Israel finally launched its ground offensive in Gaza after carpet bombing the strip indiscriminately, slaughtering and massacring hundreds. Many across the world – Muslim and non-Muslim have watched in horror as Israel continued to churn out lies and as pictures of Israeli bombardment beamed around the world. Even the usual pro-Israeli influential elements within the global media have been unable to defend Israel as images of dead bodies dumped outside hospitals were beamed around the world.
The response by the Ummah to the events of Gaza globally has shown that after undergoing centuries of decline the ummah has responded as one body. The outpouring of emotion and the demonstrations around the world show that although geographically Muslims are dispersed around the world they viewed Israel’s massacre in Gaza as against a section of the Ummah and not as Palestinians or foreigners.
This shows that the Ummah has responded as one body to the attacks and we also see this has also been the case with the general onslaught the West has been leading against Muslims since 9/11.
Muslims currently all over the world are reacting as one body to the onslaught against their brothers and sisters.
This treachery of the rulers has reached a new watershed as their collaboration has been in open rather then in secret. Only 20 years ago many thinkers and scholars in the Muslim world could not sense the treachery of the Muslim rulers. However, after the first Gulf war, which was perpretrated under the pretext of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, both the American animosity and the complicity of the Muslim rulers became evident. Not only did the Gulf regimes lose credibility for allowing the American troops bases in the Hijaz and other places, but so too the Islamic scholars who justified the war. Muslims could sense the gulf between themselves and the rulers.
The role of the rulers been completely exposed; Egypt has been exposed by Israel’s most respected daily paper, Haaretz, of being informed of the attack days before it was carried out. The Arab rulers rather then sending their armies have instead attempted to attack Iran for its so called support of HAMAS. All the rulers in the Muslim world have done nothing other then attack HAMAS for causing the crisis and this has now proven to all that Israel can only carry out such attacks due to the treachery of the Muslim rulers. We have now reached a point where the fault line between the rulers and the Ummah is bigger than ever.
If we look at the recent history of the Muslim world and the relationship between the people and the rulers, we can see that this relationship has become tenuous and now the Muslims hold concepts and sentiments that fundamentally contradict that of the Muslim rulers. This gulf was not present for most of the last century.
We have witnessed how Jamal Abdul Nasser enjoyed the strongest relationship with the people. He was seen as the Arab saviour due to his wresting of the Suez Canal from the British and his stand against Israel. The Muslims believed that Jamal Abdul Nasser was reflective of them.
The Muslims hailed Yasser Arafat as one of the lions of Islam. Arafat managed to enlist hundreds of thousands of young Arab men to his rallying call for Jihad against the Israeli occupiers.
The Muslim Ummah until the late 1980’s were oblivious to the actions of King Fahd and the other Gulf rulers due to their economic prosperity and the influence of the Saudi backed scholars and movements.
The relationship between the rulers and the ruled in the Muslim world was always weak; people were apathetic to their failings for a whole host of reasons. The chasm was initially masked due to the relative strength of Arab nationalism and other ideas such as Ba’athism and Socialism. In some of the Gulf States, economic prosperity masked the underlying chasm. This was the case until 9/11. The attacks on the twin towers brought to the forefront that Muslims have a completely different view to how life should be organised relative to the West. When Muslims from the west were found fighting alongside the Taliban this sent shockwaves around the Western world, as such Muslims who were born in the West placed their loyalty with the Ummah rather then the nation they were born in. The subsequent war in Iraq and the complacency of the rulers proved to many that the Muslim rulers share virtually nothing with the Ummah.
The question that needs to be asked is: if the values the Ummah wants to live by are different to the values that are implemented over them then why do the Muslims continue to abide by these values and allow the rulers who implement them to rule over them? The answer to this is that the rulers in the Muslim world do not maintain their power by sharing a close affinity with their people, but rather through brutal methods of force and torture in order to subjugate the masses. This point is well established and does not need explanation. This has been the case for many years now and is not a new development.
Today the Muslim rulers are in political chains; trapped between subservience to an ever demanding America and the West and fear of removal by their own people. Only this week online news reports quoted unidentified diplomatic sources as saying that Egyptian authorities have arrested a number of high-ranking army officers and put military police on high alert following signs of growing resentment within the army over the way President Hosni Mubarak has handled the current situation in Gaza.
With this in mind the following points should be remembered as we move forward:
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– The Ummah globally needs to beware that the treachery of the rulers continues without shame. The Muslim rulers are deceiving the Ummah by allowing demonstrations, protests and vigils. Such actions are not enough. Muslims globally must push the rulers with all ability to mobilise the armies to fight.
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– At the same time the Ummah should expose the treachery of the rulers for not doing actions which will save the Ummah and push the armies of the Muslim world to remove such traitors. The armies will only move if they feel the Ummah globally is against such rulers who are now a liability.
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– The armies of the Muslim world themselves are part of the Ummah. They feel the problems of the Ummah. Most of the Arab rulers actually gain their legitimacy by having the army on their side and without them they are useless. A strong message needs to be sent to the armies that its time for change, which requires the removal of the rulers.
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– Muslims in the West should also be careful in working with non-Muslim groups. Many Socialist and lefty organisations are attempting to respond to Israel’s massacre making their view the best organised response in the face in injustice. It should be remembered such movements are calling for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state and lobbying Western governments who created Israel and continue to collaborate with them to solve the problem they created.
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– Whilst Muslims are forced to accept the legitimacy of Israel, Israel on the other hand is never condemned for not accepting a state for Muslims. An independent Palestine in reality is a jail for Muslims and unfortunately many Muslims have fallen prey to this. Israel never disengaged from Gaza, it simply relocated its settlers to seized West Bank land to strengthen its hold on the territory. It redeployed to new positions so it could re-enter Gaza at will. It has ensured it controls Gaza’s airspace and coastline, movement within and between Gaza and the West Bank and virtually all other aspects of Muslim lives. Since HAMAS’s January 2006 electoral victory Israel has falsely labelled HAMAS a terrorist organization, cut off all outside aid, imposed a crippling economic embargo, imprisoned 1.5 million Muslims in isolation, inflicted devastating human suffering and stepped up oppression in an all too familiar pattern: repeated incursions, killings, targeted assassinations, mass arrests, incarcerations and torture.
