From Masjid al-Haram to Masjid al-Aqsa…

by Zafar Bangash October, 2015 Two sacred mosques in Islam—Masjid al Haram in Makkah and Masjid al-Aqsa in al-Quds (Jerusalem)—are under threat. The global Muslim Ummah must take serious note of these challenges and take appropriate steps. The most sacred mosque in Islam—al-Masjid al-Haram—and the first qibla of the Muslims—al-Masjid al-Aqsa—are under threat: one under the occupation of the Bani Saud, the other under their Zionist kissing cousins, the Bani Isra’il. While Muslim attention is diverted to the ongoing wars in Syria and Yemen, they have been unable to pay adequate attention to what is underway in the two holy sanctuaries. In Makkah and al-Madinah, the Najdi Bedouins (Bani Saud) are busy demolishing anything that stands in their way to build obscene Western style steel, concrete and glass structures turning these holy cities into cheap replica of Las Vegas or Los Angeles. They have no regard for Islamic history or Islamic heritage sites. Their demolition crimes are compounded by their callous disregard for the safety and security of hujjaj during each Hajj. This year’s twin tragedies have brought home to Muslims the utter incompetence of the Bani Saud.

Further to the north in Al-Quds (Jerusalem), the Bani Isra’il have been busy pushing their way into Masjid al-Aqsa. Illegal Zionist squatters from North America and Europe (aka Jewish settlers), they have no regard for Muslim rights—religious, political or social. The pushy Zionists have an enabling regime in Tel Aviv headed by the war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu. The heavily armed Zionist squatters have the full backing of the even more heavily armed Zionist occupation army when they invade and desecrate the holy sanctuary. The Masjid al-Aqsa, the Dome of the Rock and a number of madrassas are located on the holy sanctuary. These are sacred to Muslims and are valiantly being protected by Palestinians with little or no help from anybody. The Zionists have made no secret of their desire to destroy the Masjid al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock to build their mythical third temple in their place. For decades, they carried out excavations underneath the holy site hoping to find some “traces” of the earlier temples but the real reason was to bring down the structures. They found nothing; there was nothing to discover. There have been no traces of the earlier temples but the Zionists have never been constrained by historical facts. In recent years, they have become much more belligerent by attacking the holy sanctuary directly. The Zionists demand the “right” to worship on the holy sanctuary even though Jewish religious law expressly forbids trespassing this sacred space. They have no right to be there.

For Muslims the challenges are clear. The three most sacred sites in Islam—Makkah, al-Madinah and Al-Quds—face a relentless onslaught from thieves and husslers. The current of regimes in the Muslim world will not lift a finger to defend Muslim rights or Islam’s historical sites. The exceptions are the Islamic Republic of Iran and such revolutionary movements as Hizbullah in Lebanon and Ansarallah in Yemen. Together with these, the global Islamic movement must raise its voice and mobilize the Ummah for the defence of its sacred sites. It will not help to protest or even cry once they are destroyed. The time to act is now!

‘Is ISIL really ‘Sunni’? Not at all’

