It was a terrifying scene at the international airport of Dagestan when a fanatic mob of Muslims chanting ‘Allahu Akbar’ entered the airport lounge and smashed their way onto the runway. They then rushed towards Red Wings, a Russian airliner flight WZ 4728, which took off from Tel Aviv and landed at the Dagestan airport. The mob wanted to get the passengers on board, drag them out of the aircraft and lynch them on the tarmac of the runway. Their only crime was that they were suspected of being Jewish.
From London to Glasgow and from New York to Paris, hundreds of thousands of pro-Palestinian Muslims from all races and colour have been constantly on the streets since Israel retaliated against the Hamas attack of October 7, chanting anti-semantic slogans and calling for the complete annihilation of the state of Israel. In the United Kingdom, the Muslim mayor of London Sadiq Khan, the Muslim Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf, the leader of the Muslim Scottish Labour Party and the Opposition leader Scottish Parliament Anas Sarwar have divided British politics right in the middle on the lines of religion.
As Labour leader Keir Starmer refuses to call for a Hamas-Israel ceasefire, the above-mentioned three stooges are adamant that a humanitarian aid corridor should be open for the citizens of Gaza and therefore a humanitarian ceasefire should commence. They do not fear that all the aid supplies could end up in the hands of the internationally designated terrorist organisation Hamas which, on October 7, launched a barbaric terrorist attack on the sovereign state of Israel, killing over a thousand civilians, beheading babies and kidnapping more than 200 people from Israeli towns bordering Gaza.
All of a sudden, a large section of the Muslim world has decided to ignore the brutal carnage that the Hamas terrorists committed on October 7 and are calling for the death of the Jews and obliteration instead. This is no coincidence that from Iran to Pakistan and from Syria to Iraq, societies seem to have degenerated into those following Islam like a cult and have ceased to engage in its metaphysical dialogue with the divine.
The courageous liberal Islamic scholar late Tarek Fatah shed light on this intellectual catastrophe that the Muslims suffer at the hands of state-sponsored jihadi cultural narrative. In his acclaimed work, Jew Is Not My Enemy, Fatah writes, “Over one billion Muslims worldwide…are constantly being told by clerics about the essential deviousness of the Jew (and Hindus and Christians) and the global conspiracy he weaves. Adding to this paranoia is the global Muslim community’s false sense of victimhood…as the rest of the world makes rapid advances in technology, arts, culture, literature and social development, the Muslim world seems frozen in time, obsessed with the past.” He further pens, “The Muslim community…is left paralysed in the quagmire of stagnation…the cause of Palestine is still invoked around the Muslim world, both to distract the community from its own needs and to blame all our shortcomings on some fictitious Jewish conspiracy.”
Fatah informs us, “Over the centuries, the incessant Hadith, (a collection of sayings of Muhammad recorded by his companions after his death), inspired attacks on the very nature of the Jew, left Muslims indoctrinated to the belief that a Jew cannot be trusted to be straightforward or truthful.” Fatah then explains how the Israel-Palestine conflict has cemented this racist doctrine, which, “slowly corrupted the attitudes of generations of Muslims.” Fatah concludes, “Myths and legends of seventh-century Arabia have been dusted off and rejuvenated to make Jew-hate the norm, not the exception.”
The Muslim clergy, be it the Shia clergy ruling over the state of Iran, the military establishment which rules over Pakistan or the Hamas terrorists that govern Gaza, have one thing in common: they have institutionalised the Jew-hate racist narrative in their societies. It has assisted the national ruling elite in using religion and Jew-hate doctrine as useful tools to suppress and oppress its subjects.
Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK) is currently under the spell of one of the biggest civil disobedience movements in its history. A movement against additional taxes on electricity bills by Pakistan has sparked a revolt in PoJK. On October 5, there was a general strike in PoJK. This was the second such strike in a month. On October 10, women and children took to the streets across PoJK and on October 17, students across the occupied territory took out protest rallies and observed sit-ins. On October 28, once again people from all walks of life came out in large numbers across PoJK to protest against Pakistan’s plunder of their natural resources including river water and minerals.
The PoJK government has imposed a ban on gatherings of more than 5 people at any one place and imposed Section 144. However, with the help of the clergy and Islamic jihadi organisations, the government has allowed anti-Israel protest rallies across PoJK in its endeavour to divert the civil unrest towards a racist and communal Jew-hate fit of rage.
The question we are faced with here today is how to reverse the hegemony of the jihadi racist religious-cultural narrative. There is no simple solution. But one could start by standing by the side of the Jew and the state of Israel and support the Israeli Defence Forces’ efforts to annihilate the terrorist infrastructure that has caused so much misery not only to the people of Israel but also to the two million Palestinians kept as hostages and used as human shields by Hamas in Gaza.
The Israel-Hamas war is not just about Israel defending itself. It is more than that. Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, is fighting a war for the emancipation of the people of the Middle East and beyond.
Dr Amjad Ayub Mirza is an author and a broadcaster. He currently lives in the UK. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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