By Manuka Wijesinghe –

But, where is such reaction in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates? Cyprus has just begun. But those nations of the Arabian Peninsula, are they sovereign nations or mere fiefdoms? Do their people have nothing to say when their leaders collaborate with infidels to annihilate fellow Muslims?

Where is the brotherhood that Islam claims? Be it Shia or Sunni Islam, is its origin not from one source?  Did the prophet not say, that a Muslim is the brother of a Muslim. He does not oppress him nor does he fail him. He does not lie to him and he does not hold him in contempt. Whoever fulfills the need of his brother, Allah will fulfill his needs. Whoever relieves a Muslim from distress, Allah will relieve him from distress. Did he not say, ‘do not envy one another and do not inflate prices for one another and do not hate one another but be slaves of Allah and brothers amongst yourselves’. Where is that brotherhood now?

Why does Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) support Infidels and Zionist rather than brothers, united in one faith?

Or, should one try to understand western cunning before one tries to understand the betrayal of brothers. Perhaps the same tactic that influenced DS to assume that British protection was vital to defend the Sinhalese from Tamils has been the credo of their indoctrination too.   

The British were skilled and cunning, but to understand the American, one must watch a western movie and observe that lone ranger, on horseback, with a gun, killing American Indians for land, for gold or for boredom’s sake. Those lone rangers, when they congregated, became known as the United States of America. Their nation was built by forcing native American Indians into barren reservations and the occupation of their lands with the barrel of the gun. They are the archetypes of Zionism; settler colonials devoid of moral compass. Their state of Israel, like the great marches of the American Indians, was founded on the Nakba, the catastrophe which made the Palestinians stateless refugees.

‘When the white man comes in my country, he leaves a train of blood behind him’, (Red Cloud of the Sioux)

‘We were once friends with the whites, but you nudged us out of the way by your intrigues, and now when we are in council you keep nudging each other, why don’t you talk, and go straight and let all be well’ (Black Kettle)

The above quotations are from Dee Brown’s ‘Bury My heart at Wounded knee’. It is the elegy of the Indians. But that what Black kettle requests is precisely that what they do not do. They nudge and manipulate.  Their moral compass has no honesty. When murder was considered a crime, they began with the decimation of cultural memory. They abducted native children, forced them in reeducation camps and indoctrinated them. When they were done those Indian children had red skin but a white youl. They spoke white language, worshipped white gods and married white men.

What was done in the Americans, was done, under settler Colonialism, and subsequent British Colonialism, in nearly every colonized nation.

But, when Islam was born in Arabia, it was like lush oasis in the barren desert. It was to them, not a new faith, but an improvement of the old. And the holy Quran; the final edition of the Torah and the Bible. And Islam’s prophet Muhammed, the last in the lineage of prophets of the Abrahamic faiths. The one who followed ‘Isa ibn Maryamu’, Jesus; the son of Mary.

Islam spread across the region like a powerful desert wind, where men had no choice, but to submit to its human grandeur for it was the only human faith that had blown their way, that had no hierarchy and called out for social justice, pluralism and non-violence.

Karen Armstrong, a former Catholic nun turned author writes in her book titled, ‘Mohammed, a prophet of our times, ‘Muhammed was a brilliant, compassionate leader who navigated immense political and social challenges, emphasizing his humanity and dedication to peace over violence. He was decisive and whole hearted in his role in promoting justice and kindness in the 7^th century Arabia’.

Islam was a magnet of the times.

Unfortunately, that magnet was also a threat to the Christian church. And, once Islam began to spread, not by swords, religious missionaries nor colonial conquest, rather the beauty and kindness of its faith, it became a threat to the Catholic popes and the crusades against the Muslims were commissioned. If Christianity managed to halt the spread of Islam, it was not through the superiority of their faith, but the superiority of their weapons.

Thus, Islam has always been the west’s crown of thorns. Islam’s preaching of brotherhood and community is an anathema to western capitalist civilization whose Christian God has been replaced by Consumerism. The western mind is devoid of faith and his life is one of hedonism and his death, of medical intervention. His churches are no longer places of worship but of tourist attraction reminding the visitor of a golden age when Christian crusaders plundered the wealth of Muslim lands to build their fine monuments to Christian glory. Magnificent cathedrals were financed from robbery, it was the law of the jungle, not the religion of Jesus Christ.

Therefore, the Christian west’s greatest intent is to destroy Islam. It got their mightiest chance with the fall of the Ottoman empire and has not stopped since. To enable the Ottoman demise, it lured the Mufti of Mecca, to organize an Arab revolt against the Ottomans, promising him the Ottoman territory and kingship. That was an Islamic leaders first act of betrayal. ‘‘Let no believers take disbelievers as allies’’. But the Mufti broke a fundamental edict of Islam and allied with infidels and delivered to the British what he had promised.