By Kevin Barrett

The Western media describes ISIL – the ultra-extremist terrorists destabilizing Iraq and Syria – as “Sunni militants.” Headlines read: “Sunni Islamist Militants Seize Mosul.” “Sunni militants capture northern Iraqi town.” “Iraq Army Tries to Roll Back Sunni Militants’ Advance.” The corporate media casts the fighting in Iraq as a Sunni vs. Shia conflict. The Sunni side, according to these reports, is led by ISIL – a group that was expelled from al-Qaeda for being too extreme. But is ISIL really Sunni? Many experts say “no.” Some question whether ISIL has a right to call itself an Islamic group at all. In an interview with Truth Jihad Radio, Islamic scholar Dr. John Andrew Morrow (Ilyas Abd al-‘Alim Islam) questioned ISIL’s Islamic credentials: “A lot of so-called jihad (such as ISIL’s) is not rooted in Islam. Especially if you look at who’s funding it, who’s supporting it, who’s behind it. Western powers have a long history of using jihadists and Islamists to further their own imperial ambitions. In terms of the foot-soldiers, they may think they are fighting for Islam. But if you look closer, you find they’re furthering the cause of the enemy.” Dr. Morrow pointed out that much of ISIL’s behavior is patently un-Islamic. He said that the ISIL terrorists love to film themselves committing war crimes that are forbidden by Islam: “They are very proud to commit atrocities. They film it. They upload it to the internet. They have their own websites.” Dr. Morrow commented on the notorious video showing a Takfiri terrorist eating a dead soldier’s liver: “This is what Hind (an enemy of the Muslims) did. You’re not following the sahaba, you’re not following the Prophet. You’re following the polytheists who were fighting the Prophet when you start cannibalizing corpses. And there was another video of a poor Muslim sister who was strangled to death. I mean, who goes around strangling women to cries of Allahu akbar?” Continuing the habit of vaunting their un-Islamic atrocities, ISIL terrorists recently posted internet videos showing themselves murdering 1,700 captured Iraqi army soldiers. They have also reportedly killed dozens of Sunni imams who refuse to swear allegiance to ISIL. And they are killing Shia Muslims indiscriminately. If these terrorists are Sunni Muslims, why are they systematically violating the tenets of Sunni Islam? In fact, ISIL appears to be far outside of Sunni Islam. The kind of “Islam” espoused by the ISIL Takfiris is an extreme version of the Salafi-Wahhabi school of thought. These people reject the five major Islamic madhhabs (schools of thought) including the four Sunni ones. If you reject all four Sunni madhhabs, how can you call yourself Sunni? In fact, the extreme Salafi-Wahhabis, including the ultra-extreme ISIL, have broken with mainstream Islam as it has existed for fourteen centuries. By jettisoning the established Islamic madhhabs, and stepping outside of Islam as it has always been understood, they have entered a very dangerous territory in which they feel they can just make up the rules as they go along. So they make up such rules as: “It is okay to rape Christian and Shia women. It is okay to eat the internal organs of dead enemies. It is okay to marry ‘jihad brides’ for sex and divorce them after 30 minutes. It is okay to crucify Christian holy men. It is okay to strangle women to death. It is okay to mass-murder civilians. It is okay to mass-execute prisoners of war.” No Sunni in history would recognize this as Sunni Islam. Zaid Hamid, a Sunni Muslim defense analyst from Pakistan, says ISIS and related terrorist groups are not Sunnis, but Kharajite heretics serving an imperial anti-Islamic agenda. (The Kharajites were an ultra-radical group that rejected early versions of both Sunni and Shia Islam and stepped outside of the Islamic community - hence their name, which means “those who step outside.”) Hamid argues that the ultra-radical groups destabilizing Pakistan, Syria and Iraq have indeed stepped outside of Islam, and are making war on Islam and Muslims on behalf of Zionism and imperialism.

But isn’t it true that many Sunni Muslims in Iraq support ISIL? Yes and no. It is true that some ordinary Iraqis from Sunni backgrounds have joined ISIL’s insurrection in Iraq. But these are mainly pro-Saddam revanchists, not religiously-oriented Sunni Muslims. Saddam Hussein, of course, was a radical secularist whose idols were Stalin and Hitler. Saddam’s Ba’ath party was anti-religious and pro-secularist; Saddam’s hatred of the Islamic Awakening was so extreme that he launched a war on the Ayatollah Khomeini’s new Islamic Republic in hopes of preventing the rebirth of Islam. So to call the Saddam Hussein supporters who are joining with ISIL “Sunnis” is misleading. Saddam’s forces, like ISIL, are opposed to Islam in both its traditional Sunni and Shia forms. The full name of Sunnism is “the people of the Tradition of the Prophet and the consensus of the community” (ahl as-sunnah wa l-jamaʻah). Eating the livers of dead enemies is not part of the Tradition of the Prophet – it is the tradition of the enemies of the Prophet. And such behavior is obviously not approved by the consensus of the Muslim community. The Tradition of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) is one of inclusion, tolerance, mutual respect, and the forging of alliances between people of different tribes and religions. The original Muslim community, whose founding document is the Constitution of Medina, consisted of Christians, Jews and Muslims living together and sharing power and obligations on an equitable basis. The real Sunna (Tradition) holds to reason and persuasion, and uses violence only as a last resort. The Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and his Family and Companions preached peacefully for 12 years, despite atrocious persecution, before God finally authorized them to fight back in self-defense. The real Tradition of the Prophet respects knowledge so much that “the ink of the scholar is more precious than the blood of the martyr.” And the consensus of the Islamic community is that the work of 14 centuries worth of Islamic scholarship – the five major Islamic madhhabs, both the four Sunni madhhabs and the Shia Ja’fari madhhab – collectively represents mainstream Islam. All Sunni Muslims have tremendous respect for Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq, who founded the main Shia madhhab. The terrorists who reject this tremendous scholarly achievement, and want to kill everyone who disagrees with them, are far outside of normative Sunni Islam. So why does the Western mainstream media insist on calling anti-Sunni, anti-Shia groups like ISIL “Sunni”? Perhaps the problem is laziness. Since ISIL has a special hatred for Shia Muslims, the simplest way to portray them is to paint the situation as an alleged Sunni vs. Shia conflict. By defaulting to this lowest-common-denominator description, the media absolves itself from the duty of explaining, in detail, what is actually going on. But it is also possible that the corporate media is intentionally misreporting the situation. The extreme-Zionist neoconservatives launched the US invasion of Iraq in order to break up that country, and the Middle East as a whole, by inciting ethnic and sectarian strife. The “Sunni vs. Shia” meme was created and spread by the Occupiers through a wave of false-flag terrorism. Perhaps the media is trumpeting that meme in order to propagate it. In any case, the world’s Sunni Muslims are being slandered every time the media calls ISIL “Sunni.” It is time for Sunnis to reject this mischaracterization of their religion. Perhaps Sunni Muslims should file a class action lawsuit against the media outlets that are spreading this calumny.

