Time is running out in the Muslim East

Zafar Bangash is Director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought

The Islamic Arab East has fire in its belly. The popular mood is: “fa-al-yasqut al-nizam — down with the regime.” Masses of people are breaking the fear barrier and expressing their century-old, pent-up feelings. Some dictators have been toppled, others are teetering, and still others are trying to change laws and make amends before they, too, are swept away by the people’s fury. It all began in Tunisia when a vendor, out of desperation, set himself on fire because the police denied him a permit to sell vegetables to make a living. That one act in a cauldron of seething popular resentment and frustration set off a chain of events that began in Tunisia, immediately followed by Egypt, and then spread to other countries whose people have had it with playboy Pharaohs and tin-pot tyrants along with their drooling luxury classes.

Ever since then, the media has focused attention on this life-sized event. Some media refer to it as the Arab Spring; others call it the Islamic Awakening. Whatever one’s choice of words, the dust has not settled yet. In this popular movement, what is unmistakable is the beginning of the unraveling of the old imposed political order on the Islamic peoples in that geographic area of the world. And the chances are that in a few months, at most a couple of years, other populations will erupt and bring down their own IMF-World Bank sponsored regimes. Already, Greece, Spain and Portugal have witnessed popular protests that threaten the stability of governments in Athens, Madrid, and Lisbon.

Roughly speaking, the popular movements in the southern and eastern Mediterranean fit into three broad categories. The first is the spontaneous or self-generated, as in Tunisia and Egypt.

The second is the pre-existing: examples include Yemen and Jordan. Third, there are the contaminated, such as Libya and Syria. Another category, not much in the news as yet, is what can be characterized as the latent — the ones that are not presently in eruption. Included in this last category are such states as Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and the tribal states in the Persian Gulf. The only exception in the Persian Gulf is Bahrain, which may be included in the first category above. Much has been said and written about this excitement and the arousal of these peoples who have one thing in common: they all lack representative government and have been forced to live at the survival level for decades.

Up to this point, no Muslim has any objection. But from here on it gets tricky, messy, ugly, and nasty. Some wet-behind-the-ears Muslims are going to feel uncomfortable with what we have to say; but we are not writing for people to enjoy a comfort zone. The truth sometimes stings. So let us go ahead and say it as it is.

The peoples’ movement (let us call it that) took two opposite camps by surprise. Firstly, it caught the imperialists and Zionists off guard. No one with a functioning mind can deny the fact that the loss of Zine el-Abidine Ben ‘Ali in Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt is a grand loss for their remote controllers in Tel Aviv. Now Benjamin Netanyahu and company have no slicked-up proxies in the presidential palaces in Tunis and Cairo. The Israeli political establishment is and has been in damage-control mode ever since. Recent leaks indicate they are working through their American channels to ease out Field Marshal Mohamed Husain Tantawi in Egypt who appears too independent for them. Tantawi is not playing the American card in Egyptian internal politics. The Americans want the September elections postponed because they fear a significant Islamic gain in these “early elections”. And the Israelis are experiencing frequent and watery bowel movements simply because they cannot digest the Egyptian main course.

Secondly, the opposite camp that was taken by surprise was the “Islamists” themselves. Up and down the Islamic political spectrum in Egypt no one was prepared for this type of explosion of the popular will. Not that they feel unhappy about what has happened; on the contrary, most members of the Islamic Movement in Egypt are cheerful and excited that the Pharaoh is gone and they have a chance of rearranging Egyptian society in an Islamic way. Hold on, though: we said “most of the members of the Islamic Movement” — because the dumbed down salafi-Saudis had come out last January at the beginning of the popular movement, saying things like: demonstrations are thankless acts (a‘mal ghayr mahmudah), or that they are a bid‘ah. This word bid‘ah must be their favorite recourse to abort any human ijtihad to do the fara’id (Islamic obligations). The poor enlightened sons of the global Islamic Movement do not have the finances to counter the high decibel Saudi voice of bid‘ah with the word ijtihad. And for Muslims who know their history well, it was that time in Islamic history when the mentality of bid‘ah set in that phased out ijtihad.

