Israel is destroying everything.

Judges decline Berlin’s request to dismiss complaint made by Nicaragua.

Tents offer no protection from rising temperatures.

Netanyahu government spreads rumors of imminent arrest warrants.

Israel has destroyed our home.

Pro-Israel group portrays protests as anti-Semitic.

by Ibrahim Moiz for MuslimMatters

28 April 2024

Major Political and Da’wah Figure

One of Yemen’s most colourful politicians, and a major figure in Islamic proselytization, passed away this week. Abdul-Majeed Zindani was a founding leader of the Islamist Islah party, a major part of Yemeni political and public life for the last thirty years, and was energetically involved in Yemeni and regional politics and education since the 1960s, when the country first became a republic.

In effective exile in Turkiye when he passed away in his early eighties, Abdul-Majeed Aziz Hammoud Zindani was a long way from home. Born in central Yemen’s Ibb province into the Arhab clan, Zindani studied across Yemen before joining the still relatively small coterie of students who travelled abroad, a coterie that had a major impact in Yemeni politics during the period.

Regional Wars

At the time, North Yemen was ruled by an increasingly unpopular Zaidi imamate, while South Yemen was ruled by Britain from the port city of Aden. During Zindani’s youth in the 1960s, the situation changed dramatically: in 1962 a military coup in Sanaa, widely supported by North Yemen’s educated class and dissident clans, toppled the imamate, while nationalist and leftist militants in South Yemen agitated against and eventually ousted the British colony. North Yemen in particular became the focus of a regional war: Cairo sent a major military expedition to support the Sanaa regime, while Saudi Arabia and Jordan, backed by Britain and the United States, threw their support behind an insurgency built around Zaidi supporters of the former imamate. It was to be the first of several regional wars in Yemen in Zindani’s lifetime.

Moving in Conservative Circles

At that point, Zindani was studying in Cairo, where he came into Islamist circles led by Muhammad Zubairi, who was later assassinated after attempting to mediate in the civil war, and the underground Ikhwanul-Muslimin group. The latter association forced his deportation to Yemen, where, still in his mid-twenties, he was promoted to the information ministry.

With the end of the North Yemen war, Saudi Arabia withdrew its support for the imamate insurgency and instead cultivated conservative circles in the Sanaa government in the 1970s. Zindani was one such figure and eventually moved to teach in Saudi Arabia, beginning a long if often uneasy association with Riyadh that would last four decades.

Zindani was closely associated at this point with the Muslim World League, a Saudi-sponsored association that collected various Islamic scholars and activists from across the world for various educational and political endeavours. With a lifelong interest in science, he founded the World League’s commission to examine scientific miracles in the Quran and Sunnah in the mid-1980s.

Contact With Jihadists and Founding of Islah

Zindani also ardently supported – in the name of jihad – the 1980s Afghanistan resistance against the Soviet invasion, raising volunteers and travelling for the cause. In the event, he also made contact with famous Arab leaders in that insurgency, including the Palestinian preacher Abdullah Azzam and the then-Saudi-backed potentate Usama bin-Ladin.

Yemen during the 1970s and 1980s was preoccupied with questions of unification between North Yemen and South Yemen, and the specific terms of such unification. South Yemen, under a Marxist regime since 1969, backed leftist dissidents in the North, while North Yemen backed various often conservative dissidents in the South: often these dissidents mounted small-scale insurgencies.

When the two Yemens united under Northern dictator Ali Saleh’s leadership in 1990, Zindani worked to undercut leftist influence. He founded the Islah Party, along with the northern Hashid confederation chieftain and assembly speaker Abdullah Ahmar, in 1990. This was a mixture of Ikhwan-leaning Islamists, Salafis, and clansmen: Zindani qualified in each category. It became a major partner to Saleh’s ruling party, with Zindani promoted to the five-man ruling council in 1993.

