Anita Rai
(Author, Jihad and Terrorism)
Copyright: www.rieas.gr
Osama bin Laden is dead. Islamist terrorism, is nonetheless alive and kicking.
US Navy Seals sealed his fate and buried him at sea. The fight against terrorism is however, far from over. This century is going to be shaped by how we fare in this war and how heavy the cost will be in terms of invaluable lives, both military service members and civilians. Muslim supremacists have thrust this war upon the free world and in order to survive we have to fight back. Human hearts should welcome the news of Osama’s elimination. Somehow the concept and clear identification, of good and evil and a clear difference between the two are lost upon many people.
“We condemn the assassination and the killing of an Arab holy warrior. We ask God to offer him mercy with the true believers and the martyrs.”
How can anyone forget the response of the people of Gaza to the news of the slaughter of 9/11? They erupted into loud cheers and vulgar chants. Sweets and candies were distributed in celebration of the carnage.
Haniya told the reporters that Hamas sees the killing of Osama bin Laden as “a continuation of the American policy based on oppression and the shedding of Muslim and Arab blood”.
We have seen comparable show of solidarity with, and sympathy for the dead terrorist in numerous Muslim countries. In Pakistan, two elected parliamentarians from two different parties lifted their hands in prayer for the departed soul of a mass murderer. This happened on the Floor of the House and the Speaker did not stop these Members of the National Assembly from praying for a terrorist. The headline of Daily Ausaf, a Pakistan-based Urdu newspaper, read: American Raid, Osama “martyred”.
An Imam of Al-Aqsa mosque when expressing his support for the dead terrorist threatened President Obama and Bush (Jr.) with death.
Imam of a mosque is extremely important for Muslims and plays an intrinsic role. Mosque plays a pivotal role in the lives of Muslims everywhere. And it acquires an immensely heightened significance on Fridays. For Muslims, Friday is the most sacred day of the week. Most Muslims including those who do not pray the daily five obligatory prayers attend the Friday congregational prayers held in the mosques. While many perform the daily prayers at home or at work, the Friday prayers would necessarily mean a large gathering of Muslims in the mosques. Khutbaah (Sermon) is an integral part of Friday congregational Salaat / Namaaz (prayer). It is delivered by the cleric of the particular mosque who leads the congregation in prayer. He is known as the Imam of the mosque.
Most of the clerics who on a weekly basis lecture large-to-huge gathering of Muslims and lead them in prayers, are devoid of any creditable education at the formal level. At most mosques the sermon comes before the obligatory prayer. Be it a mosque in a remote village of Indonesia or Bangladesh, the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the Great Mosque in Mecca or the University of Tehran, the congregation of Muslims are obligated by religious pinning to sit through the clerics’ sermons. This is how a clergy that is highly uneducated commands the attention and attendance of masses of worshippers when they are riding a religious high.
The Friday sermon has a set theme. The khateeb (lecturer/sermon-deliverer) and the mosque’s financer however have the privilege of choosing its tone and scale. Thematically, the Friday sermon is:
Christians, Jews, every other non-Muslim and those Muslims who prefer peaceful co-existence to Islamist supremacy, are all enemies of Allah, and therefore your enemies too. Infidels can never be your friends. Muslims who are friends with non-Muslims are bad Muslims and must not be trusted. These bad Muslims, Jews, Christians, and every other infidel are hostile to the fundaments of Islam, which is to convert, conquer, and coerce until all submit to the one true creed of Allah. It is therefore, the obligation of all true Muslims to fight for the destruction of Satans of all sizes (USA, UK, and other free nations) and to wipe Israel “from the face of the earth”.
Special mention is made of the “holy” warriors like Hamas and Hezbollah and in a highly charged atmosphere of religious ardour, their horrific deeds are heroised. The total thrust of the sermon is on a Muslim’s holy duty of combative jihad and how to sustain an atmosphere of continuous aggression until the Muslim domination over the infidels is complete and conclusive.
On Friday 13 March 1998, Sheikh Ali Abd-ur-Rahman al-Huzaifi, Imam of Masjid-e-Nabavi (the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, Saudi Arabia) said the following in his sermon to a huge congregation of Muslims. For Sunni Muslims, the Imam of this mosque is amongst the excellent of Allah’s creation. He is revered as a Muslim man of extraordinary virtue, wisdom, piety and truth. His words are believed to be in perfect alignment with the “Will of Allah”. In his sermon, Imam Huzaifi said:
“… How can there be any similarity, any bond between Islam and Yehudiyyat, (the Jewish faith) when… Yehudiyyat is a collection of materialism and narrow-mindedness, bears malice towards humanity, is steeped in moral degradation, greed and covetousness.
… Can the Muslims bear the presence of the Jews who call Hazrat Esa Alayhissalam (Jesus) the son of a whore? …
Similarly there is no similarity between Christianity and Islam. Islam is a pure and clean religion believing in the oneness of Allah, in Tauheed….Whereas Christianity is a deviation from the right path…
The Shias are the followers of Ibn Sabaa, the Yehudi, and of Abu Lulu, the Majoosi (Zoroastrian)… The enemies of Islam have united in their false beliefs to fight against Islam. This applies whether the enemies are of old or new.
