The Facade Of Sectarianism

‘Sectarian’ clashes in the second-most holiest site in Islam can only serve to achieve one forbidding outcome. The sight of bloodshed and hostilities in the near vicinities of this sacred site is tantamount to sacrilege in the hearts and minds of Muslims all across the globe. News of four deaths and several more critically injured in the aftermath of the recent clashes in Medina will have no doubt turned memories back to the 1987 massacre in the holy city of Makka during the annual Hajj. Despite the seemingly subsiding intensity of these clashes however, it is paramount to underline the lingering nature of its outcomes just as was the case following the massacre – which will remain to influence and shape policies vis-à-vis segments of Saudi society, and wider regional relations.

hajj-people

In order to come to terms with the motives for the recent clashes in Medina, it is crucial to highlight the ongoing geopolitical shifts in the wider region. The Middle East today stands at a unique crossroads; its peoples are witnessing the displacement of age-old power structures that have been the symbol of this region for decades. Naturally, the ‘old-guard’ is pitted against the forces of change, with dear life stuck between their teeth. As loyal and attentive students of history will no doubt attest to, power holds an incredible capacity to corrupt. An even more real but no less frightening concomitant of power lies in its longing for eternalness.

The distressing events in Medina over the last few days are not sectarian clashes, yet the principle motive of its agitators is to utilize these events to heighten regional sectarian tensions. Faced with a climate of growing Islamic solidarity and imperialist rejection, these provocateurs are placing their last hopes in heightened sectarianism to secure their loosening-grip on power. The process of awakening amongst the Arab masses throughout the Middle East is alarming the oil-sheikhdoms, and at their helm the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Riyadh and Cairo once stood tall as the nerve centres of the Middle East from where regional agendas, carefully calibrated in line with US imperialist interests, were set. Times have changed. Today, the simmering revolution in Egypt is being restrained thanks only to the firing guns of an ailing Mubarak. Saudi Arabia, which proudly lauded itself as the counter-balance to Iran can no longer maintain a steady footing, and finds itself replaced by a far more pragmatic and conciliatory, Qatar. Arguably, the final nails in the coffins of these historical ‘powerhouses’ have also been hammered down by the growing role that is being played out by a Turkey that is increasingly turning Eastwards.

The House of Saud today faces a distinctive predicament. Over recent decades, the Saudi kingdom has single-handedly pumped millions upon millions of US Dollars to fund the Wahhabi sect of Islam around the world. The Saudi monarchy which came into power on the crest of Wahhabi fanaticism, resolved to export Wahhabi ideology from 1979 with the particular aim of countering the Shia following the success of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Today, the godfathers of the Wahhabi and Salafist groups are haunted by the products of their very own making. Faced on the one hand with the return of their now matured brood, and on the other by a resolutely passionate political agenda on the Arab street strongly against US imperialism in the region, the Saudi monarchy has chosen to kill both birds with the fire of sectarianism.

The impression of a wounded fox with no other weapon in hand except for its most primordial ability to fan the fires of sectarianism is thus the proper context against which these coordinated attacks by the Saudi army aided by the fanatical ‘moral police’ (the Mutawwa’ah) ought to be seen. From Nigeria to Pakistan, Saudi policy is operating with the single goal of obfuscating the ‘awakening’ of the Arab and Muslim populous through providing regional developments with sectarian overtones. Invented terminologies like the ‘Shia tide’ and the ‘Shia crescent’ are used in line with this agenda: an agenda to polarize the unifying Muslim ranks that stand against US imperialism in the Middle East into ‘Sunni’ and ‘Shia’ bastions.

Muslims around the world, especially those who are situated in the Middle East, should be cognizant of these underlying currents. They should not allow themselves to be utilized as instruments through which the waning power of client-states in the heart of the Arab and Muslim world is consolidated. In this regard, the primary onus falls upon Muslim leaders to refrain from pitching these clashes as ‘sectarian wars’.

