The final lunar month of Dhul Hijjah is expected to begin on Monday, 18 May 2026, with Hajj taking place from Monday, 25th May 2026. The 9th of Dhul Hijjah (Day of Arafah) is expected to be on Tuesday, 26 May 2026. As over two million pilgrims from across the globe gather in the sacred precincts of Makkah to fulfil the fifth and final pillar of Islam, Muslims throughout the world who are not performing the pilgrimage often ask: What is our role during these sacred days? How do we, as non-pilgrims, participate in the spiritual blessings and transformative ethos of the Hajj?

The first ten days of Dhul Hijjah are among the most sacred days in the Islamic calendar. Their sanctity derives from the fact that they host the rites of the Hajj itself. The Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) emphasized their spiritual significance when he proclaimed: “There are no days during which righteous deeds are more beloved to Allah than these ten days.” (Sahih Bukhari)

The first ten days of Dhul Hijjah are therefore not only for the hujjaj (pilgrims); they are sacred days for the entire Muslim ummah. While the pilgrims engage directly in the manasik al-hajj, the rites of pilgrimage, those of us at home are also invited to participate spiritually, ethically, and devotionally in the blessings of this sacred season.

There are at least three important ways in which non-pilgrims can participate in the Hajj experience indirectly and in solidarity with the pilgrims.

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The first is through fasting, especially on the Day of Arafah. The standing on the plains of Arafah (wuquf al-Arafah) represents the spiritual climax of the Hajj. It is the moment when pilgrims gather in humility, repentance, and prayer before Allah. Non-pilgrims are encouraged to fast on this day as a means of spiritual solidarity with those gathered at Arafah. The Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) taught: “Fasting on the Day of Arafah expiates the sins of the previous year and the coming year.” (Sahih Muslim)

Importantly, the Prophet (pbuh) himself did not fast while standing at Arafah during his farewell pilgrimage. This clarifies that the fast of Arafah is intended primarily for non-pilgrims. Through fasting, the hearts of believers across the globe become spiritually connected to the pilgrims gathered on the sacred plains of mercy and forgiveness.

The second way non-pilgrims participate in the Hajj is through the celebration of Eid al-Adha. Eid al-Adha is not merely a cultural festival or social holiday. It is deeply rooted in the culmination of the Hajj journey. The joy of Eid derives its meaning from the successful completion of the sacred rites by the pilgrims. The Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) famously declared: “The Hajj is Arafah.” (Musnad Ahmad).

In other words, the standing at Arafah is the essence and culmination of the pilgrimage. When Muslims around the world celebrate Eid al-Adha after the pilgrims depart from Arafah, they do so in spiritual unison with the hujjaj. The global Muslim community becomes symbolically united in devotion, gratitude, and remembrance of Allah.

The third and final way non-pilgrims participate in the Hajj is through the udhiyah or qurban, the ritual animal sacrifice performed during Eid al-Adha and the days of tashriq that follow. The Qur’an explicitly links the sacrifice to the rites of Hajj in Surah al-Hajj. The sacrifice commemorates the faith, submission, and moral courage of Prophet Ibrahim and his family. At its deepest level, however, the qurban is not simply about the slaughtering of an animal. The Qur’an reminds us that: “It is neither their meat nor their blood that reaches Allah, but rather your consciousness of Him.” (Qur’an 22:37)

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The sacrifice thus calls believers to embody generosity, compassion, and care for the vulnerable. In a world marked by widening inequality, war, hunger, and displacement, the spirit of qurban should move us beyond ritual symbolism toward social solidarity and ethical responsibility.

The Hajj season also reminds us of Islam’s profound vision of human equality and unity. Pilgrims stand side by side regardless of race, nationality, language, or class. The simple garments of ihram strip away worldly distinctions and remind humanity of our shared dignity before the Creator.

At a time when our world is witnessing devastating wars, rising xenophobia, deepening racism, and growing social fragmentation, the Hajj offers an urgently needed moral and spiritual message: that human beings are one family under God and that true piety lies not in wealth, power, or ethnicity, but in righteousness and moral consciousness.

For non-pilgrims, participating in the sacred days of Dhul Hijjah through fasting, Eid celebration, charity, remembrance of Allah, and qurban allows us to share spiritually in the blessings of the Hajj journey.  May Allah grant all pilgrims a Hajj Mabrur, a pilgrimage accepted with Divine grace, and may these sacred days renew within all of us a deeper commitment to faith, justice, compassion, and human solidarity.

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On 24 May 2026, more than 1000 South Africans will enter the vast tented camp of Mina at the start of their Hajj journey. I recall that moment nine years ago when I performed my Hajj.  It came as a bit of a surprise when I saw our white tents were a small little piece of a zone set up for Non-Arab Africans.

The exact number housed on any given Hajj year can vary slightly depending on overall Mina capacity limits, tent layouts, and Saudi space‑management rules, but the planned capacity for the Non-Arab African‑countries sector is generally on the order of 150,000–180,000 pilgrims.

Arab African countries like Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia and others are placed closer to Arabic-speaking countries. This year, our country’s allocated number is 1140. For years, we largely remained unaware that we are thrust together with our African Muslims in a sea of devotion. We balance only on our little wave, unaware of how far the other waves around us could take us on our journey of achieving the Islamic commitment to the unity of all of humanity.

As I recall, most of that day was spent in prayer and reflection. The only opportunity to meet women from other countries came when we visited the ablution facilities before sunrise and during the day. It struck me then that those moments were not conducive at all to striking up a good conversation or making an unexpected friend. Most of us make lasting friendships with other South Africans but seldom with pilgrims from other countries, which I have always understood to be part of the exercise.

It occurred to me then that it was a pity that there was not a structured opportunity to hear about Islam in another African country from their women, so that we could increase our understanding and knowledge. We should deepen our understanding of others who are our neighbours on this vast continent, destined to be propelled forward in the coming decades.  I understand this to be a Qur’anic obligation.

Then across my desk came the news that former Member of Parliament, Dr Ismail Vadi, has recently launched a research entity to increase our awareness and understanding of Islam in Africa. It gave me such a great pleasure not only to report this on my website (www.zubeidajaffer.co.za) but also to publish in full the inaugural 66-page booklet should you wish to read the initial findings.

He launched the new research institution, the Centre for Islamic Research – Africa (CIRA), in Johannesburg to deepen understanding of Islam across the continent among South Africa’s two million Muslims.

In the preface to its inaugural booklet, CIRA founder Vadi notes that South African Muslims – just 0.4% of Africa’s estimated 500 million Muslims – know little about their co-religionists in the continent’s 54 nations.

 “Continued ignorance of our diverse Islamic history, legacy, traditions, and traits is intolerable,” he said, urging a correction of this “intellectual and spiritual imbalance.”

South Africa’s Muslim community, tracing roots to Indian, Southeast Asian, and indigenous origins, has grown post-apartheid with arrivals from Somalia, Nigeria, Palestine, and beyond. Diverse across socio-economic lines, they form influential middle classes in Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, and the Western Cape, he said.

The initiative arrives amid global and African conflicts, positioning South African Muslims to engage broader continental narratives. 

