The two opposite poles of the global Islamic movement

Abu Dharr

Deep down inside the recesses of the , there is what one may call a dichotomy — two mutually exclusive subclasses of the worldwide Islamic movement. One of them is centered on Islamic Iran and the other around what is today called “Saudi” Arabia. This animation is so intense and profound but no one wants to express it in public. It is limited to the inner circles of the inner circles of the polite and well-educated members of the worldwide Islamic movement. In a sense, the active and informed Muslims who belong to one or the other branch of this umbrella Islamic movement are alienated from each other because their individual organizational hierarchies have to answer to either one of these two divergent and many times mutually exclusive official umpires. Currently there is a detente between the government in Arabia and the government in Persia; both, of course, affirming in strong terms their Islamic credentials. But are they both legitimate points of reference for the larger Islamic movement in the world? Our humble but strong opinion is an emphatic NO. We say this with the support of facts on the ground and the record that speaks for itself.

In the first demonstration of facts, there is the Islamic political willpower in Iran that has, in word and in deed, taken on the imperialist and Zionist superstructure of kufr and shirk, and their combined might. Because of this, the loudmouths and bullhorns of racist Zionism and socioeconomic class imperialism are frothing at the mouth. Their corporate media fumes with the same, now tiresome, innuendo against the leadership of the Islamic state in Iran because of its self-willed and unwavering opposition to both militarist and political Zionism. This fearless and daring position by the Islamic leadership in Iran should remind every active Muslim who knows his history of the Yahudi forerunners (of today’s Zionists) in Arabia 14 centuries ago — the same ones who were also seething with rancor and conconcting countermoves against the Prophet (pbuh) when Islamic self-rule was on the rise in Arabia at the time.

Contrast Islamic Iran with the official Saudi sponsorship of a grand plan to reconcile the dispossessed Palestinians with their Israeli overlords. The official Saudi creatures and their unofficial Egyptian and Jordanian tools are what they call the “moderates”. And, who said there are no “moderate Muslims”? The real power-brokers in Arabia and its extensions into Egypt and Jordan among other countries along with that strain of the Islamic movement that answers to royal Riyadh are all showing excessive and compulsive concern with a slowly-but-surely consolidating front that will eventually move all the Muslims from Central Asia to the Mediter-ranean in a wave of military determination to pluck the regime of Zionist Israel out of existence. The American hegemon who went into Iraq and Afghanistan, giving both Israel and Saudi Arabia a decade of wiggle time, is beginning to pack his bags and gradually but surely moving out of Iraq and eventually out of Afghanistan. We call forth the wits and wisdom of this long paralyzed branch of the Islamic movement that has been sheltered and weltered by the financially obese and mentally anorexic Saudis to open its eyes and see the light!

This past month the top news item from Arabia concerned the $60 billion dollar military contract that the Saudi halfwits signed with the American military-industrial-banking complex. What an insult to every living and thinking Muslim everywhere! Are the Muslims in Arabia so brainless as to be unable to begin to build a military industry of their own? Let them begin with manufacturing their own guns and bullets and then proceed from there to manufacturing their own tanks and aircraft. This is also an insult to the larger Muslim population of the world; do the Saudi statesmen and representatives not believe that the 1.8 billion Muslims in the world are capable of initiating their own military industry that will free them from being dependent on their enemies for purposes of self defense? And at the end of the day all these weapons purchases will end up injecting much needed cash into the corporate coffers of weapons manufacturers like Raytheon, Lockheed, General Dynamics, Grumman and Northrop among others as well as the predatory policies of imperialist occupation and invasion forces — the ones that occupy Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan to be precise. We can almost hear their chief executive officers say behind closed doors “Thank God for Saudi Arabia”. Of course, Saudi Arabia returns the thanks to the US by making sure that its contingent of the worldwide Islamic movement does not forget that the USA [and even Israel] are Ahl al-Kitab!

Contrast this Saudi capitalist cash-cow with an independent Islamic Iran that has crossed the rubicon on its way to becoming the first independent Islamic nuclear powerhouse in the world. The quality and quantity of enriched uranium in Iran this coming year will be enough for the Islamic Republic to kiss all Western offers of “uranium exchanges” good-bye.