Thus the only reason for the creation of a Jewish, Zionist state in Palestine was to start an armed conflict with the Muslims and thus create tension and terror in the region. After they had succeeded in creating Israel, the Jewish colonial powers then set in motion such basic and collective plans….Among these the major plan was to bring about a dissolution of all Sharaee courts from the Islamic countries….To a large extent the Kuffar succeeded in their aim. But praise is to Allah Ta-Aala, that the Saudi government did not fall a prey to this conspiracy and there still exist many Sharaee courts in the country. Today, amongst all the Muslim governments of the world, the government of Saudi Arabia is the only representative, model Islamic government. …forces of Kufr (infidelity) have now all united against Islam and the Muslims.
The evil intentions and aims of the world powers are:
To strengthen and fortify the Zionist, Jewish state of Israel
To tear down Al-Aqsa Mosque and build a synagogue in its place, thus satisfying the ancient desire of the Jews
To maintain the military supremacy of the Jews over the Muslim Arab countries
To appropriate a major part of the oil-wealth of the Gulf States for themselves, leaving the Saudis with the residue only
To deal a death-blow to Islam at the slightest provocation
To promote everything which is against Islam…
The Americans should learn a lesson from the Muslims of Afghanistan who had started Jihad against Russia armed with sticks only. They had thus brought about the total destruction of the super power of the day…
O people! There is religious enmity between the Muslims and the Kuffar. So how can they be the well-wishers of the Muslims? ...Muslims cannot tolerate…the presence of any power of Kufr in the Arabian Peninsula… Two religions cannot co-exist in Arabia…
Ya Allah! Confer upon the Muslims and Islam, honour and victory, upon Kufr and the Kuffar dishonour and defeat….Ya Allah! Lord of the universe cause the powers of Kufr to go to war against each other…. Ya Allah! Seize the Jews and Christians in the grip of your punishment. Seize the Hindus and the Mushrikeen (polytheists) too…. Ya Allah! Send down upon them a torment most grievous…. Ya Allah, we seek only thy shelter against the mischief of the Rawafiz (Shias), the heretics…”
The current Imam of the Great Mosque in Mecca, Sheikh Abdulrahman al-Sudais, is one of the most powerful religious advisors of the Saudi government. On Friday 19 April 2002, he delivered a sermon from the Great Mosque to a large gathering of pilgrims in which he said: the Jews are, “the dregs of the human race… the rats of the planet…killers of prophets…pigs and monkeys,” and prayed to Allah to “exterminate them”. (Laurent Murawiec, Princes of Darkness, 2003, chapter 8, p 88).
Thursday 24 March 2011, this Saudi cleric came to India upon the invitation of Jamiatul Ulema-e-Hind, an organisation of hardliner Sunni clerics. Hundreds of thousands of Muslims from different parts of the country flocked to the Darul-Uloom seminary (founded and run by Deoband Muslims who follow the Wahhabi school of Islam) in the state of Uttar Pradesh to welcome their Imam.
On Friday 25 March 2011, Imam Al-Sudais led this sea of Indian Muslims in prayer. Every road and alley leading to this Wahhabi seminary was bursting to its seams with people who had come to offer their Friday Namaaz (Salaat) under the leadership of Imam Sudais. The Friday fervour was such that worshippers prayed from every place conceivable and otherwise. Streets, lanes, pavements, parks, rooftops, terraces, verandas, back and front yards, highways – all became grounds for prayer.
Around the world the Friday prayer is followed by a Dua (supplication) marking the end of the midday worship session. Suppliant Muslims invoke Allah to annihilate the Jews and grant fataah (victory) to Filisteen (Palestine) and bless the Muslim ummah (community) with victory over the kuffar (infidels).
It is not incomprehensible why the day of Friday is so important in the “Revolutions” that are rising and rolling in the Muslim territories, and in every anti-government demonstration by Muslims living in the West.
Peace is conspicuously absent in the regimen of Friday’s obligatory congregational worship.
Muslim clerics easily obtain Visas to Western countries as appointed Imams of mosques and/or as visiting preachers/lecturers. A greater number of Sunni brand of mosques, Islamic centres, and schools in the West are run by Wahhabi and Salafi Islamists blessed by the Saudi government. Likewise, centres labelled Shiite are “inspired” and “moved” by the Islamist Revolution of Iran. The “spiritual” sustenance these “men of Allah” serve to the believers inside these places of worship has little difference to what they feed the millions of Muslims inside the mosques and madrassas in Islamic countries. Large number of young generation Muslims are growing up on a staple diet of hatred dished up to them inside places of worship.
The show put up by the mosques and Islamic centres in the West for the benefit of law enforcement and security agencies is truly a master workmanship of duplicity and hypocrisy. Every prominent Islamist organisation in the West carefully and meticulously keeps and updates a “front-office” for inter-faith understanding and peace. An army of Western educated professional Muslim brothers and sisters are assigned the ‘jihad’ of glossing the way for various government aids and charity grants to glide in. For one who is not aware of what is really going on behind the showbiz of Islamism, legions of clerics barely versed in one Western language and basic IT skills and donning robes of religion are damn convincing in their public performances. More than anything else, this has more to do with performance-based pay packets here, and a congregation of paradisiacal virgins hereafter.
Freedom of the West, enshrined in its laws, allows people of all faiths to practice, preach, and promote their faiths without any fear and discrimination. Hence, the Muslim minorities easily build mosques and religious centres in the West, some of which stand out in size and opulence. Like believers of other faiths, they too practice, preach, and promote their respective sects of Islam in an atmosphere of fairness and freedom. The minorities in Muslim countries on the other hand do not have this privilege. People are being slain just because they subscribe to faiths other than Islam. Their places of worship and those who worship therein are constantly terrorised by Muslims inflamed by Islamist clerics and preachers at home and abroad.