According to the booklet, approximately 45-50 percent of Africa’s total population identified itself as Muslim in 2025, with the total population of Africa estimated at approximately 1.56 billion people. This represents about 18.8 percent of the total world population, ranking Africa as the second-most populous continent, second to Asia.

CIRA will research political, economic, social, cultural, and religious trends through an Islamic lens, partnering with organizations continent-wide. The booklet, drawn from open sources, offers a “small step” toward awareness, acknowledging Africa’s predominantly Christian other half.

If I am allowed to dream, perhaps my granddaughter will one day arrive in Mina to perform her hajj and meet other African women forming friendships that will solidify continental unity.  Perhaps her generation will understand that we could form part of a sea of devotion in Africa if the waves of Islam and all other faiths seek cooperation. They will stand as a testament to a rejection of separateness that is so fashionable in the world today. 

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Indonesia recently hosted foreign policy practitioners from middle powers – countries with significant regional influence, catalysts for multi-lateral reach, and while having some military and economic leverage, they hone a diplomatic ability to secure stability and development. Jakarta gathered two such categories (traditional north/western and emergent middle powers from the Global South) at a critical moment in the history of the world in which the United States, and its regional ally in the Middle East, Israel, are conducting a war of choice against Iran, with negative global reverberations in supply chains, inflation, and security.

But Iran is proving more resilient than expected, and survival itself is victory. The United States, however, no longer appears impervious to resistance, but while it is vulnerable as a superpower, it still retains sufficient superpowers to prevail. Middle powers, traditional and emergent, are now forced to consider what a post-American world would look like. In the interim, they have to cope with an America that is an incoherent, rogue, and punitive superpower, bereft of strategic vision. 

Among middle powers, South Africa is regarded as significant, despite our own challenges and self-doubt: it is regarded as credible for its convening of BRICS and the G20, courageous for charging Israel with genocide; garnered great sympathy for bearing the brunt of Trump’s lies about a ‘white genocide’and his punitive measures; and in turn, there are great expectations about SA’s role in strategizing a way out of the current impasse. My input articulated a few key themes, culminating in a set of five scenarios on offer for a world needing to respond to an unhinged superpower dealing with its eclipse.

The foundational theme is to recognise a transition from the unilateralism of a dominant United States that took the world through 30 years of wars, running up a deficit of 39 trillion US dollars and creating a war-weary US citizenry. Now we are witnessing the emergence of multipolarity – competing poles in the world: some regional, like ASEAN; some a collection of emergent economies, like BRICS; and some tentatively defensive, like the EU. But none, yet, are in any position to challenge the dominance of the USA.

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The corollary theme is that the Middle East, as the theatre of conflict, demonstrates the erosion of consent. The dominant consensus that existed, of Israel’s impunity, following the Jewish Holocaust, is increasingly coming to an end.  In the United States, where most citizens are denying Israel such a free pass – US arms fuel unjust aggression and the genocide of Palestinians. This has severe implications for whether Trump will be able to carry through the Netanyahu playbook of destroying Iran. Already, Trump is hesitant as Iran’s resilience creates discontent at home and among allies, and this is translating into a war effort that is regarded as pointless and operationally inept, all at the behest of Israel.

Yet, while the US may appear to be erratic, declining, and run by a narcissist, we must not underestimate the United States. The emerging multipolarity that can assert itself against the USA has not yet been established. Despite disenchantment with and fragmentation from the USA, few can act decisively. Therefore, the world requires a set of strategies to respond smartly and collectively to the USA. What then are the scenarios for such a strategic response to the United States of America by middle powers? The scenarios posited for middle power relations with the USA currently are five. 

The Ideal Scenario is one of Mutuality and Reciprocity and is premised on cooperation and exchange based on mutual need, in which the USA walks on two legs – soft and hard power – and therefore invests in other countries a combination of exchanges of markets for trade, investments in capacity, and development aid against vulnerability, to ensure mutual development and security, with limited migration to the north. This is obviously the scenario spurned by Trump in his amputation of the leg of soft power, and for the immediate future is highly unlikely. 

Trump’s preferred scenario is the Scenario of Surrender. Surrender Greenland, the Panama Canal, national sovereignty, energy, critical minerals, and rare earth elements, and in the case of Iran and Palestine, sovereignty, land, resources, and dignity. Venezuela is the template, and SA is on the menu. For Middle Powers, this scenario is not tolerable.

The instinctive, responsive scenario is one of Retaliation against the USA. Only China comes close to having the wherewithal for retaliation, and even then, not in a sustained and sustainable way. When China withheld rare earth elements, like Gallium, in response to 250% tariffs by the USA, it forced Trump to go to Seoul and negotiate a reprieve. Iran is proving the workability of such a scenario – only because it has nothing to lose. But for everyone else, this will remain a difficult scenario while no multilateral capacity exists.

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These 3 scenarios are not possible or probable in the current context, which therefore compels the search for intermediate scenarios. 

Therefore, the fourth lies between Mutuality and Surrender – the Scenario of Appeasement. It means conceding to pacify an aggressive party to prevent a conflict by satisfying its demands. This was the word used to describe the initial approach to Hitler, and various countries are trying this with Trump, offering jets, Trump Towers, deals for his children and investments in the USA. Alternatively, such propitiation can often take the form of smiling through blatant lies and ad hominem attacks. This is currently the most likely scenario in relation to the USA.

The fifth scenario lies between Mutuality and Retaliation and can be called a Scenario of Contingency. It is a soft retaliation in which insurance policies are taken out to mitigate the shocks of a capricious power. This is sophisticated, necessarily so, and involves a series of mitigation measures like finding alternative markets for tariffed goods, alternative sources of investment and development aid, and basically ensuring that your eggs are not all in one basket. Simultaneously, this must be accompanied by tying your wagon to other multi-lateral engines and ensuring that the world is building a collective insurance against unilateral actions.

In working through these scenarios and finding one, or a combination of a few, the middle powers must divine whether the scenario is a holding operation – to see out the Trump years – before returning to ‘normal’ or whether this is permanent – on the assumption that the USA is fundamentally altered and, once it tastes the power of tariffs and bellicosity, it will not return to the status quo ante, even though that was itself aggressive and invasive. However, the erosion of trust in the USA – whether by NATO or the Global South – is such that there must be an unstoppable momentum to transform the emerging multi-polarity into an effective multi-lateralism that can withstand an untethered superpower.

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At a moment marked by escalating global tensions and a deepening moral crisis, Pope Leo XIV stands out as one of the few global religious leaders willing to speak with moral clarity against the US/Israeli military campaign against Iran, whose underlying dynamics remain unresolved despite a temporary ceasefire. His principled critique of war, his call for restraint, his commitment to peace with justice, and his unwavering insistence on the sanctity of human life have provoked controversy, particularly among those who view such moral interventions as an unwelcome intrusion into the domain of political statecraft.

From the perspective of Islamic ethics and peacebuilding, however, Pope Leo’s stance is neither surprising nor misplaced. On the contrary, it exemplifies the moral vocation of religious leadership: to speak truth to power, to resist the normalization of violence, and to affirm the primacy of justice and human dignity in the face of unjust war. In moments such as these, silence is not neutrality; it is complicity. Pope Leo’s intervention thus stands as a necessary and principled witness, one that resonates deeply with the ethical imperatives at the heart of the Islamic tradition.