Step by step, there is a serious behind-the-scenes Euro-American discussion and at times argument to factor in Iran as the up-and-coming undisputed regional power in the “Middle East” and to factor out Saudi Arabia as the undisputed last-ditch stand by the old-school of political imperialist political thought that seeks to prevent Iran from becoming the acknowledged regional superpower. We have to remind the pre-Imam Khomeini “Shi‘i” faithful that these audacious and resolute strides are not attributable to a “theological” or “historical” superiority that some diehards never tire of expressing to the outside world. No indeed; it is the result of the hard work of the sons of the revolution who never forgot the eight years of imposed war and all the characters involved in those eight years, including the war financiers — the crude oil Arabians.

Listen, O sons of the broad Islamic movement in the world! If we were to rip this whole issue to its bare bones we could agree, I hope, to see that there is a real core conflict that puts the Islamic Republic of Iran on one side and the Zionist regime of Israel on the other. The rest are, let us say, “fillers”. The number one supporter of racist Israel is the United States of America. Any run-of-the-mill Muslim knows that. And the number one supporter of Islamic Iran is Syria, in the shaping up of the not-too-distant firestorm between an Israel of Zionism and an Iran of Islam.

In the distorted view of things within the Saudi sponsored wing of the Islamic movement the Americans turn out to be Ahl al-Kitab and nasara while the Syrians turn out to be kafirs and zindiqs. Before this begins to strain the minds of the indoctrinated Saudi types, would it not be fair if we were to look at how the Ahl al-Kitab American officials came down on all the Islamic fringes that are under the Saudi umbrella. Washington even went as far as demanding the Saudi embassy in Washington, DC close down its religious department which employed scores of da‘is and is said to have had a budget of scores of millions of dollars annually. The American Ahl al-Kitab officials are going to the Arabian nation-states — tribal states to be more precise — and to other Islamic countries and rearranging their educational curricula, seeing to it that all Qur’anic ayat and Prophetic hadiths mentioning Yahud in a negative way are deleted from textbooks.

Can we compare that to a country that has accommodated Palestinian fighters and Hizbullah to the detriment of Israel? Don’t rush to conclusions; no one here is trying to paint a rosy picture of the Syrian regime, we know it has its own agenda against Islamic self-determination in Syria and it should be addressed at the appropriate level. But in the larger scheme of things, the Islamic Republic in Iran has managed to deploy specific Syrian tactics to help with a groundswell program that intends to place all their common resources and assets into the up-and-coming fight with the Zionist tormentors of the Holy Land and its original population.

If the leading light and the momentous policies come from Islamic Iran then what is the Saudi Arabian government’s problem with a free trade agreement between Tehran and Damascus? Why are the Saudi national security functionaries so upset with Tehran and Ankara raising their economic ties to higher and unprecedented levels? Why do we sense nervousness in the Saudi financed Arabian media when Islamic Iran declares that it will begin to refine its own petroleum? One would think that the Saudi lords would feel a pinch of ardor and eagerness to do the same; but no, the Saudi officials are downright resentful and begrudging.

The Saudi royalists are hoping against hope that the Euro-American economic measures against certain banks belonging to the Islamic Republic will pay off. But the brave leadership in Iran called upon the people to adopt a “resistance economy”. And when Wall Street and Western economies have been gripped by structural problems such as inflation, unemployment, currency erosions, recessions looming into depressions, the economy in Iran with all its loopholes has weathered these troubled economic times with relative success. According to some sources, when the American economy in the past two years has been in a free-fall the overall economy of the Islamic State has grown by about one-third.

Its economy is strong enough to make Russia think twice before it decides to cancel a $13 billion S-300 missile system deal. If Islamic Iran’s economy were not doing well Russia would not have had second thoughts about canceling that deal, especially when it is prodded to do so by the US on generous terms. Add to this Islamic Iran’s policies that nudged Syria — its strategic ally — to acquire the Yakhnut surface-to-sea advanced missiles. The Israeli leadership tried in vain to persuade the Russians to call the deal off. No success.

Sure, Islamic Iran buys advanced military technology just as the Saudis do; but the difference is that in Islamic Iran there is an advanced military industry that will make buying weapons from foreign sources obsolete in another decade or so; while in American Saudi Arabia the plan for buying foreign military hardware goes on and on and on and may continue for another century if the status quo continues.

Is he who moves along, head beneath, more apt to be guided [the contemporary Saudi establishment] or he who walks composed on a path [head-up] straightforward [the current Islamic government in Iran]?

