Al-Qalam 
[Photo: EuroNews]
A few weeks ago, after Jumu’ah, I was rudely asked, ‘Why do I stand by Iran and Yemen?’
“Why?” he asked, almost in rebuke. This is approximately what I replied: Despite being vilified and demonised, these two nations, slandered and reviled for their Shiite majority, are the only two Muslim nations that stood unwaveringly with Palestine providing succour and support while the rest of the 1,7 billion Muslims in the world remained mostly spectators in Caligula’s Roman circus.
Among them are rulers, influencers, institutions, mimbars, and yes — average individuals — who do nothing but cheer on what Israel is doing. Yes, as Franchesca Albanese (the United Nations Special Rapporteur) said, Israel is responsible for one of the ‘cruellest genocides in modern history’, the silent inaction on the part of 55 of the 57 Muslim countries is like the epitaph that every passerby in the cemetery will read, inscribed for eternal shame.
Let me say this. In this Holy Month of Muharram 1447, I declare that it’s better to become a martyr than to watch the humiliation and horror and live in shame. We will be subjected to severe injustice, worse than what we are experiencing now. I abhor silence in the face of injustice, and the abuse by speakers in Houses of Allah who sow seeds of division instead of the truth, for Zionism is what the coronavirus did and is doing.
Whilst a genocide is carried on and still being done, mimbar after mimbar is distracting the Ummah away from the suffering in Gaza and indulging in sectarianism.
I mentioned Iran and Yemen not because I support their theology, it is because I believe in their ideology of freeing Al Aqsa from the Zionists and because I find silence an abomination. The same goes for those lame tongued clerics whose lukewarm criticisms achieve nothing, for they lack conviction and commitment.
Compared to them, their Shia counterparts hold nothing back.
I pause here to make this disclaimer. That does not make them right in creed, and I will supplement that it does make them morally courageous in action, especially when compared to many of our governments and religious institutions, who did nothing.
To acknowledge that is not Shia sympathy. In this 10 Muharram month I repeat that just as Hussayn whose faith and moral conviction was so strong that he preferred martyrdom to succumbing to usurpers and the cunning who sought to dilute the cause of his noble grandfather Muhammad (PBUH), I too would rather succumb to martyrdom as those in Gaza have, as those in Iran have than to live in shame….
Saber Ahmed Jazbhay
Constitutional Law
Durban