The controversy this has provoked is therefore revealing. At its core is a troubling expectation that religious leaders should remain silent when moral truth confronts oppressive and unjust political narratives and calls into question the legitimacy of state violence and terror. Pope Leo’s intervention offers an unequivocal answer to this misguided expectation. His critique of war, echoing the moral trajectory set by his predecessor, Pope Francis, rejects the normalization of violence and calls into question the enduring legitimacy of “just war” reasoning in an age of devastating military technologies. This position has drawn sharp criticism from those who defend the geopolitical logic of deterrence, security, and pre-emptive force. Yet such criticism misses a deeper moral point.

It is precisely this deeper moral horizon that must inform contemporary religious ethics. In my earlier reflections on Pope Francis’s encyclical Fratelli Tutti,  I argued that religious ethics today must move beyond narrow conceptions of charity and embrace a broader commitment to transforming the structural conditions that produce suffering and violence. Peace, in this understanding, is not merely the absence of war, but what peace scholars have described as “positive peace”, a condition grounded in justice, human dignity, and the equitable distribution of resources.

This vision of positive peace resonates closely with the ethical imperative of peace with justice. It calls not only for the cessation of violence, but for the active dismantling of the structures of domination and inequality that sustain it. In this light, opposition to war is not an abstract moral posture; it is a concrete commitment to building a more just and humane social order in which the dignity of all people is affirmed and protected.

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From an Islamic perspective, this moral vision resonates deeply with the Qur’anic commitment to justice (ʿadl), compassion (raḥma), and human dignity (karama al-insan) as well as with the Prophetic mandate to establish justice and to resist oppression. The Qur’an issues a stark warning:

“Do not show any inclination toward those who commit oppression and injustice (zulm), lest the Fire should seize you.” (Qur’an 11:113)

This Qur’anic verse is not merely a caution against complicity; it is a moral injunction to maintain ethical distance from injustice and those who perpetrate it. Similarly, the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) elevated the act of moral courage in the face of tyranny to the highest form of struggle:

“The highest form of moral struggle (jihad) is to speak a word of truth in the presence of an unjust and oppressive ruler.”

(The hadith was reported on the authority of Abu Sa`id al-Khudri and found in Sunan al-Tirmidhi and Sunan Abi Dawud)

It is precisely this prophetic ethic that Pope Leo has embodied in his principled opposition to war and injustice. Yet it is at this very point that we must confront a deeply uncomfortable reality. With the notable exception of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the response from major contemporary Muslim institutions and religious leaders to Pope Leo’s principled stance against the unjust, illegal and immoral war waged by the US and Isreal against Iran has been marked by a troubling silence

CAIR, to its credit, issued a statement expressing solidarity with the Catholic community in the wake of attacks on Pope Leo following his moral critique of the war. As it noted, “We stand in solidarity with the Catholic community…” This intervention goes well beyond interfaith courtesy. It reflects CAIR’s unequivocal opposition to the war and, in that light, amounts to a clear and principled affirmation of Pope Leo’s courageous rejection of it as unjust. In doing so, CAIR not only defended the dignity of a religious leader but also aligned itself with a morally grounded stance that rejects the normalization of violence and affirms the sanctity of human life.

By contrast, the relative absence of similar moral clarity from other Muslim institutions raises urgent and disquieting questions about the state of contemporary Islamic leadership and its willingness to speak truth to power in moments of profound moral crisis. This pattern of silence is not incidental. 

Elsewhere, I have argued that one of the central challenges facing contemporary interreligious peacebuilding is the extent to which many religious leaders and institutions have become entangled with, or beholden to, state power. In such contexts, speaking truth to power is often discouraged, or even punished, giving rise to a form of religious quietism that prioritizes institutional survival over moral witness. This is particularly evident in regions where religious authorities are state-appointed or operate within tightly controlled political environments. Here, the prophetic voice of religion is often muted, reduced to legitimating the very structures of power that perpetuate injustice.

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Against this backdrop, Pope Leo’s intervention stands in stark contrast. It is a reminder that authentic religious leadership is not measured by proximity to power, but by the capacity to maintain moral distance from it. It is about the courage to name injustice, to challenge violence, and to stand in solidarity with the victims of war—regardless of political convenience.

For Muslims, this moment presents both a challenge and an opportunity. It is a challenge to reclaim the rich ethical resources within our own tradition, resources rooted in nonviolence, justice, and moral courage, that have too often been eclipsed by hegemonic interpretations of state power and violence. As I have argued elsewhere, the Islamic tradition contains significant, though underdeveloped, foundations for articulating a robust theology of nonviolence and peacebuilding.

It is also an opportunity to deepen interreligious solidarity on principled grounds. In Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis invited Muslims and Christians into a shared moral struggle for a more just and peaceful world. I argued then that this invitation should be taken seriously, not as a matter of diplomacy, but as an ethical and spiritual imperative. Today, Pope Leo has extended that invitation through action.

The question before us is whether we, as Muslims, are prepared to respond with comparable moral clarity. To stand with Pope Leo at this moment is not to endorse the totality of Catholic theology or Western political discourse. Rather, it is to affirm a shared commitment to the sanctity of life, the rejection of unjust war, and the moral responsibility of religious leaders to speak truth to power.

In a world increasingly marked by violence, polarization, and the systematic dehumanization of the other, such acts of moral solidarity are not optional; they are indispensable. It is my sincere hope that more Muslim scholars, institutions, and leaders will find the courage to follow the example set by CAIR: to raise their voices, to break the silence, and to stand unambiguously on the side of justice.

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Reports from various sources suggest that negotiating teams from the United States and Iran may return to Pakistan in the coming days to resume talks aimed at ending the war in the Gulf.

Though reference is made to the “war in the Gulf’’, it does not adequately describe the reality of the war against Iran, nor why it was launched and by whom it was launched. 

It is thus crucial to recall that Israel and the US launched Operations Roaring Lion and Epic Fury on February 28, with the stated aim of collapsing the government of the Islamic Republic and imposing regime change.

Iran retaliated by firing missiles at Israel, across the Middle East at Gulf nations hosting US military bases in the region. The sustained ferocity of Iran’s response demonstrated its ability to defend itself from the combined air and naval attacks by the US and Israel.

Though Iran claims that hundreds of soldiers from the attacking forces have been killed, Israel has downplayed this. According to Zionist media, only twelve IDF soldiers and 23 civilians have been killed, and at least 7,693 more injured in ballistic missile attacks across Israel since February 28, while eleven US soldiers have been killed.

While uncertainty about the toll reigns, and a fragile truce hangs by a thread, the US has imposed a blockade on the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump has threatened to sink any ship that dares to defy the blockade, adding that US forces will employ “the same system of kill” used against drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean Sea.

Despite Trump’s bravado, we learn that four Iran-linked vessels have sneakily skirted around his blockade – with China blasting the siege as “dangerous and irresponsible”.