The total transformation of the Ummah requires more than just political success

by Iqbal Siddiqui July, 2012 The confirmation on June 24 that Muhammad Mursi, the candidate representing the Ikhwan al-Muslimeen, had been elected President of Egypt, has a certain air of inevitability. The Ikhwan has been established as the country’s main opposition movement for over half a century, and has been subject to official persecution for most of that time. Only its popularity and credibility among Egypt’s people has enabled it to survive numerous attempts to damage, destroy or marginalise it, and now to emerge stronger than ever before. And it was this same factor which made many of its leaders, activists and supporters confident throughout Egypt’s turbulent recent months that the Ikhwan would emerge in a position of strength once the babble of conflicting voices and messages from politicians and commentators was set aside and the Egyptian people given the opportunity to have their say. The context and implications of the Ikhwan success in Egypt are discussed elsewhere in this issue of Crescent International. The reaction among Islamic activists outside Egypt will probably be one of caution, recognising the significance of the success, but warning also that the challenges of power will be very different from those of opposition, and that numerous forces both within and outside Egypt will be doing their best to ensure that the Ikhwan are unable to fulfil the hopes that the country’s Muslims have for them. Already we have seen, in the few days between the final round of polling and the delayed announcement of the results, Egypt’s ruling generals taking extra powers for themselves specifically to ensure that Mursi’s hands are tied. Some commentators will probably also (and still) doubt the political vision and strategy of the Ikhwan’s leadership, particularly given that Mursi is not one of its established intellectual and political leaders, who were not permitted to take part in the elections. Such scepticism is perhaps understandable, and may yet be vindicated, as Mursi and his supporters face up to the realities of trying to rule Egypt from within the strict limitations imposed by the military establishment, with no doubt the tacit approval of the Western powers who claim to have championed democracy in Egypt. The powers that be in the West must have known that the Ikhwan would emerge in a powerful position in any even vaguely representative political process, as they did even in the pseudo-elections that took place under the Mubarak regime. Their calculation has evidently been that it was no longer practical to try to thwart this reality, and therefore their best bet would be to permit it while ensuring as far as possible that their key interests were protected, even though some element of Islam would have to be accommodated in some spheres of Egyptian public life. The continuing dominance of the military is no doubt a part of the West’s strategy. The new government can also expect to come under intense pressure to ensure that the US’s regional geopolitical interests are not challenged. In return, elements of “moderate Islam” in domestic Egyptian affairs will perhaps be officially tolerated — although still attacked through channels such as the international media, human rights organizations, etc. — in the hope that the Islamic movement will prove less popular in power, however restricted, than they always have in opposition. This strategy reflects a realization on the part of the West that many Muslims, including activists in the broader Islamic movement, still fail to grasp. This is that the objects of the establishment of Islam go far beyond the purely political — the establishment of Islamic states — and so require much more than political power, however achieved. The “total transformation” of Muslim societies represented by Islam (to use a phrase coined by the late Dr. Kalim Siddiqui) requires the individual and collective internalization and realization of the Islamic vision and Islamic values at all levels and in every sphere of society. This is impossible without Islamic political institutions and order; Islamic government within an Islamic state is an essential element of this process. But it is not the be all and end all. The achievement of political power is neither an essential prerequisite for beginning this process of transformation, nor proof of its completion or success. Rather it is merely a step in the process, which may be achieved early, providing the Islamic movement with invaluable powers and tools to facilitate and accelerate the broader transformation of society, as has proved to be the case with the Islamic Revolution in Iran, or may in other circumstances come later in the process, as a result of groundwork done in other areas. Either way, it is merely a step on the journey, not an end in itself. The hegemonic West has been forced by the Islamic commitment and aspirations of Muslim peoples to accommodate Islamic parties within their power structures. They hope that Muslim aspirations can be satisfied by Islamic-ish governments within non-Islamic states, thus enabling the Islamic transformation of Muslim societies to be limited to spheres in which the key interests of the hegemonic powers are not threatened. This is the context in which the successes of Islamic parties in countries such as Turkey, Tunisia and now Egypt must be seen. What Muslims must realize is that these successes are just minor steps toward the broader objectives of the Islamic movement. The total transformation of Muslim societies requires progress in many areas and spheres simultaneously, of which the political sphere is only one, albeit an important, even crucial, one. Having achieved a limited degree of power in Egypt, the Ikhwan now faces opportunities, challenges and obstacles very different to anything it has confronted before. Its enemies, and those of Islam more broadly, will hope that they will be able to cripple it and in the process do immeasurable damage to the broader Islamic movement. While supporting our brothers and sisters in Egypt as best we can, not least by reminding them of their responsibilities and warning them of the dangers they face, we must also maintain the broader perspective, in order that the historic vision, aspirations and progress of the Islamic movement is not limited to the merely political and cannot be damaged by the short-term vicissitudes of current affairs.