Arabia Without Sultanism

The Arab streets everywhere are now teeming
with popular demands for real change.
By Kaveh Afrasiabi

The late Fred Halliday, a keen observer of the laboratory of Middle East politics, once at the tender age of 28 penned an impressive book titled Arabia Without Sultan,
in mid-1970s. Years later, Halliday, who was a friend of this author,(1) once told me that he no longer subscribed to a bulk of his analysis in that book -- that was written from a Marxian perspective and vested undue hope in the leftnationalist movements ‘from the blow’ to topple the western- backed sultanist regimes in the oil region of Persian Gulf.

Still, Halliday clung to his historical materialist view that the narrow elites of those oil sheikhdoms and their fragmentary legitimation due to the profound social stratifications and unjust hierarchies and exclusionary politics were bound to experience significant jolts sooner or later and that it was simply a matter of time before the winds of change traversed the semi-closed waters of Persian Gulf and reached them too in the contemporary context of “post-cold war era.” Nearly 40 yrears later, Halliday’s astute predictions appear to be somewhat exonerated by the prospects of an Arabia without Sultanism that is a shade different from the type of wholesale regime change foreseen by him, for in both the Persian Gulf region and the wider Arab world we are witnessing the dawn of a new era where the volcanic rupture of mass movements for democracy, as in Jordan, Kuwait and Bahrain, may culminate less in outright regime change and more in incremental, albeit significant, democratization, understood as a process of institutional change portending the wresting away of concentrated power in the monarchical hands and into the representative hands of assemblies, councils, etc., altogether featuring a rapid metamorphosis, or said otherwise re-inventing, of those regimes along inclusionary and participatory lines. Enough hand-picked and rubber-stamped “consultative” councils or assemblies, and limited and exclusionary elections that defy the elementary meaning of true elections with genuine impact on the reified and antiquated status quo aptly perpetuated by the praetorian guards and foreign powers. The Arab streets everywhere are now teeming with popular demands for real change, and in the case of Arabia’s sultans this means the end of business as usual mandating drastic measures to make the necessary adjustments that may be painful to the ruling families and their system of patronage keenly cultivated throughout their political systems, yet inevitable if they want to prevent a massive revolution from the below.

King Abdullah II Of Jordan 10 Year Anniversary Celebration
Thus, the cabinet changes and shuffling of government personalities, witnessed nowadays
in several Arab monarchies, go hand in hand with the reluctant nods from the top to the popular demands for accountability, anti-corruption and nepotism, independence and democracy (within limits). After decades of development without liberalization, the stage is now set to close the gap and sail through the turbulent channels of change that dictate the abrogation of big chunks of monarchical power and privilege in favor of “people’s power.” Spelling doom for the future of dynastic Sultanism, the current trend is toward a new political narrative that indicates the acidic mixture of democratic institutions, such as effective, representative parliaments and an independent judiciary, with the relics of the past, above all the monarchies.


Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, King of Kuwait
The irony of conservative monarchies, forced into the uncomfortable position of initiating self-reform as a result of intensifying pressures from the below, is incomprehensible save through the intricate lenses of democratization in tune with the intricacies of local customs and traditions. In the new Arabia without Sultanism the sultans can survive only by being the grave diggers of their own sultanist power and authority, that is nowadays the focus of popular anger seeking a more diffuse and participatory political system. Whether or not the co-habitation remains temporary depends on multiple factors, chiefly the balance of forces and the ability of rulers to re-invent themselves as stakeholders in the movement for change, rather than as simply the targets of those changes.

In the case of Bahrain, where the embattled ruler has put the crown prince in charge of mapping a new course of action to appease the revolting population, now squarely in possession of the Pearl Square in Manama, this would mean power-sharing with the hitherto disenfranchised Shiite majority who yearn for citizen input and equal rights. The Sunni-led order, backed by Saudi Arabia and US power, is no longer tenable and nothing can prevent the winds of change that drift in the direction of a future coalition of Sunnis and Shiites running the government and controlling its various branches including its legislative and judicial branches. Without doubt, Bahrain’s foreign behavior and its present allegiances to US power will not remain immuned from the important domestic changes gripping the country, no matter what the degree of US’s unhappiness over these developments ringing “chaos” and “insecurity” for US’s vested interests in the region. A corresponding diminishing role and influence of US power in Bahrain is inserted in the scripts for change, albeit in a subtle way that will likely become more pronounced in the future as the internal dynamics of change shows is foreign ramifications. The US may end up keeping its naval headquarters and bases in Bahrain, but will likely come under increased pressure and scrutiny that will, in turn, put certain limits on the conduct of US military power, e.g., the US will no longer be able to take for granted that Bahrain will be a passive observer of any action against the neighboring Iran. Instead, the “new Bahrain” may consent to continuing US military presence on the condition that it will refrain from any unilateral action against Iran or any other regional player. This would clearly represent a net loss for the hitherto unfettered US military movement and power projection in the region, but one that the US may have to bite the bullet and accept, as still a better alternative than pushing the status quo ante to a reluctant population to no avail. The end-game may be not just the decline but the evaporation of US, and altogether
western, hegemony in the region, but the intermediate future bespeaks of a mixed narrative that is wrought with the tensions of an odd coupling, the strange bedfellows of monarchy and democracy.

Zafar Bangash on the true purpose of Hajj and its despoilment under the Saudi regime

Zafar Bangash on the true purpose of Hajj and its despoilment under the Saudi regime


December 2007


This month, an estimated 2 million Muslims will gather in the Hijaz for the Hajj, the annual gathering of the Ummah in accordance with the orders of Allah swt. and the Seerah of the Prophet. But the Hajj they perform, ZAFAR BANGASH, Director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought (ICIT) says, is far removed from what it is supposed to be.


If the past is any guide, an estimated two million Muslims will perform Hajj this year as well. There is another tradition that will be followed to the letter: Hajj will be performed in a mechanical way without most hujjaj ever realising why Allah wants them to go through such a physically and financially demanding exercise. Is there any other purpose beyond visiting the House of Allah for a specified number of days? No doubt visiting the Masjid al-Haram in Makkah is a richly rewarding experience in itself; how many of the world’s 1.8 billion Muslims will have this honour in their lifetime?
But it behooves us to ask what the real purpose of Hajj is, and why it is not realized at present. What factors are involved in preventing Muslims from understanding the real purposes and significance of Hajj, based on the teachings of the Qur’an and the life-struggle of Prophets Ibrahim and Muhammad, upon them both be peace and blessings, whose Sunnah the Muslims are trying to follow by performing Hajj?