Netanyahu comes unstuck too, with global economic crisis brewing and the IMF now issuing warnings about negative growth rates. As the instigator of the unprovoked and illegal war, Netanyahu is aware that the likelihood of a global recession resulting from his criminal actions and having dragged Trump along, places his regime as the central cause of it.

The alarm that gripped Western economists points to a strain on supply chains. The unwise and foolish military blockade by Trump to ostensibly “punish” Iran for exercising its sovereignty over the Strait puts the international community at risk of a global food crisis, the chief economist of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations warned on Monday.

While Netanyahu exercises his manipulation of US policy against Iran, Saudi Arabia has publicly been pressing the United States to end its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and return to negotiations with Iran, according to a The Wall Street Journal report. 

The report said Riyadh fears the standoff could trigger a broader regional escalation, including threats to Red Sea shipping routes and Saudi oil exports.

In obedience to Netanyahu and fearing axing, which ultimately led to him being fired, Mossad Director David Barnea proclaimed at the Holocaust ceremony that his spy agency will not rest until it facilitates the “fall of the Islamic regime of Iran”.

“Our mission is not yet complete. We did not think that our mission would be completed immediately with the fading of the battles, but rather we planned, and [really] we planned to continue, and this will be manifested even after the time of attacks on Tehran,” said Barnea.

This was the first time that the Mossad chief publicly addressed his role and views about regime change in Iran.

After regime change in Iran had not transpired in the early weeks of the war, and even more since a ceasefire kicked in without regime change, various Israeli and American officials have sought to blame the Mossad and Barnea for the failure.

Unconvincingly pushing back, the Mossad desperately rejected allegations that it had failed or that it tried to “sucker” the US into believing in delusions of regime change.

Having failed miserably to attain any of his military and political goals, Netanyahu is in a fix – domestically as well as internationally.

With Trump desperate to end his malicious adventure that has resulted in a huge fallout of his prestige and power, he is set to cave in to Iran’s legitimate demands in the forthcoming second round of talks hosted by Pakistan.

*Iqbal Jassat is an Executive Member of the Media Review Network.

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Media Review Network welcomes Iran’s incredible resilience in defending the country and its revolution that has led to an amazing military victory. 

While analysts and strategists within the military industrial complex across the US, NATO and the Zionist-apartheid regime will be staring at their drawing boards to make sense of their humiliation, Iran’s steadfastness will ensure that its fingers remain on the trigger. 

The Islamic Republic of Iran has been bitten more than once since its brave people overthrew the corrupt Pahlavi dynasty during the Islamic Revolution of 1979, led by Imam Khomeini (RA). 

The pattern of deception engraved in Western duplicity is a badge of dishonour which Iran is fully aware of and will be on guard against. 

It knows that the defeat inflicted on Israel has left the settler colonial regime in disarray, angry and extremely bitter. 

Zionist leaders such as Yair Lapid have sharply criticised the ceasefire. He lashed out against it by blaming Netanyahu and described it as a failure of political and strategic leadership, warning of long-term consequences for Israel’s security. “There has never been such a political disaster in all of our history,” Lapid said, arguing that “Israel wasn’t even at the table when decisions were made concerning the core of our national security.”

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That Netanyahu has been opposed to Trump’s inclination to seek an exit strategy by maliciously sabotaging offramps is well known. And that he apparently was sidelined and forced to eat humble pie has left him to account for the devastation caused by Iran’s missiles, without him achieving any of his military or political goals. 

Indeed, the irony of Netanyahu’s messianic zeal to obliterate Iran confronts him in the ashes of a synagogue in central Tehran, destroyed by him in a missile strike. Jewish representatives condemned the attack, saying Torah scrolls remained buried under the rubble.

“The Zionist regime showed no mercy towards this community during the Jewish holidays and attacked one of our ancient and holy synagogues,” Homayoun Sameh, Jewish representative in the Iranian parliament, was quoted as saying. “Unfortunately, during this attack, the synagogue building was completely destroyed”. 

Netanyahu’s failure to obliterate Iran stares him in the face as he grapples with the reality of defeat. 

It was after all his pressure on Trump based on a presentation designed to persuade the US that Iran’s regime could be toppled within 48 hours. 

He outlined a scenario in which the country’s “ballistic missile program could be destroyed in a few weeks, the regime would be so weakened that it could not choke off the Strait of Hormuz, and the likelihood that Iran would land blows against US interests in neighbouring countries was assessed as minimal.” Forty days of spirited retaliation by Iran, which undermined and defeated Netanyahu’s goals in addition to exposing Trump’s complicity in Israel’s genocidal war, and extracted a ceasefire on terms dictated by the IRGC, have reinforced Iran’s status and prestige among the oppressed masses of the world. 

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Israel’s genocidal regime has had to unwillingly, reluctantly, with resentment and annoyance, pay a price for the ceasefire. 

Despite Netanyahu’s efforts to sabotage the ceasefire, Trump was desperate to be relieved of his erratic demands and obligation to follow through on his threat to “open the gates of hell” on Iran. 

Now that the US has conceded defeat and Netanyahu is being forced to halt his war on Hezbollah, Iran has rightfully re-emerged as the leading edge of the global Islamic Movement and the axis of Resistance.

*Iqbal Jassat is an Executive Member of Media Review Network, Johannesburg

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By Ebrahim Moosa

On 25 February 2026 – 7 Ramaḍān 1447—South Africa lost one of its most consequential and visionary Muslim figures. Suliman Mohamed Ghoor, fondly known to all as “uncle Solly” of Vryburg, who passed away in Johannesburg at the ripe age of 93.

Businessman, philanthropist, and a tireless patron of Islamic education at home and abroad, he left behind a legacy that few could match and almost none would have kept so quietly.

He was born on 29 September 1932 in Ranavav, a village set in the Khatiavar Peninsula of Gujarat, India. Ranavav is today a small town of some 160,000 souls situated roughly 15km from Porbandar – the birthplace of Mahatma Gandhi, who himself had spent formative years in South Africa as a lawyer. This geography of coincidence is fitting. The region’s people are also known as Memons, a community with a distinct Gujarati dialect and culture that today constitutes an impressive and influential global diaspora. From such roots grew the Ghoor family’s story in South Africa.

The family ancestor, Cassim Abdulla Ghoor, was a farmer in Ranavav. He had two sons: Dada Cassim (DC) Ghoor and Mohamed Cassim (MC) Ghoor, whose mother died when the latter was just two months old. It was DC Ghoor who first made the crossing from India, arriving in South Africa at the tender age of ten in 1888, where he worked for a merchant. His younger brother MC Ghoor followed, also arriving at age ten, spending a few months in Dundee, then Pretoria, before joining his brother in Vryburg in 1898. MC Ghoor was Suliman Ghoor’s father.

Their destination, Vryburg, was itself a place of layered histories. Once the capital of the short-lived Boer Republic of Stellaland (1882–1885), and then the capital of the British Crown Colony of British Bechuanaland (1885 –1895), Vryburg was later annexed to the Cape Colony and is now part of the North West Province. Its population in the 19th century numbered 18,082 residents. Into this remote but historically charged town, DC and MC Ghoor were drawn by a network of Memon families also from Ranavav. The brothers alternated their stays between South Africa and India for several decades: while one kept the family hearth in Ranavav, the other worked in South Africa. In 1903 they formalized their presence, opening a general dealer partnership trading as DC Ghoor in the downtown area next to Vryburg’s Grand Hotel.