The Arab revolt was the end of Ottoman rule. But the British betrayed the Mufti. They agreed to deliver their promise if the Mufti would forfeit Palestine to European Zionists. By this time, the European Zionist lobby, the militant wing of political Judaism had begun lobbying the British for a Jewish state in Palestine.

The house of Islam was on the eve of destruction, not by Arab Jews living in Ottoman territory such as Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, but by Zionism, a western idea born from the Dreyfuss affair which convinced European Jews that a separate state for Jews was all that could save them from Christian barbarism.  Those who imprisoned Dreyfuss were French, not Arabs. The architects of the Holocaust were Germans, not Arabs.  Christians, not Muslims.   

The desert faiths were simple. So were desert minds. They survived nature, not through craftiness, but endurance for in these large barren spaces, endowed with nature’s sandy impermanence, all that was lasting was the sweetness of their eternal God, to whom they prayed five times a day. The desert faith was not of rocks and mortar that built stone cathedrals of vain glory, but of faith, prayer, alms, fasting and pilgrimage; cemented upon brotherhood amongst its community of believers.

What has happened to that brotherhood now? The world is in a state of war and that brotherhood has turned against its brother and is letting infidels, Americans and Zionists, use their territory for the destruction of his brother.

Did it not happen before, during the reign of King Faisal?

When the Mufti refused to cede Palestine the British, they had had no more use of him and found amongst the Arab tribes, one greedy and ambitious man from the house of Saud which had recently allied itself with the powerful Abd al Wahhab, the father of Wahhabism. His name was Abdul Aziz. Abdul Aziz was going to be Britain’s ally in breaking the unity of the community, the prerequisite for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine.

Following the UN resolution for the partition of Palestine, when 700, 000 Palestinians were violently displaced and dispossessed by the Zionists, the king of Arabia, Abdul Aziz turned a blind eye. He had a handsome army, but sent none for the protection of fellow Muslims from militant Zionists.

Yet, Abdul Aziz’s second son, Faisal, did pride to his faith and to his tribe and rose to the defense of Palestine. ‘We believe’, he proclaimed, ‘that there will never be a lasting peace in the area unless Jerusalem is liberated and returned to Arab sovereignty, unless liberation of all the occupied Arab territories are achieved and unless Arab people of Palestine regain their rights to return to their homes and be given the right to self-determination’.

To Faisal, the eradication of the state Israel from Palestine territory was the Only means to territorial sovereignty that would bring peace to the Arabs and to the region. But the west was not interested in peace. Only in an eternal state of crisis which they exploited to plunder the wealth of third nations. The Colonial gambit never ended.

So, when Egypt and Syria began to the Yom Kippur, to take back Palestinian territory lost to the 1967 war, Faisal, now the regent in place of his corrupt brother Saud, supported Palestine. But, as victory was imminent, the Americans entered the war on the Zionist side and the Arab armies were defeated.

It angered Faisal and he refused to sell any more oil to the west.

The crisis of 1973 was as serious as Hormuz is today.

While the west suffered in darkness and economies lagged without oil, Faisal became instrumental in the creation of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC), where all the heads of Muslim states joined Faisal and agreed to make liberation of Palestine a universal Muslim issue. He brought to the gathering of Muslim leaders, the spirit of the Prophet Mohammed, whose core premise was justice. And to whom his community of believers were not individuals, but one body, united in mutual goodness and suffers when another suffers and responds accordingly.

The seeds Islamic solidarity had been sown, but even before it could take root Faisal was assassinated.  By nis nephew, the son of his elder brother Saud. A prince who had lived in the United States for a greater part of his life and was known for womanizing and drugs.

Upon Faisal’s death, most of the Muslim leaders who had joined him, were pulled like puppets on a string to the west and the question of Palestine went into the dustbin of history, becoming a refugee issue, not a political issue, until one country, in the spirit of Islamic community picked it up; Iran. Not during the reign of the Shah, but after 1979 when the Islamic revolution brought Ayatollah Khomeini from France and placed him as the supreme leader of Iran and its Shia Muslims.

Yet, what are the Shia and how do they differ from the rest of the Muslim community?

It is said that the word ‘Shia’ was first uttered from the prophet’s mouth. ‘The Shia (followers of the prophet) and his household are pious, they obey God and one recognizes them by their humility, submission to God, honesty, abundant praise of God, fasting and their goodness to parents, attention to poor and needy. Debtors and orphans. The Shia speaks the truth, recite the holy Quran and hold back their tongues for good work and for trustworthiness towards one’s relatives. These are the characteristics of the Shia. They follow God, the holy Quran, prophet Muhammed and after him the nearest people to the prophet who have been appointed by the prophet and that is ‘ahl il bayt’; the family of the prophet’.