And since that time the bid‘ah ‘ulama have reigned supreme. Their heirs are the current Saudi ignoramuses who, in the name of bid‘ah forbid their mothers, daughters, sisters, and wives from driving vehicles. Without going off on a bid‘ah tangent here, even the Islamic Movements beyond Egypt were caught by surprise. And now they are in “catch-up” mode. We dare not think of what Egypt would look like if the well-financed Saudi contingent of the Islamic Movement turns the civilizational and cosmopolitan land of the Nile into an Egyptian version of Saudi Arabia! Imagine a salafi king of Egypt! With all the loops and gaps in the literature of the Islamic Movement no one should be surprised if in the years to come we wind up with a Saudi Arabian Egypt.

Now we get to the nerves and bones of the issue. “Sunni” Muslims, generally speaking, cannot concede the natural right of the people in Bahrain to form their own representative government. The majority population in Bahrain is “Shi‘i”. So, why does any Muslim have second-thoughts about the masses of Bahrainis dethroning a king who is an absolute monarch and whose ambassador to Washington is a Yahudiyah? The Bahrainis, every Muslim should say, have all the right in the world to a representative government; and if that representative government wants closer relations with Islamic Iran than with American Saudi Arabia, all the best to them. No Muslim in Indonesia or Algeria should lose any sleep if the Bahraini people were to rid themselves of a king who has prostituted his country to the American Fifth Fleet (literally).

Now we go to a more sensitive issue. “Shi‘i” Muslims, generally speaking, cannot concede the natural right of the people in Syria to form their own representative government. The majority population in Syria is “Sunni.” So, why does any Muslim have second-thoughts about the Syrian masses unseating a regime that has shown its anti-Islamic colors during the course of the last four decades? Only last year it wanted to host a pan-Arab conference on secularism, which was canceled days before it was to be convened, probably because of positive influence coming out of Tehran. The same regime was doing an Ataturk in the past few years by barring Islamic dress code in government schools. The only argument the Syrian government may have is its support for Hizbullah in Lebanon and the myriad Palestinian resistance groups in Damascus, especially Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The Ba‘thi regime in Damascus, in and of itself, would not have gone so far in supporting Islamic liberation orientations had it not been for positive influence from the Islamic Republic of Iran.

But at the end of the day, the government in Damascus rules the Syrian people, not the Palestinians. So, why can’t a reasonable and levelheaded Muslim concede the right of the Syrian people to have a government that represents them? The inability of the Syrian decision makers to be politically inclusive of their own people is what gives Washington and Tel Aviv inroads into a heartsick and fatalistic population. The stubborn and bloody official policies of the political and military establishments in Syria are playing into Zionist and imperialist hands. The more blood that is spilled in Syria, the more years it will take to stabilize that society — that is if the society can survive these polarizing events. The Muslims in Syria, like Muslims elsewhere, do not have an “Islamic political culture”. In this vacuum, the Saudi Wahhabi nutcases will feed their acolytes the venom of sectarianism. And the sectarianism of “Sunnis” will breed the sectarianism of the “Shi‘is” and this will result in the “Iraqization” of all countries that have a “Sunni-Shi‘i” population in them. Sayyid Hasan Nasrullah was on the mark when he said (and I paraphrase him): “if this thing begins here (in Bilad al-Sham) its fires will rage on into Arabia itself.”

If anyone, anywhere needed the good offices of the Islamic Republic of Iran it is here in this context. Only the Islamic Republic of Iran has the credentials and merit to preempt this sectarian fireball from scorching Syria-south and Arabia-north. A reformed Syria with all its anti-Zionist and pro-Islamic potential is much better than an alternative American-Israeli-Saudi friendly regime that sneaks into power via the victimhood of the Syrian people.