MC Ghoor continued his crossings. In 1933, he brought his wife and five children to Vryburg, the youngest of whom was Suliman, who was then barely a year old. Suliman began his schooling in the town but could not advance beyond the primary stage: apartheid’s brutal logic barred him from the only white high school, and no high school existed for non-whites. Circumstances thus pressed him into the family business. DC Ghoor and his brother MC dissolved their partnership in 1935. MC Ghoor then renamed the departmental store MC Ghoor & Sons but died five years later at the age of 52. Suliman Ghoor was only eight years old, and his older siblings assumed responsibility. Eventually Suliman joined them and later took charge, specializing over the decades in clothing, curtaining, fabrics, flooring, appliances and furniture. In the 1970s the Group Areas Act forced the business out of the downtown area toward the edge of what is today’s central business district. There it continues to flourish, serving a Vryburg which has now grown to 90,000 residents and functioning as a regional hub for a vast farming and mining hinterland.

Through the success of his business and the force of a sterling character, Suliman Ghoor gained recognition far beyond the Memon circles of South Africa. From seven to 10 Muslim families in the 1880s, Vryburg had grown to over a thousand Muslims, hosting a mosque whose committee Suliman Ghoor chaired at the time of his death. Yet modesty and self-effacement were his most distinguished marks. He would never disclose the extent of his own generosity. The most he would ever say – and I witnessed this firsthand – was “our family helped out a bit,” words offered as encouragement for others to give. What he withheld was that his contribution was almost always the lion’s share of any project he took to heart. He was among those who spent his wealth according to the Qurʾānic teaching, “secretly,” fully reassured that his reward is with his Lord (Q 2:274). This, too, is the teaching of an authentic ḥadīth: giving with the right hand such that the left hand does not know what the right hand gives.

His public engagement with Islamic life was no less devoted. In the 1970s he became active in the Muslim Youth Movement of South Africa, which hosted important international figures and made a vital contribution to Islamic awareness in the country. He was especially moved by the Pakistani Islamic scholar and preacher Mawlānā Fazlur Rahman Ansārī (d. 1974) and by the Lebanese-American biochemist and Islamic preacher Dr. Ahmed Sakr (d. 2015), who advanced the cause of halal certification in the United States. Suliman Ghoor was also a regular member and contributor to the Quranic Study Circle in Vryburg. And he was deeply engaged with the South African National Zakah Fund (SANZAF), a premier Muslim faith-based socio-economic welfare and development organization.

His legacy is most indelibly marked by two major projects. He had a close personal relationship with the physician Dr. Imtiaz Suliman, the founder of the globally reputed NGO Gift of the Givers (GOTG). It was Suliman Ghoor, together with Dr Haroon Tayob and an established network of friends, who urged Dr. Imtiaz Suliman to commit himself fully to relief work. GOTG is today known as the unofficial “fourth arm of the state” in South Africa: a hyper-efficient, non-governmental disaster relief organization that routinely arrives at crisis zones faster than the government itself, both at home and abroad.

The second project was the founding of the Islamic Academy of South Africa. In 1989, Suliman Ghoor and his network of donor friends formed the Academy and endowed, in perpetuity, two academic positions at the University of Cape Town (UCT): a junior lectureship and a full lectureship. The Academy also supported smaller ventures at other South African universities. It was an act of institutional vision, executed with the quiet determination that characterized everything he did. 

After a national search, the inaugural hires for these two positions were Professor Abdulkader Tayob, a graduate of Temple University, USA, appointed as lecturer, and me as the junior lecturer. In his tribute, Tayob – now emeritus professor of Islamic Studies at UCT—noted “Uncle Solly’s” unique, quiet and understated manner: a businessman with a deep social commitment. Tayob, who knew him through family networks and later worked closely with him, added: “Uncle Solly represented a long line of visionaries in South Africa that committed themselves to its current crop of vibrant institutions, be it mosques, schools, or colleges. May that line not disappear. We need people like him, more than ever in our world.”

Without that endowment of the Islamic Academy embodying Suliman Ghoor’s vision, I often wonder what alternate trajectory my career would have taken, were it not for the opportunity he and his committed group of friends created for two South African scholars. Whatever contribution we make will always be indebted to his act of social benevolence and to the contributions of his colleagues in the Islamic Academy. We will never know for certain, but I carry an informed hunch that when additional fundraising for these positions slowed, Uncle Solly and his network of friends quietly covered whatever remained – asking nothing, saying less. The Muslim tradition is very explicit in the teaching of the Prophet ﷺ, who said: “Whoever inaugurates a good practice shall obtain its reward – as well as the reward of those who act upon it after the one who started it, without diminishing their reward.”

Suliman Ghoor was also deeply drawn to Islamic Sufism and the tradition of self-purification. In the 1990s he and his brothers sponsored the translation into English of the works of Shaykh ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī (470–561 AH / 1077–1166 CE), the world-renowned Persian scholar, preacher, and founder of the Qādiriyya Sufi order. Through his patronage, several volumes were translated by Muhtar Holland and published, bringing this treasure of Islamic spiritual writings to new generations of readers. Shaykh Saʿdullah Khan, the Chief Executive Officer of Islamia College in Cape Town, also a native of Vryburg, but never a permanent resident after his childhood, recalled “Uncle Solly as a kind and pleasant man with a heart of gold.” Endearing in his soft-spoken nature, Khan recalls conversations with Suliman Ghoor about translations of significant Islamic literature. It is during these “sittings at his home,” Khan said, “that I realized the remarkable insight of this quiet, unassuming man from a small town who had this incredible passionate interest in enlightening people the world over.”

All Suliman Ghoor’s siblings had predeceased him. He is survived by two children – Bashyr and Asima – five grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. A middle son, Samir, died in a tragic accident in 1990.

With the passing of this great South African figure, all communities are the poorer. Yet none more so than South Africa’s Muslim community, for which he was a pillar, but whose height was largely invisible to those who stood under its shelter.

أَعْدَى الزَّمَانَ سَخَاؤُهُ فَسَخَا بِهِ

وَلَقَدْ يَكُونُ بِهِ الزَّمَانُ بَخِيلَا

His munificence has infected time itself, making it generous, though time, were it not for him, would be a miser.

— Abū al-Ṭayyib al-Mutanabbī (d. 354/965)

*Ebrahim Moosa is the Mirza Family professor of Islamic Thought and Muslim Societies at the University of Notre Dame in the USA.

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On 28 February 2026, the United States and Israel entered an illegal, immoral and reckless war against the Islamic Republic of Iran. The decision was not compelled by necessity but by hubris: the claim to universal political legitimacy and the belief that non-compliant regimes could be dismantled by force. Even in Western criticism of the latter, the former persists, as a subtle colonial reflex; they read the present dangerous war with Iran as a deviation from modernity, from rationality, from some imagined norm of political progress. What is especially lost in this mode of analysis is a proper engagement with the theoretical underpinnings of Iranian revolutionary political thought, that which binds the intellectual architecture of its political order and sustains its durability. The Islamic Republic is a political formation with its own history, its own internal logic, and an intellectual genealogy that runs deeper than most Western commentary has cared to trace. Understanding what political Islam in Iran actually is, genealogically, conceptually, and historically, matters precisely because it is a system far more embedded than that which can be dissolved by any single intervention.