Ali Jawad is a political activist and a member of the AhlulBayt Islamic Mission (AIM) – http://www.aimislam.com

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The Crisis of Zionism

Nazi Star of David

Nazi Star of David

A lot was written about the evils of Zionism as a colonialist movement and Israel as a racist regime, but the role of Zionism in the Imperialist Hegemony over the Arab East is much less known and understood. Still the main role of Zionism is not the exploitation of the Palestinian people, of which they prefer to get rid by continuing ethnic cleansing, neither the building of a Jewish society in Palestine (and the subsequent exploitation of the Jewish working class). The main role of Israel is as an advanced military outpost in the middle of the Arab East to prevent Arab independence, Arab unity and the building of a national economy and democratic society.

The military character of the Israeli project is enshrined in many strategic agreements between Israel and the imperialist powers, guaranteeing the “strategic superiority” of Israel in the region.
The current imperialist hysteria against Iran’s nuclear program has only one meaning – imperialist determination to keep Israel as the only power with nuclear weapon in the area, so as to enable it to use it on need. In many recent writings by Zionist leaders they tell openly how close they were to using nuclear weapons in some of their past conflicts…

For their role in keeping imperialist hegemony over this strategically important region, the Zionist military-capitalist elites receive a wide range of economic and political privileges, which are a small fraction of the imperialists’ profits from the subjection of the Arab nation and the robbery of its natural and human resources.

Colonialism and Class

In order to be able to expel and oppress the Palestinian people, and in order to be able to militarily terrorize the whole region, the Zionists need the best of all imperialist weaponry, but they also need soldiers to fight their wars. The state of Israel uses those Jewish masses it succeeded to tempt to come to Palestine as its base of support and as the foot soldiers for its colonization, oppression and aggressive wars. It needs this immigrant community to be satisfied, to prevent it from re-immigrating to safer places, and to keep its loyalty as a fighting force.

Fear is one major force behind the intense control of Zionism over the Jews in Palestine. In this sense, Zionism is the main beneficiary of anti-Semitism and it shares its conviction that Jews can’t assimilate in the societies where they live. It also benefits, to some degree, from terrifying Jews in Palestine from the possible consequences in case Israel will loose it military dominance.

In order to provide replacement to the expelled Palestinians, the Zionist movement is bringing in Jews from all over the world. At a process of internal colonization, Jews from Arab and other third world countries are deprived of their culture and social structure, which are declared by the state as “inferior”, and their society is crashed to provide defenseless “human raw material” for the Zionist manipulation and exploitation.

But the main mean used by Israel to keep the loyalty of the Jewish masses is to make their daily way of living depend of a complex system of privileges as against the native Palestinians. This system of privileges includes every aspect of daily lives in Israel: Health and Education, Housing, Welfare, Acceptance and promotion at work, just everything. Much effort is done to involve as many Jews (from all classes) as possible in actively expropriating Arab land, in the ’48 occupied territories as well as in the West Bank and the Syrian Golan heights.

This system allows only one way for effective struggle for sections of the Jewish masses that aspire to improve their daily lives: To struggle to enhance their privileges and distance themselves from the much more oppressed and exploited Arab masses. It is not a coincidence that the most successful struggle of Oriental Jews in the last years was a campaign for more equal distribution of expropriated Arab land, waged under the slogan “this land is also mine”.

The Alternative can’t come from within the Jewish Community

Capitalist exploitation in Israel, like anywhere else, creates its contradictions and class struggle. But the acute polarization of society under colonialism prevents the class struggle from naturally evolving to a political conflict over power. Arab workers are marginalized by systematic discrimination, many of them working in unofficial or semi-official sectors of the economy where class organization is almost impossible. The most organized and combative workers are those in the more privileged, almost fully segregated, sectors. As much as struggle and local organization develops, it is put to vain by the Histadrut, the all powerful tool of the Zionist movement that is responsible to assure that trade unionist struggle is subjected to the interest of the colonialist system.