By 1994 unhappiness with Saleh was mounting among various southern politicians, both the leftists and their former rivals, prompting them to break away and attempt to secede. The resultant war showed the limits of accord between Saudi Arabia and Islah. Riyadh, which had fallen out with Saleh, backed the separatists, but Zindani and Ahmar fiercely opposed them and framed the war as a jihad, for which they recruited both Islamist militants and clan fighters. It was only after the civil war that his relations with the Saudis were repaired.

Designated As a Terrorist

A decade later, the American “war on terrorism” – with Zindani’s former friend Usama bin-Ladin as its primary target – put the Islah leader in its gunsights. The USA designated Zindani as a supporter of terrorism, and warned Qatar and Saudi Arabia to cut funds to his institutions. Zindani’s protests and offers to appear in court were supported by Saleh, who instead turned on another target of the United States, the Zaidi Houthi group in the north.

Advocating a return to the imamate, the Houthis also attacked Saleh’s overtures to Washington and were soon embroiled in a war where Islah played a major role: the Ahmar family and Saleh’s cavalry corps commander Ali Muhsin, also affiliated with the party, led the campaign against the Zaidi rebels, in a faint repeat of the 1960s North Yemen war. As the war dragged on, Saleh’s alliance with Islah was increasingly frayed.

Switched Sides

In 2011, Saleh sent Zindani to mediate with protesters in Sanaa, part of a regional pattern of opposition to Arab dictators. Instead Zindani sided with the opposition, part of a general Islah pattern of turning against the dictator. The resultant government, led by Saleh’s former deputy Abdrabbuh Hadi, featured a significant Islah presence. This prompted Saleh to secretly side with the Houthis against the coalition between Hadi and Islah. In September 2014 Zindani had to flee Sanaa as the Houthis mounted a sudden takeover of the capital.

With the regional tables again turning, in 2015 Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates led a bloody campaign in Yemen, ostensibly to support the ousted government of which Zindani’s Islah party was a part. Even as it officially opposed the Houthis, Abu Dhabi also supported southern separatists and turned on Islah, which still maintained passable links with Saudi Arabia. Zindani uncompromisingly opposed the separatists once more. Like Hadi, he lived in Saudi Arabia until 2020, when he moved to Turkiye. There he ended his life, far from a homeland in whose history he had played a major part for decades.

Related

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The post Yemeni Islah Leader Abdul-Majeed Zindani Passes Away appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

The Prophet ﷺ said, “A woman is married for four things: her wealth, her family status, her beauty and her religion. So you should marry the religious woman, otherwise, you will lose out.” [Sahih al-Bukhari 5090]

 

Once upon a time in the Land of the Sunset, a merchant named Aderfi Yaqoob lived with his six children. Being a man of the market, he had high hopes that not only would his children be merchants like him, but sultans of more than souks.

Shortly after his eldest son became old enough to hold a saw, he soon joined Souk Chouari and its carpenters. When his middle son could first hold a hammer, he rushed to be an apprentice of one of Souk Haddadine’s blacksmiths. And his youngest son, cloth in hand, was welcomed eagerly by the cobblers of Souk Smata. All three brothers began to spend longer and longer hours in their respective markets, neglecting their aging father at home, adamant that such time in the souks would be invested into their father’s security later.

Aderfi also had daughters, but they had little interest in working in the markets. Instead, they loved spending money in those markets. After their mother passed, Aderfi tried to console his eldest daughter with jewelry from Souk Dhabia and his middle daughter with perfume from Souk Attarine. 

But the youngest was peculiar; she never asked for anything the way her two older sisters did. It was her father’s company that was invaluable to her, and not what he could purchase. Known for the beauty of her character and appearance, it was no surprise that she was a lady of her name: “Jameela.”

Lanterns of the souks [PC: Dario Ciraulo (unsplash)]

The brothers soon became successful in their crafts. Many of the women in Marrakech whispered to their fathers about Aderfi’s sons, seeking them out for their promising careers and amassing wealth. For them to be married to merchants, too, would have boosted their reputations.