The revolution that overthrew Mohammad Reza Shah in 1979 was the culmination of decades of opposition to a regime synonymous with corruption, repression, and dependence on Western power. The Pahlavi state had been restored by the CIA and MI6-orchestrated coup of 1953, which removed the elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. It governed through the SAVAK secret police and systematically eliminated political opposition across the ideological spectrum. By the 1970s, nationalists, communists, Islamists, and liberal constitutionalists had converged not around a shared vision of what should replace the Shah, but around a shared conviction that his rule was illegitimate. The revolution was broad precisely because that illegitimacy was felt across class and ideology. It was also, as the scholar Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi has argued in Revolutions and its Discontents (Cambridge University Press, 2019), the product of an ideologically plural intellectual formation, drawing on clerical jurisprudence, Marxist sociology, Third Worldist anti-colonialism, Shia theology, and Persian literary culture. To reduce it to a single ideology, whether called fundamentalism or theocracy, is to misread the intellectual history on which its institutions were built. Once the Shah fell, the question of which current would define the new order was settled, rapidly, by force. Two figures above all had shaped the intellectual terms of that contest: Ruhollah Khomeini, whose juristic reconception of clerical authority provided the revolution’s institutional architecture, and Ali Shariati, whose synthesis of Islamic theology and Third Worldist anti-colonialism gave it its most powerful popular idiom.

Khomeini and the juristic tradition

Ruhollah Khomeini’s central theoretical contribution was velayat-e faqih, the guardianship of the Islamic jurist. This was not a return to tradition but a decisive rupture within it. Traditional Twelver Shia political theology had counselled quietism: during the occultation of the Hidden Twelfth Imam, the faqih might exercise limited delegated authority in judicial and social matters, but direct governance was another question entirely. Khomeini’s lectures at Najaf in early 1970, later published as Islamic Government (Hukumat-i Islami), made a radical claim: that in the Imam’s absence, the most learned jurist must not merely advise but rule, and that this was not an innovation but a recovery of Islam’s original political logic. However, no Shia thinker before him had explicitly argued that only senior clergy had the authority to govern the state nor the corollary that previous monarchies were illegitimate.

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Khomeini’s intellectual formation was itself deeply layered. Trained in both jurisprudence and mysticism, he engaged philosophical traditions stretching back through centuries of Shia thought. The broader currents of twentieth-century Sunni political Islam also shaped the Iranian revolutionary milieu. A young Ali Khamenei, later to become Supreme Leader, translated the Egyptian thinker Sayyid Qutb’s work into Persian in 1967. Qutb’s arguments for Islamic sovereignty and against both Western liberalism and Soviet communism were arguably absorbed and reworked within a specifically Shia and specifically Iranian framework.

What emerged was a peculiar and novel political architecture: juristic authority embedded over elected institutions, while retaining republican forms, elections, parliament, and presidency, that gave the system its claim to popular legitimacy. The 1979 constitution was not the codification of a pre-existing consensus but the political victory of one current within a plural revolutionary moment.

Shariati and the intellectual left of Islam

Ali Shariati represents a different strand of the revolution’s intellectual genealogy, no less important for having been partially absorbed and partially suppressed after 1979. A sociologist trained in Paris in the 1960s, Shariati worked at the intersection of anti-colonial theory, Marxist sociology, and Shia theology. He was the principal theorist of Islamic Third Worldism: the argument that Islam, properly understood, was a liberation ideology capable of articulating the struggle of the mostazafin, the oppressed, against imperialism, capitalism, and colonial modernity. The Quranic term mostazafin became his rendering of Frantz Fanon’s les damnés de la terre, the downtrodden, a concept he wove throughout his lectures and writings.

Those lectures, delivered at the Hosseiniyeh Ershad in Tehran and later transcribed into some fifty pamphlets and booklets, captivated the educated youth of the 1960s and 1970s precisely because they refused the choice between secular modernism and clerical conservatism. His speech “Red Shiism/Black Shiism,”  delivered in 1971, distinguished between the true Shiism of Ali, characterised by martyrdom, resistance, and agency, and the Safavid institutionalisation of religion as mourning ritual, a quietism that served entrenched power. He was openly anticlerical, deeply suspicious of the clerical establishment as guardians of an inherited Shiism that had evacuated its own emancipatory content. Shariati died in 1977, before the revolution he helped generate. His intellectual legacy was consequently available to be selectively appropriated. With Khomeini incorporated some of the political language of the mostazafin into populist addresses.

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The entrenched structure of political Islam

What these two genealogies together illuminate is that political Islam in Iran is not a surface ideology imposed on an otherwise secular society, nor a medieval residue awaiting displacement by modernity. It is a form of modern political thought emerging from the region’s own reformation with unique intellectual contours. It is also a form of political organisation that has had close to five decades to embed itself in institutions, educational systems, military structures, and patterns of social life. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is not merely a military organisation; it is the organisational embodiment of the doctrine that the revolution must be protected from within. The seminaries of Qom are sites where the political theology of the state is continuously reproduced, debated, and contested.

The ongoing intellectual debates within the Islamic Republic, about the scope of clerical authority, about the relationship between divine and popular sovereignty, about the role of religion in governance, are themselves evidence of how the system functions. None of this is to foreclose questions about the system’s past Islamic legitimacy or future survival. It is rather to insist that those questions can only be correctly purveyed on the basis of a serious account of what the system actually is. Political Islam in Iran is not an interruption of Iranian history but a chapter within it, one produced by specific intellectual formations, shaped by transnational currents of thought, and institutionalised across decades. It will not wither away through the logic of modernity, nor dissolve under the pressure of any single moment of conjuncture. Understanding it requires taking seriously what its architects actually thought and engagement with Iran can only proceed by recognising that only the Iranians get to choose who they want to be.

*Dr Ayesha Omar is a British Academy International Fellow at SOAS, University of London and a Senior Lecturer in Political Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand. She is the author of The Pluralistic Frameworks of Ibn Rushd and Abdullahi An-Na’im (Cambridge University Press, 2025).

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A Time for Condolence and Moral Clarity

The killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the recent United States and Israeli bombing of Iran marks a grave turning point in our global moment. Condolences are extended to his family and to the Iranian people, and to every civilian who has lost loved ones in these attacks. Condolences are also due to all innocents killed in this imposed war and in the widening geography of violence that now stretches across continents. What unfolds in headlines and security briefings is experienced in homes as shock, fear, and irreversible loss.

War is narrated in strategic vocabulary. It speaks of targets, deterrence, precision, and dominance. It does not speak of a mother gathering her children into a darkened street as the walls tremble from distant blasts. It does not speak of a child pressing hands against ears while sirens tear through the night. It does not speak of elders clutching medication that may run out long before the bombing does.