Let us compare this with another obligatory duty of Muslims: the five-times daily salah. If an average Muslim were asked to describe it, the likely explanation would include the following: to be in a state of tahara (cleanliness), perform wudu, make the niyah, and the mechanics of how salah is performed. Some might even mention that since it is one of the faraid (compulsory acts of ibadah) it has to be performed regularly. All these descriptions and explanations are correct, but they do not reflect its true significance. The word salah is derived from the Arabic root sila, meaning link. Thus, salah is the renewal of our link with Allah by our standing before Him. When we utter the takbir al-ahram to start our salah, we turn our backs on the world around us and initiate direct communication with Allah, praising and thanking Him for what He has bestowed upon us and beseeching Him for His help and guidance. There are two other aspects that must be kept in mind: salah is a great leveller, and is meant to instill discipline. When we stand for salah, all distinctions of class, position and authority are obliterated; whether rich or poor, big or small, official or layman, all are equal before Allah; the only thing that counts is our taqwa.
Like salah, Hajj too has been reduced to a few rituals without appreciating its true meaning or significance. Allah subhanahu wa ta‘ala says in the noble Qur’an: “And people owe Allah [the obligation of] Hajj to the Sacred House; [that is] for those who have the means and the ability to undertake the journey” (Q. 3:97). The “means” and “ability” refer to both financial and emotional as well as physical ability to fulfil the task.
Hajj is the re-enactment of the struggles of Ibrahim and Ismail (as). But we must also remember that Ibrahim (as) was a rebel against the power of taghoot in his native land. For rejecting his people’s false gods, he was thrown into the fire by Nimrod but miraculously saved by Allah. Are we prepared to rebel against the taghoots of our time, or we are content with simply indulging in the rituals of Hajj without understanding the struggle of Ibrahim (as) or reliving it?
There are two other aspects of Hajj that demand attention. First, Hajj is the grand annual assembly of the Ummah, unmatched by any other event in history. It is meant to reflect the unity of the Ummah. Although Muslims gather from all over the world for Hajj, the vast majority come and go quite oblivious of the plight of their fellow Muslims. This is a great opportunity wasted. Allah wants us to get to know each other; Hajj provides a perfect occasion for us to do so, and yet most Muslims perform Hajj in the company of millions of fellow Muslims but remain totally oblivious of their problems or suffering.
This is not accidental; such behaviour has been deliberately cultivated. To understand how Muslims have fallen into this, we need to examine recent history. At the beginning of the last century, the British and French competed for control of the Middle East. The British had realized the significance of the Hijaz, especially the two holy cities of Makkah and Madinah that were administered by the Uthmaniyya khilafah. These are important places for mobilizing Muslims. A British officer, Captain R.F Burton, later to become famous as Sir Richard Burton, had expressed concern as early as the 1850s that Makkah and Madinah could be used to propagate ideas that are hostile to Britain, which had colonised large parts of the Muslim world. This was spelled out even more clearly by the British Consul General in Jeddah, a person named Zohrab. In a message to the Foreign Office in London in 1902, he wrote: “The point of real importance to England politically, I believe is that Hijaz is the focal point of Muslim thought and the nucleus from which radiate ideas, advice, instructions and dogmatic implications… The Hijaz is also a point of much political importance to England and its relations with India… [Certain persons] I am persuaded proceed on the Hajj for political reasons. Makkah being free of European intrusion is safe ground on which gatherings can be held, and ideas exchanged. Up to the present time we have kept no watch on those who come and go… Thus meetings may be convened at Makkah at which combinations hostile to us may form without our knowing anything till the shell bursts in our midst… If this Consulate could have a trusted Mussalman agent in Makkah, I believe a great deal of valuable intelligence could be obtained.”
The British consul general’s warning and advice were taken so seriously in London that soon Britain had not one but two trusted “Mussalman” agents serving it in the Arabian Peninsula. One was Sharif Husain ibn Ali of Makkah, who had been appointed by the Turks as governor of the Hijaz in November 1908; the other was Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, founder of the present-day kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Both were paid £5,000 sterling per month and a lump sum of £20,000 annually, according to a statement by Winston Churchill, then British secretary for the colonies, in the House of Commons on March 2, 1922. The two British agents first undermined Turkish rule in the Arabian Peninsula, and later fought each other for control of the Hijaz. Abdul Aziz ibn Saud with his Bedouin hordes turned out to be more ruthless and was successful in driving Sharif Husain out of the Hijaz.
In order to placate Husain, the British carved out Trans-Jordan from the Turkish province of Palestine (which they had occupied in 1918) and placed one of Sharif Husain’s sons, Abdullah, on its throne; his other son, Faisal, was handed control of Syria. Faisal was driven out of there but the British made him king of Iraq, which they also controlled. Even that did not last long; Iraqi Ba‘ath nationalists murdered his grandson Faisal II and the hopes of Husain’s family ruling the entire Arabian Peninsula were dashed. It was left in control of Jordan only, where it continues to this day, under the pompous title of “the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan”, though it is little more than a US-zionist colony serving the interests of the enemies of Islam.