He has further cemented it by saying, ‘Islam is like a tree, in which I am the root. Ali is the branch Hassan and Husein are the fruits and the Shiite are the leaves’, as according to the Sunni scholar Ibn Hajar.

But Ali, the prophet’s son in law, was bypassed for Abubakr the prophet’s companion and when Ali did finally become the leader of the community, after the murder of Sunni Islam’s 3^rd caliph Uthman, Ali became the first Imam of the Shia but the fourth caliph of the Sunnis. Tragically, his leadership was short for he was assassinated at the great mosque at Kufa. Yet, to the Shia, Ali’s life was an embodiment of piety, justice and courage and his death, one of martyrdom.  Even today his death marks a day of national mourning where Iranians spend nights in prayer and vigil while mourning and reciting the holy Quran, weeping, for Imam Ali.

Hence, the fundamental difference between Sunni and Shia Islam is the question of leadership.

Yet Twelver Shiism, that special branch of Shia Islam which is Iran’s national religion, which was introduced to Persia under the Safavid dynasty not only believes that the leader of the community should be from the Prophet’s family, but also believes that if none are manifest, a religious scholar, known for his piety and theological knowledge must guide the community until the rightful leader, the Mahdi (the hidden Imam) will emerge at the end of time and establish peace, justice and also redeem Islam. It is called Twelver Shia for it recognizes 12 Imams beginning with the prophet Muhammed and following him, his son in law; Ali.

Not only Ali, but the prophet’s grandson was martyred too, one in the Najaf and the other in Karbala; in Iraq. The blood of martyrs run deep in Iranian veins. Hence, when Imam Khamenei was killed, the west created another martyr. Imam Khamenei’s death does not weaken the Iranians; it strengthens them for he gave his life, for nothing less than a battle against infidels for having been martyred, not at any given time but when he was in discourse, trying to find appeasement to western ambition and Zionist paranoia, through dialogue.

If the west assumed that killing Imam Khamenei was comparable to the murder of Sadam Hussein or Muhammar Qaddafi, they made a terrible mistake. Those murders were heinous crimes, but not sacrilegious. Ayatollah Khamenei’s assassination was an attack, not against a political system, but against faith.    

But how would the west even identify faith when most of them are members of the Eppstein sect which is the supreme evidence of moral debasement. The assassination of a spiritual leader shows the ethical bankruptcy and moral debasement of western society. Perhaps it would be wise to recollect the words of Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘God is dead. God remains dead and we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers. What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives, who will wipe the blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves?’

Nietzsche wrote this passage in in the nineteenth century, illuminating the western society in which he lived. Today, that society is in a worse state. It cannot identify truth, is devoid of empathy and resides in the new Realism of Digital Platforms and Disneyworld. Its God is Consumerism, its dress is blue jeans, its food is the burger and its drink is coca cola and its high priest; Jeffery Eppstein. Was the murder of 175 Iranian school girls by the western powers an offering to that high priest?

The breath of God was in every one of those 175 dead little girls. By killing them, the west created 175 more martyrs. The Iranian is not alone; all those who have a heart and a sense of faith will hate Israel and its ally and fight unto the last man for the death of those little girls. And when America wins, for it always wins, even when it loses, the world’s citizens would have rediscovered faith; Islam.

Let us hope it will be the peaceful and just the Islam of the prophet Muhammed. Not like Islam of the Taliban, ISIS and Boko Haram; the results of the west’s weaponized effort to destroy the equality and justice of the faith revealed to Muhammed of Mecca.

Islam has been the greatest threat to western Capitalism. For it preaches brotherhood; the anathema to western society’s rabid individualism. Hence, it has done its utmost to destroy it. Had they not ruined Afghanistan, there would be no Taliban. Had they not destroyed Syria, there would be no ISIS, had they not killed Qaddafi, there would be no Boko Haraam. The root of Islamic fundamentalism is not Islam, it is in the Crusades, which was not the religion of Jesus Christ, but that of popes and kings.

My heartfelt condolences to the people of Iran, you have lost your supreme spiritual leader. May you have in his son, a spiritual leader as able and wise as his father. May he guide you in the true spirit of Islam and of the prophet Muhammed. And may peace come to you soon. And your faith redeemed. If one does not see its beauty, it is for the privation of their gaze. And may you be rewarded on the day of judgement. For you alone remembered that the human family creates no refugees.