In Tehran, Isfahan, Gaza, Khartoum, Goma, Bamako, and beyond, war enters kitchens, bedrooms, markets, and schools. It reduces life to waiting, to rationing, to vigilance. The loss of life in these places is not merely tragic; it is a civilizational rupture, a devastating assault on human dignity whose stain will linger across generations.

Negotiations as Prelude

For months, the world was assured that diplomacy remained possible. Nuclear negotiations were discussed, technical teams convened, and statements of cautious optimism circulated through diplomatic corridors. The language of restraint suggested that catastrophe could be averted through patient engagement.

The sudden unleashing of overwhelming military force, therefore, raises a profound question. Were these negotiations intended to culminate in agreement, or were they a strategic interlude while military machinery was positioned? The choreography of dialogue, followed by rapid escalation, suggests that talks may have served as political cover, a way to project reasonableness while preparing for bombardment.

When diplomacy becomes instrumental to war rather than an alternative to it, trust in international processes erodes. Negotiation becomes a spectacle, and the spectacle becomes a prelude to destruction. Nuclear diplomacy, long presented as the safeguard against catastrophe, appears in this instance to have been folded into the theatre preceding war.

The Doctrine That Travels Across Continents

The assault on Iran does not stand alone. It belongs to a longer imperial doctrine that has travelled across Europe, Africa, and Asia. Iraq was invaded on the claims of weapons that were never found, leaving behind a fractured state and enduring instability.

Afghanistan endured decades of occupation under the promise of liberation, only to witness the collapse of that project into uncertainty and renewed authoritarian rule. Libya was dismantled under humanitarian rhetoric and descended into militia fragmentation and regional spillover. Syria became a theatre of proxy conflict, while Yemen absorbed relentless bombardment with global complicity.

In Eastern Europe, war unfolds amid great power rivalry, with towns reduced to rubble and families scattered across borders. Across Africa, from the Sahel to the Horn, foreign military bases, mercenary forces, and competition over minerals and strategic corridors are reshaping fragile states, while ordinary villagers navigate insecurity that never leaves.

Each conflict is narrated as exceptional, framed by its own justifications and security claims. Yet taken together, they reveal a consistent pattern in which threat is magnified, diplomacy is marginalised, and military escalation becomes policy. Civilians absorb the cost. Iran stands within this expanding cartography of intervention, another node in a system that presents itself as guardian of order while leaving behind fractured societies and displaced populations.

Gaza and the Architecture of Annihilation

The bombing of Iran unfolds alongside the ongoing devastation of Gaza. Under Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership, Israel’s assault on Palestinians has reduced entire neighbourhoods to dust. Hospitals, schools, and residential blocks have been obliterated. The scale of killing, mass displacement, and systematic destruction of infrastructure constitutes genocide unfolding in full public view. The images that emerge from Gaza depict not only military confrontation but systematic devastation of civilian life.

In Gaza, war is experienced in profoundly intimate ways. It is a mother searching through collapsed concrete for a child’s belongings. It is children learning the sound of drones before they learn the rhythm of play. It is families displaced repeatedly, carrying fragments of a home that no longer stands.

This devastation is sustained by military supply lines, diplomatic protection, and political endorsement that link Washington to Tel Aviv. Security rhetoric accompanies overwhelming force, and regional escalation becomes normalised. The attack on Iran signals that the theatre of violence is widening, and the small lives inside these large events carry the deepest scars.

Epstein, Oligarchic Impunity and the Culture of Power

Beneath this militarised order lies a deeper moral corrosion. The global political class that authorises these wars operates within oligarchic networks whose impunity has been publicly exposed. The Epstein scandal revealed a world in which wealth shielded predatory paedophilia, sexual exploitation, and abuse from consequence. It exposed elite circuits of protection and silence, demonstrating how power insulates itself from accountability.

This culture of impunity does not remain confined to private wrongdoing. It shapes public policy and international conduct. The same insulated networks that evade scrutiny in matters of exploitation authorise violence abroad.

Power protects itself across domains, and borders and bodies become instruments within a system resistant to moral reckoning. The tentacles of this culture extend into European financial centres, American political institutions, and parts of Africa and Asia, where capital flows intersect with governance.

For elites, war is a strategic calculus conducted in secure rooms. For ordinary families, war is the closing of schools, the collapse of hospitals, the silence after a blast when one waits to see who will emerge from the dust. The distance between those who decide and those who endure defines the injustice of our time.

Sectarianism, Silence, and Sovereignty

Many Arab governments respond with complicity rather than clarity. Imperial alliances remain intact, and strategic cooperation continues while Gaza burns and Iran is bombed. This posture has been decades in the making. From facilitating the invasion of Iraq to silence over Libya’s destruction and participation in the devastation of Yemen, segments of the Arab political order have repeatedly chosen accommodation over accountability. The Abraham Accords formalised a trajectory that privileged economic corridors, security pacts, and intelligence coordination while Palestinian dispossession deepened and regional militarisation intensified.

Today, this accommodation is visible in the maintenance of foreign military bases, the opening of airspace, intelligence sharing, and muted diplomatic language in the face of bombardment.

Sectarian rivalry further distorts moral clarity. Residual anti-Shia sentiment mutes condemnation of the assault on Iran, turning theological difference into a political filter. This fragmentation serves domination by signalling to imperial actors that escalation will encounter limited resistance. The devastation that follows does not distinguish between Sunni and Shia; it engulfs communities across doctrinal lines and narrows moral imagination to factional identity.

Iran’s internal political tensions are real. Many Iranians desire reform, greater accountability, and wider political participation. Those aspirations are legitimate and belong to the Iranian people themselves. They must be debated, shaped, and realised through processes grounded in Iran’s own history, culture, and social realities.

When imperial foreign powers intervene militarily, the space for political reform narrows as national security imperatives come to dominate public life and overshadow debates about renewal and accountability. External attacks tend to consolidate hardline positions and place civic actors under intense strain, making gradual, peaceful change more difficult to sustain.

The political future of Iran should be shaped by its own people through internal deliberation and reform rather than by external military pressure. Sovereignty is a universal principle, and it retains its moral force only when consistently upheld rather than selectively applied.

A Shared Global Responsibility

The wider crisis lies in the normalisation of annihilatory force across continents. Cities in Europe are militarised, villages in Africa absorb warfare, regions in Asia witness escalating naval tension, and the Middle East endures bombardment and blockade. Each theatre is justified within its own narrative, yet the cumulative effect is a world habituated to violence and desensitised to suffering.

The bombing of Iran must be condemned, as must the destruction of Gaza and the culture of oligarchic impunity that underwrites such actions. Sectarian division must be rejected, and negotiations must never be weaponised as a prelude to war. Sovereignty and human dignity must be upheld consistently across all regions.

Lives lost in Iran, in Gaza, and across Europe, Africa, and Asia demand more than mourning. They demand ethical clarity and principled action. History records not only events but moral posture. In this season of expanding conflict, a politics grounded in justice, accountability, and shared human dignity must be reclaimed. The geography of imperial war is vast, but the smallness of war in homes and hearts runs deeper still.

*Aslam Fataar is a Research Professor in Higher Education Transformation in the Department of Education Policy Studies, Stellenbosch University.

