International Al- Quds Day

Also published in Daily Trust

Though it was the British occupation of the Palestinian territories in 1920 that paved the way for the establishment of the Zionist State of Israel in1948 following decades of intrigue and terror attacks against the Palestinians, the Zionists’ subsequent annexation of the remaining part of Al-Quds city, where Islam’s third holiest site (Al-Aqsa mosque) is located, was particularly devastating.

Al-Quds occupation followed the Arab-Israel war in 1967 when Israel defeated the combined forces of Egypt, Syria and Jordan, seized the Golan Heights from Syria, captured West Bank and the remaining part of Al-Quds city from Jordan, occupied Gaza strip and took Sinai Peninsula from Egypt.

Since then, Muslims’ resentment against Israel has been understandably on the increase, particularly in the Arab world where, apart from Islamic religion, anti-Israeli sentiment is the most vibrant unifying factor that unites the average Arabs. Though initially all Arab and almost all Muslim countries’ governments had resisted the occupation in various ways ranging from military confrontation, refusal to recognize Israel as a country and other forms of resistance, they afterwards began to succumb to the US-led pressure, blackmail and threat to soften their positions against the Israelis.

Incidentally, the US and the other key Israeli protectors in the West capitalize on the Arab leaders’ fear for the survival of their undemocratic regimes, which makes them increasingly rely on and indeed owe their continued clinging to power to the support and protection they get from the US and its western allies, who hypocritically turn a blind eye to their (Arab leaders’) systematic manipulation of power to evade real democracy that would do away with them and produce popular governments in their countries. In return, the Arab regimes contain, either by suppression or distraction, their respective citizens’ growing frustration over the continued existence of the illegal Israeli entity in the region.

By the way, though the so-called revolutionary leaders, among them e.g. late Saddam Hussein of Iraq, late Hafiz Al-Assad of Syria and late Mu’ammar Ghaddafi of Libya, were the most vocal critics of Israel, none of them was brave enough to attack it, despite Israel’s continued occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights for instance and indeed its provocative military activities in the region, which sometimes amount to attacks, e.g. their attack on a suspected nuclear site inside Iraq in 1981.

  
Fortunately for such Arab leaders, the average Arabs and Muslims are easily influenced by emotion at the expense of reasoning, which explains why they are impressed by empty anti-Israel sermons and glorification of some relatively insignificant past military exploits they managed to make in their past encounters with the Zionists. For instance, until his overthrow, Hosni Mubarak, a former Egyptian president, would always boast of being the air force pilot who launched the first air strike on Israel during the Egypt-Israel war in October 1973.

Anyway, their Persian neighbour, Iran, isn’t really any different either; only that its approach is quite different from that of its Arab neighbours. Ever since the establishment of its republic in 1979, Iran has succeeded in deceiving the gullible over its purported anti-Zionist stand. After all, its first Supreme Leader, late Khomeini, had, in 1979, declared the last Friday of Ramadan of each year as International Al-Quds Day, to conduct rallies in order to symbolize Iran’s purported ambition to mobilize Muslims and indeed lead war against Israel to liberate Al-Quds city and Al-Aqsa mosque. This is in addition to its usual confrontational anti-Israel rhetoric and empty threats. 

Incidentally, despite being a nuclear power and by far stronger than all its Arab neighbours in terms of military capabilities, Iran has never and indeed will never dare to attack Israel or participate in any  possible war against it for the sake of Palestine. It will never go beyond the “death to Israel” and “death to America” empty slogans.

This is because, among other things, contrary to Muslims’ belief in the blessedness of Al-Quds city and the holiness of the Al-Aqsa mosque, the Shiite religious ideology, which Iran is hell-bent on promoting, doesn’t recognize the city and the mosque as such, because their religious scriptures claim that Al-Aqsa mosque is actually in the heavens not on earth. For instance, in his two books Almasjidul-Aqsa, ayn?” and “Assahih-fi siratin-nabiyyil Aazham”, Ja’far Murtadha Al-amily, a renowned Shiite religious cleric, quoted extensively from various key Shiite religious reference books, which falsely attribute such claims to the Prophet or some members of his noble descendants in order to validate that false claim.

What therefore remains to be found is Iran’s agenda in its purported concern for Al-Aqsa mosque and indeed its bogus pro-Muslim and anti-Israel/US stands, as demonstrated in the last Friday’s rallies by the Shiites in some countries including Nigeria.

Though the answer isn't hard to find, yet it can, and indeed does, remain obscure to the naïve and narrow-minded. The reality is that, though Iran and its turbaned priests are hell bent on converting the Muslims into Shi'a, they realize how hard and perhaps impossible to achieve their mission through the dissemination of what their religious scriptures contain, because a great deal of the contents of such scriptures is too irreconcilable with Islamic fundamentals and/or too superstitious in nature.

This explains why in Nigeria as in other countries, their agents, both the turbaned ones, who disguise as Muslim clerics, and those without turbans, who disguise as intellectuals or public commentators go to any extent to twist facts in order to confuse hence lead their victims astray, taking advantage of Muslims' absolute love for the Prophet and his noble offspring to feed them fabricated narrations falsely attributed to him and many of his noble descendants.