Certainly, Allah does not change the [social] condition of a people until they change their attitude (13:11).

No, he is not an American agent!

Abu Dharr

Caution! This article is not written for the rationally disabled or for those who are reproach-free.

In the past month, the world was abuzz with the announcement of the American president that US forces had killed Osama bin Laden (OBL). We seriously doubt that Osama bin Laden was killed at the time, in the manner, or at the place they officially said he was. Many alternative news media have done the job of debunking and repudiating the official US version of Osama’s death. At this point, we take a moment to look beyond statements of the ruling class in Washington, at this Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda political widget.

Before OBL and al-Qaeda sprang into the public mind (this was in the early to mid-1990s) there was an Islamic leadership and an Islamic heroic sacrifice that had Washington and Tel Aviv politically hypnotized and militarily confounded — and that is the Islamic Revolution and its political administration in Iran. All Euro-American and Ziono-American policies were for more than a decade preoccupied with policies and in fact haunted with strategies of how to diminish or defeat in a conclusive manner the first burst of Islamic self-determination in the contemporary world.

Their proxy in Baghdad failed through a long and drawn out war to bring the Islamic Revolution and the Islamic purpose in Iran to its knees. Parallel to that, the Zionist military in occupied Lebanon was taking a beating at the hands of Hizbullah and the Islamic resistance until they finally had to withdraw their occupation forces in ignominy (May 2000). The ruling elites in Washington and Tel Aviv were sitting on thorns as they watched their incompetence and deterioration unfold from an ascending Iran to an aspiring Hizbullah. The new set of anti-American and anti-Zionist circumstances demanded a “stroke of genius”. Enter the Taliban and al-Qaeda. To refresh one’s memory, Afghanistan for a decade and a half (1979–1995) was swarming with mujahidin from many corners of the earth, particularly those who marched there from Arabia to the cadence of an American-Arabian master plan for jihad to defeat the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

Tens of thousands of mujahidin were all over Afghanistan fighting valiantly against the brutal Soviet occupation not knowing they were being used by the Saudis, who themselves were being used by the Americans, who in turn were being used by the climactic interests of the Yahud. As long as these credulous and trusting warriors in Afghanistan were fighting the evil empire they were heroic mujahidin in the political literature of Arabia and America, until finally the Soviets were defeated. Now that the Soviets were out of Afghanistan, what do you do with a reserve of hardened combatants who were on the warpath in Afghanistan? Combatants who were motivated to take on an Islamic enemy militarily? Behold the kickoff of al-Qaeda and OBL. To set the stage for that we had tens of thousands of Taliban (religious students) acting like professional soldiers, experienced commanders, and competent armed forces moving from Pakistan into Afghanistan at a time when the Afghans were slugging it out against themselves (remember the major polarized “Islamic” forces around Ahmad Shah Mas‘ud and Gulbuddin Hikmatyar?)

Well now there was a new kid in town. The Taliban became the rulers of Afghanistan with the support and recognition of three US satellite nation-states: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). In this Taliban enclave we had the bourgeoning of al-Qaeda and its leader OBL. Let us make it very clear that many if not all the Islamic foot-soldiers in al-Qaeda and to a lesser extent in the Taliban are sincere and single-minded Muslims. In their heart they went out on a course of jihad for the sole purpose of raising the banner of Islam high and eminent. The problem with them was not in their heart and motivation; it was in their mind and cognition. Little were they aware of the fact that they were pawns on a global chessboard of duplicity, chicanery, and enmity.