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The declaration of Israel’s Chargé d’Affaires, Ariel Seidman, as Persona Non Grata has elicited yet another extraordinary diatribe from Warren Goldstein, Chief Rabbi of SA, in early February. His expulsion from South Africa indeed had an unmasking effect.  But it did not, as Warren Goldstein asserts, unmask the South African President, the government he leads, or the ANC as captured by a variety of forces who are anti-West, Islamist or Iranian.  The unmasking was in forcing the real representative of Zionism and its political project, Israel, to step into the breach, directly and unfiltered, dispensing the onerous and inconvenient mask of “Chief Rabbi”. 

Indeed, Warren Goldstein has been juggling these two personae, Chief Rabbi and Chief Representative, throughout his tenure to manage the moral tumult that Israel has been at the centre of, and that Zionism, as a political–colonial ideology, has inspired.  A political problem needs a politician, but a moral conundrum needs religious sophistry.  But we’ve all been too polite to call him out, partly because it is imperative that we redeem – mostly for our own humanity – Judaism and Jews as a noble religion and indeed a people who have been victims of a holocaust perpetrated by Western Europe. 

In the demeanour of Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein, the Chief Representative emerged.  The only clue to his rabbinical role, in the nine-minute diatribe, was the reference to Genesis 12:3 that those who bless will be blessed and those who curse will be cursed.  Although the reference is to Abraham, the appropriation is for Israel.  He then anoints himself as God’s appointed blesser and curser and proceeds to curse President Ramaphosa, the Government and the ANC for the temerity to expel the Israeli diplomat, discovering belatedly that this is reserved for serious misdemeanours like bordering on espionage.  Such cursing is the sound and fury of fundamentalist extremism, which would be irritating only if it were not so severe in the Middle East, where such extremism has power and is not afraid to exercise it perniciously on the vulnerable.

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Balancing his personae, he froths moral outrage at how the expulsion of the diplomat has now cursed the children of the Eastern Cape to a life of deprivation of potable water and sanitation – when Israel is the global leader in water management; to a life of compromised health care as a consequence; and endangered the country’s relationship with President Trump and the USA who will visit economic doom on us.  Let’s examine whether Warren Goldstein’s  “moral outrage” is that of a naïve Chief Rabbi or a calculated Chief Representative.

Israel is the global leader in water management! Indeed.  It is so good that Israel has perfected the art of ensuring 100% access to Israeli Citizens to water and sanitation – even in the northern Negev Desert – by intercepting the aquifers into Palestine from the mountains, by diverting water with pipes, tunnels, and channels from, among others, the Sea of Galilee, and restricting and limiting Palestinian water drilling for wells and development of water infrastructure.  The result is that Israelis receive about 137 litres per person per day – for household and agriculture – whilst Palestinians can barely manage agriculture on 76.4 litres/person/day!  A stark example is in the establishment of a Jewish settlement in northeast Jerusalem, where, in addition to the appropriation of Palestinian land, the Palestinian villages lost access to its springs, wells and other water resources.  Since October 2023, persisting right into the ‘ceasefire’ in 2026, the Israeli Defence Force has repeatedly bombed and shelled Gaza’s water infrastructure and prohibited access to water sources in Gaza and limited the entry of water and other humanitarian aid, resulting in 96% of Gazans becoming water compromised.  No wonder UN experts declared:  “Israel is using thirst as a weapon to kill Palestinians.”  In South Africa, it appears, the Chief Representative is using thirst as a diplomatic weapon to mask a genocide.

The people in SA will suffer dire health consequences.  Quite rich coming from the man who in February 2025, is quoted in The Times of Israel as saying “…we should welcome the Trump administration’s interventions…” and later only admitting that Trump was mistaken to only allow white Afrikaners as refugees into the USA.  It is not ironic that he feigns concern about our health but welcomes Trump’s cutting of PEPFAR funds that combat HIV/AIDS – not only in SA, but Africa;  cuts USAID Programmes; defunds the WHO, and many others, that, in one night’s executive orders, bequeathed death and disease.  This is the cynicism of a Chief Representative, not the morality of a Chief Rabbi.

How do we take his warning about ‘endangering’ SA’s relationship with Trump, and jeopardising the African Growth and Opportunities (AGOA)?  That boat has sailed.  Before any word was said in anger, SA lost all its aid, had 30% tariffs imposed (together with the rest of the world), and AGOA’s renewal was delayed.  All of this based on a lie about a white genocide!  The Chief Rabbi could be moved to call out this lie, but the Chief Representative would revel in the delicious symmetry:  SA charges Israel in the ICJ with Palestinian genocide and land occupation and, in retaliation, Trump accuses SA of white genocide and white land confiscation!  The only reason AGOA is still being considered for SA, is because our diplomacy has amplified the point that while, sadly, black workers’ livelihoods will be imperilled, the main victims will, ironically, be the white owners of the farms, mines, and factories that Trump purports to defend.  Hopefully, unfair as it is, this will be enough for the morally dubious to defend and renew AGOA.

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Chief Rabbi Goldstein in 2017, was included in the Algemeiner’s Top 100 in the religious category – for denouncing Jacob Zuma’s corruption.  Some were exiled from the ANC and government for precipitating this at Polokwane in 2007 already.  But the Chief Rabbi was absolutely and morally correct!  This research was easy to find and would prove morally consistent with his fervour in his 9-minute address, charging the ANC with corruption.  Yet the search for his moral outrage regarding the corruption charges against Benjamin Netanyahu is hard to find.  I thought I would find scriptural admonition from Deuteronomy 31:29 with Moses predicting “utter corruption” for Israel:  “evil will befall you in the latter days, because you will do evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke Him to anger through the work of your hands”.  But not much in the face of Netanyahu being indicted on breach of trust, accepting bribes, and fraud! Nothing about Case 1000 (taking gifts & presents), Case 2000 (conspiring against a competitor), Case 4000 (the telecommunications industry), …. Maybe the Chief Representative persuaded the Chief Rabbi that a corrupt and flawed leader who could bring wrath to the Palestinians must, perforce, get a free pass – just as support and admiration for a leader accused of paedophilia is okay!

The problem with interchanging a yarmulka and a political cap is that politics tends to undermine your professed morality and compromise your ethical judgement and connect you to causes and leaders for which there is no defence.  Take the Chief Rabbi’s correct empathy for Iranian protestors’ deaths and compare that with the Chief Representative’s stoic denial and defence of a Palestinian genocide. The problem is that when you attach the name of your faith to a political project and thus legitimise it, you open your entire moral-ethical foundation to the vicissitudes of that project:  when the Taliban prohibits women, when ISIS kills and maims, when Al Qaeda bombs civilians, etc it takes a Muslim community decades to overcome the damage even, if there’s ambiguity about the original sin.  Similarly, if a Chief Rabbi endorses Israel as a “Jewish State”, then that Chief Rabbi has to be that State’s Chief Representative to defend or deny atrocity – even if there’s ambiguity about the original sin.  The Chief Rabbi can no longer dissemble whether an eye for an eye can be interpreted to mean that 2400 eyes on October 7^th justify 200 000 eyes ever since.  The debate is mathematical, polemical, political, not moral, religious or ethical.

*Ebrahim Rasool is a former ambassador to the United States.

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