foreign aid. This is a monster with many heads which proliferates multifariously and morphs into many forms. Its franchises exist in many countries. There is no stopping this macabre dance of death.
Islamic State or Khilafa are terms which evoke nostalgia, anticipation and hope among a majority of aggrieved Muslims who are disappointed and dejected by the animosity of the West towards them. Hitherto, many an organizations had talked about khilafa, a seemingly unachievable goal given the modern realities. None had control over any territory, an essential requirement of a state. When vast swaths of land in Iraq and Syria came under the control of an authority declaring itself to be khilafa with amazing speed and astounding efficiency and organization, all of a sudden what had seemed impossible was seen to be entering the realm of reality. The success of the ISIS in Syria and Iraq is owing to the fact that the Sunni population of the area under its control, dispossessed of political power and feeling menaced by the perceptible ascendency of the Shia militias, either joined it or gave it tacit support overlooking its flaws. Muslim youth in distant places on earth were awakened by the call and they went, leaving their schools, their parents, their clubs and yes, their gangs behind to fight for the cause. They were attracted by the slogan, the name, without knowing the dynamics and the requisites of the Islamic state. We are hoping against hope that the images seen on the internet of the atrocities, the killings and the beheadings are doctored by our enemies and that in reality what we are being told is a big lie but evidence is mounting day by day to confirm our worst fears. Even after subtracting revenge killings (revenge against enemy collaborators) a significant portion of unjustified killings remains. Questions arise as to when and where in the khilafa of Abu Bakr, Omar, Othman and Ali (May Allah’s mercy be upon them) were the religious minorities unsafe, let alone murdered. Extend the history into the Umayyad, Abbasid and Ottoman periods, you cannot find examples of any such acts.

If there was to be an Islamic state in the Twenty-first century, it had to contain all the elements of evolutionary culture, a culture with comprehensive and competitive education, high achievements and in which you could see your mothers, your daughters and sisters standing alongside the men folk with dignity they deserved and not as subservient and degraded human beings. The million dollar question is: do I want to live in a state where all the non-Muslims and Shias have been murdered and women are subjected to proprietary exploitation? Hell No! I believe that an Islamic state would survive only if it was competitive in every legitimate field, competitive with the West and with South and south-east Asia. Otherwise it would be a barren island in the sea of civilization and will gradually fade away. It is imperative that we impress this reality upon the minds of our youth, whom we teach the Quran, the Hadith and the Seearah and not miss-educate them into believing that what they are learning is exclusively ordained and is sufficient. I met with a new-Muslim lady, an ex-Catholic, who told me that her priest had advised her that she should not think for herself but let the Church think for her. She rejected this requirement; thought and thought for herself and then chose Islam over all other religions, despite nine-eleven and all the negative propaganda which ensued since. Do I tell her that now that she is here she should let my masjid imam think for her? This would be a travesty. I want to live in a state where people think and appreciate the letter and the spirit of the Qur’an, a state which is capable of producing Ibn Sinas, Razis and Al-Khwarizmis and from where scientists are not exiled for non-conformity with the majority doctrines and where archeological remains of ancient civilizations are not smashed which had previously been sustained during one and a half millennia of Islamic khilafas, dynasties and sultanates.

Palestine is the key to all the problems in the Muslim World and beyond. The Arab armies and Israel fought several battles over the issue. The Arab armies were defeated. Fearing annihilation, they withdrew into their own chaotic political arenas and dissociated themselves from Palestine, an unprecedented treachery! This dealt a severe blow to Nasserism and Arabism which for ever changed the political landscape of the region. The Palestinians, destitute and orphaned are looking hither and thither, sometimes to the East, sometimes to the West and sometimes within for answers. They have been told that a possible answer could be a “Two-State Solution”. Eureka! The scattered lands in which they are confined now would be called ”state” rather than “authority”. Mahmoud Abbas will undisputedly assume the title of President and the Palestinian police will be called its defense force. Nothing else would change including the nature of relationship between the occupiers and the occupied. The Palestinians will have a status similar to the native tribes in the United States of America. (Even the black Jews do not have equal rights in Israel) This is the maximum that the Israelis may agree to. Will the Palestinians take this or wait for “one state”, which one day will be bound to happen, provided they remain cohesive and the Israeli power wanes?

So, what does the future hold for Muslims in the world? It is obvious to anybody who is not blind that the road to the future is fraught with danger. Internally, backward thinking, propagation of and preference for ignorance and the preponderance of killers are some of the self-inflicted wounds that are making us bleed to death. As for external dangers suffice it to quote the transcript of Amy Goodman’s interview with Gen. Wesley Clark, the former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, published on March 5, 2007:

Gen Clark: “About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said ‘Sir, you’ve got to come in and talk to me second.’ I said, ‘well you’re too busy.’ He said, No, no.’ He says, ‘We’ve made a decision to go to war with Iraq.’ --- ‘I guess it’s like we don’t know what to do about terrorists, but we’ve got a good military and we can take down governments.’ --- So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, ‘Are we still going to war with Iraq?’ And he said, ‘Oh, it is worse than that.’ He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, ‘I just got this down from upstairs’ – meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office – ‘today.’ And he said, ‘This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.” Tony Blair, the British prime minister at that time had also alluded to this scheme at that time. He too was in it.

Well, almost all the countries on that list have already been taken care of plus Egypt and Yemen. Others, be ready. Here we come!

Waheeduddin Ahmed 
May 28, 2015







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