The brigand Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, who had made his mark by robbing pilgrims’ caravans, had consolidated his grip on the entire Arabian Peninsula, including the Hijaz, by 1932, thanks to British military and financial help. He named it “Saudi” Arabia in complete violation of the Prophet’s Sunnah; he (saw) had named this blessed land the Arabian Peninsula. Abdul Aziz and the Aal-e Saud continued to act as British agents until the second world war and then switched to serving American interests once the US emerged as a major power on the world stage. As part of its duties, the House of Saud prevents any activity at the time of Hajj that would lead to criticism of US policies. The Saudis serve their American masters rather than Allah subhanahu wa ta‘ala. This explains why Muslims are prevented from using Hajj as a unifying force for the Ummah or as an occasion to find solutions for its many problems.
We should also bear in mind that while the House of Saud treats the Arabian Peninsula, including Makkah and Madinah, as family property, refusing to heed Muslim advice on the status and administration of the Haramain, this was not always the case. Until 1957 the Nawab of Hyderabad Deccan paid an annual subsidy of £25 million for the maintenance of Makkah and Madinah and for services to the hujjaj. Oil had been discovered in the Arabian Peninsula much earlier, but Western oil-companies paid such a pittance for it that the House of Saud could not afford proper maintenance of the Haramain (Makkah and Madinah) without outside help. It was only after 1957 that they started to bear the costs on their own. What this shows is that the Ummah has never recognised the Haramain as the private property of Aal-e Saud; they are illegal occupiers of these holy places and have caused much damage to them.
Under the pretext of providing “better services” to the hujjaj, the historic sites of Makkah and Madinah have been systematically destroyed. In their place have emerged Western-style concrete buildings—five-star hotels, shopping plazas with such western food-chains as Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken and grease-filled McDonald hamburgers that cater to the tastes of Westernized Muslims but despoil the spiritual environments of Makkah and Madinah. Throughout the world people preserve their historic sites as cherished monuments; the House of Saud is busy obliterating the holy sites of Islam. Today there is no trace of the house where the Prophet (saw) was born or of the house where he lived with Umm al-Mu’mineen Khadija (ra) in Makkah. Madinah’s historic sites have suffered similar destruction. By contrast, relics that promote and project the history of the House of Saud are carefully preserved.
In addition to the physical destruction of Makkah and Madinah, there is an equally serious attempt underway to empty the Hajj of its true divine content and meaning. Allah subhanahu wa ta‘ala commands in the Qur’an that during Hajj, Muslims must proclaim their dissociation (bara’a) from the mushrikeen (Q. 9: 1-18). These ayaat were revealed in the ninth year of the hijrah, when the Muslims, led by Abu Bakr Siddiq (ra), had already left Madinah for Makkah to perform Hajj. The Prophet, upon whom be peace, immediately dispatched Imam Ali (ra) to proclaim these ayaat at the time of Hajj. This open and clear dissociation from the mushrikeen is a Qur’anic command, yet under the weight of official dogma and historical perversion it has been abandoned and almost totally forgotten. One must ask why so few ulama draw attention to this important command of the Qur’an. In fact, these ayaat are seldom or never mentioned in the context of Hajj. Why? Are Muslims not suffering grievously at the hands of the present-day mushrikeen—the rulers of America, Britain, France, Israel, India and the like? If the answer is yes (and there is no other possible answer), why is the occasion of Hajj not used to mobilise the Ummah to defend Muslims from the crimes of these enemies of Islam? How much more suffering must Muslims endure before the Hajj can be restored to its proper role: a unique annual focal point for asserting the unity of the Ummah, commitment to the cause of Allah, and our determination to stand against all the oppressive forces in the world, in line with Divine command and the example of Allah’s Messenger (saw)? The plight of the people of Palestine and the continued occupation of al-Quds by the zionists, the horrendous crimes being perpetrated in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir and Chechnya, and other atrocities elsewhere, make it imperative that the Hajj be used as an occasion to mobilise Muslims against the enemies of Islam and the Ummah.
There is a symbiotic relationship between the ritualisation (and therefore trivialisation) of the Hajj and the imposition of Western-style architecture on the sacred environment of the Haramain. Both are meant to keep Muslims distracted by mundane things — rituals at Hajj and consumerism of the worst kind in the marketplace — so that the Muslims have no time or attention left for reflection or to find solutions to the problems facing the Ummah. Exposing the enemies of Islam would also expose the House of Saud as agents of the mushrikeen; that would hardly be conducive to their continued control of the Haramain. Their determination to prevent implementation of a divine command is in total violation of Islam’s law and is the worst kind of bida‘ imaginable. Are we Muslims willing to change all this, or shall we continue to ignore the most important aspect of Hajj and thus make ourselves guilty of violating Allah’s command?