What were the consequences of this “Emirate of Afghanistan”, an emirate whose emotions were running ahead of its mind? In the first instance, we had the implementation of “Shari‘ah” in what may be described as a premature manner. Remember, Afghanistan was a country devastated by war; hunger and poverty were rampant and all around. Families were torn apart and dislocated. State institutions were not present. A civil war was still brewing. And in the middle of all this, without any forethought, the Taliban-al-Qaeda duo began implementing Islamic law on a population that is living at a sub-society level and with social and economic conditions that are akin in some aspects to the society in Madinah and Arabia when ‘Umar (d) suspended “legality” to relieve people who were living at the survival level. But you can’t tell that to these emotionally charged but rationally bereft officials. Then came their oddball and madcap act in which they blasted the stone chiselled image of the Buddha. As if all the previous Muslim generations dating all the way back to the days of the sahabah did not discover this “idol” but these Taliban and al-Qaeda types did. And boom! Even a delegation of Muslim scholars headed by none other than Shaikh Yusuf al-Qardawi could not convince them otherwise. These emotions-first, thoughts-last types were passionately programmed to “enjoin what is good and forbid what is evil” as they saw it, and only as they saw it — as they are al-fi’atu al-najiyah (the saved and redeemed faithful) — in reference to their oft-quoted hadith about the Ummah disintegrating into 73 groups all of them condemned except one.

And to further prove their mettle, they went to Mazar-e-Sharif to kill Shi‘i Muslims there and to make sure they kill Iranian Shi‘i Muslims, some of whom had “political immunity” — if that ever was any consideration in their vocabulary and definition of rawafid! These Zionist and imperialist, well-monitored specimens of “Islamic Fundamentalism” passed their test with flying colors. They proved that they have what it takes to plunge the whole Muslim world into a dark age of obscurantism and Islamic civil wars that will extend imperialism’s looting of Muslim resources and Zionism’s occupation of Islamic lands. Before the grand performance of 9/11 there had to be some feats-of-camouflage. So we had the American embassy bombing in Africa and the USS Cole attack off the coast of Yemen. As this imperialist and Zionist media-sponsored presentation of OBL and al-Qaeda eclipsed to a large extent the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the Islamic liberation in Lebanon the show went on and the denouement took place on 9/11. OBL, after initially denying any involvement, emerged as an iconic hero or sensational villain to all those who also had their emotions trumping their thoughts. And the rest is history as they say.

Having said all of the above — and there is much more that you can fill in with the information that a Muslim mind can glean — we do not for one moment mean to say that OBL and those with him were CIA agents or imperialist toadies. Such is the role of Turki and Bandar among a cabal of Saudi others. Rather OBL in ways that were unknown to him became an executor of necessary movements that would justify imperialist wars and occupations. In his wildest dreams he probably never knew that he was being set up and prompted to do, more or less, exactly what he and his vacuous brethren-in-arms were doing. This is what happens when individuals are brought up in the tedious and deadening religious climate of an American Saudi Arabia. Uncommon and remarkable as it is, we have a person (OBL) who deep down inside of himself thinks that he is taking on the enemies of Islam — and this is attested to by his sermons and statements — while at the same time he becomes the imperial instrument in setting off a chain of events that are needed by imperialists and Zionists to justify their military occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq and their political movements to unseat rulers who are outdated and no longer useful in the broad imperialist schemata of things.

The takfiri soul of the salafi body of Saudi sponsored zealots was used to the hilt by Zionists and imperialists in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Persian Gulf, and elsewhere to bleed the Muslim body into imperialist submission. There are many Muslims around the world who cannot see how manipulative-prone other Muslims become when they have not thought through their God-given responsibilities. The Saudi kingdom by taking the Muslim mind out of the Qur’an and Sunnah has provided imperialism and Zionism with diehards who think they are doing Allah’s (swt) will, not realizing they are undeclared proxies of the enemies they are purportedly fighting against.


Say, “Shall We tell you who are the greatest losers in whatever they do? [It is] they whose efforts have gone astray in this world’s life, and who nonetheless think that they are doing good works: it is they who have chosen to reject their Sustainer’s power illustrations and encounter.” Hence, all their [good] deeds come to nought, and no weight shall We assign to them on Resurrection Day (18:103–105).


The Islamic Revolution and Islamic liberation have weathered this attack from within — by the Saudi regime directly and by the Israeli and American regimes indirectly.