The so-called “Israeli Left” is not left at all. Sometimes it is taken to include the Israeli Labor Party, which was the central instrument of Zionist colonialism, directly responsible for both the ethnic cleansing of 1948 and the occupation of 1967. “The Labor” is till this day a full partner in all of Israel’s aggressive and racist policies and is a partner in most of its governments’ coalitions. Economically the Israeli Labor Party is as tightly connected to big business as its openly Right wing twins and it promotes neo liberal policies like privatization.

Labor’s shadow in the Zionist “left”, the small “Merez” party, which is now in opposition, is only a shade more moderate, and don’t hesitate to take part in Zionist governments of occupation and war when it gets a chance to do so. It claims to be more moderate in negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, but its main political activity is to try to engage the Palestinians in virtual negotiations and to blackmail them to give up the right of return of the refugees in order to make them more acceptable to Israeli public opinion… Merez is also well known to rely on the well to do elite, which might be a bit less aggressive than other flanks of Zionism as it sees its interest well defended in any possible settlement.

There are anti war movements, of which Peace Now was the most famous and numerous. While it expressed some popular tendency to distrust the military-political leadership and pressed the government to be less aggressive, it mostly remained under the political wings of Labor and Merez. Its logic was that Israel might allow itself some concession from a point of strength, thus denying the Palestinian refugees right of return and clinging to Jewish domination.

For a long period, the Israeli communist party tried to build an Israeli Patriotic non-Zionist left. They thought this left could cooperate with the mainstream Zionist “left” and influence it toward peace with the “external” Palestinians and to reduce discrimination against “internal” Palestinians. For this purpose they tried to limit the Palestinian struggle inside the 48 occupied territories to an agenda of civil rights, equality and peace. While they tried to heal some of the symptoms of Zionism, they accepted its main proposition of the establishment of a Jewish state. This experiment came to its futile climax when the Communist (and other Arab) votes in the Knesset were crucial to sustain the Labor government led by Rabin at the time of the Oslo agreement. Even than, Labor refused to include the Israeli Communist Party, or any other party representing Arab voters, in its governing coalition, thus stressing the exclusive Jewish character of the Zionist state and the de-legitimization of those Palestinian Arabs who are formally citizens of Israel.

As an echo of the international radicalism of the sixties of the previous century, several radical movements were formed between Jewish youth, best known by the name “Matzpen” – Compass in Hebrew. In spite of some important principled positions against Israeli colonialism and the dedicated struggle and sacrifices of some militants, those groups failed to integrate as a significant component in the Palestinian Liberation movement even while it was at its leftist radical heights. Finally those groups dried and died out within the walls of the reactionary Jewish Ghetto.

full article: www.insight-info.com

Imam Khomeini and Islamic Unity

O’ Muslims of the world! O’ followers of monotheism! The secrets behind all of the problems in Islamic countries are disunity and a failure to cooperate. The secret of success is unity and cooperation. Allah, the most high, said in one sentence: “And hold on to the rope of Allah, everyone, and do not divide.” Holding onto or clinging to the rope of Allah is a way of stating the cooperation of all Muslims with each other. Everyone should be working for Islam, be moving towards Islam, and be working for the interests of Muslims by escaping disunity which is the foundation of all failure. I ask Allah for the greatness of Islam and the Muslims and for the unity of Muslims in the world.

 Sahifah Noor, v.9, p.226, 1979

  I am hopeful that the Muslims of the world who are facing the new century will look into their problems and what causes their problems. I am hopeful that they will take themselves up from under the flags of imperialism by creating unity and moving towards Islam. Muslims who are facing the new century have felt nothing but pain from the countries of the Great Satan – they have seen nothing but crime. They must join together with Allah and think about what to do with Islam.

 Sahifah Noor, v.10, p.79, 1979

Full article: www.insight-info.com