His daughters also received numerous marriage proposals— but for many of the same reasons. Bachelors saw the ladies as beautiful, wealthy, and related to the greatest merchant in Maghreb. Sadly, none of the men saw those ladies for their virtue. Jameela, of course, received the most proposals of all. However, she also declined the proposals more than her sisters did. With her older siblings seemingly ready to be married at any minute, Jameela instead chose to stay at home with her father for a few years more.

An Angel is Near

Then tragedy struck. Foreign soldiers took over the souks. The leather meant for Souk Cherratin was taken and adorned by the soldiers, and the carpets for Souk Zrabi laced their homes instead of those of the Amazigh. Dyes from Souk Sebbagine spilled the streets until the people surrendered.

With nothing but the clothes on their backs, Aderfi and his children fled to their country home far away from the markets. Both sets of sons and daughters lost their suitors and brides-to-be. The father became a shepherd instead of a seller, and his children chose labor in light of losing love.

They all had to remain awake before the sun rose. The men were used to a quick nap after fajr, waiting until the other people awoke to purchase their wares. But now they dragged themselves from their warm beds to herd animals, tend to the earth, and hunt predators away. The women stayed inside the home, making butter from the milk, retrieving eggs from the chickens, and feeding the animals. It was a hard life, and they all complained about it… save for Jameela. Instead of groaning like her brothers and moaning like her sisters, she recited salawat as she worked, and beamed at the cry of every rooster.

“An angel is near!” she said happily each time. 

Aderfi nodded, and responded, “There is, indeed.”

A year passed. One day, Aderfi received a letter from a fellow merchant. The letter detailed that the soldiers had relaxed their regulations. Many of them had shipped goods home to their families, and wanted more. And the only one who could navigate the paths of each souk was none other than Aderfi.

He wept for joy, and proclaimed “Alhamdulillah!” His sons would have jobs again! His daughters would not suffer from breaking cookware and old clothes! All right before Ramadan. What a blessing!

Wiping away his tears, he asked his children what they wanted when he returned. His daughters answered almost immediately—a new pot from Souk Fekharine, and a copper kettle from Souk Seffarine. The brothers, staying back to protect their sisters, asked their father for similar things as gifts to their former fiances, hoping they could be convinced to return.

When it was Jameela’s turn, she, too, had to pause to rub her eyes. “Jazakum Allahu khayran,” she said. As usual, there was nothing she really wanted, other than her father’s safe return. But she looked at her siblings, who seemed ready to tease her if she refused. “If it was one thing I could never find in the souk, it was a desert rose.”

Aderfi obliged. In Marrakech, he was welcomed as an honored man by the locals. “Ramadan Mubarak!” they told him. Souk Nejjarine was full of beautiful wooden decorations, and Souk Semmarine was full of Eid gifts.

However, he quickly discovered that most of his merchant friends had also fled in fear. All of his sons’ former employers were gone, and it took Aderfi hours to convince the new sellers for a position for each one of them again. The pay was much less after occupation, as well. But Aderfi knew his sons, and they would prefer it to farm work any day.

But just as the pay was less, the prices were higher. Aderfi struggled to work out deals with the new sellers—some of them even soldiers’ wives. Scared of being accused of causing trouble, he retreated with only two gifts for his daughters.

For the second time, he left Marrakech defeated. His heart was so heavy, and his thoughts so preoccupied, that he rode through the desert without looking about him. Soon enough, he became lost. His horse, too, was unable to find his way. Terror began to consume him. He might not make it home in time for Ramadan.

The winds whipped and sand swept into his eyes, and the sun continued to sink. When it was time to pray Maghrib, he sank into sajdah, begging Allah for a way out. 

A Palatial Oasis

Just when he thought there was no way for him to return home, he stumbled upon a beautiful oasis. Date palms encircled a beautiful white veranda. Bushes of jasmine and plentiful trees of tangerines seemed to open their arms towards him.

Dar al-Bayda? he wondered as he crept closer. Casablanca? No, it couldn’t be. As he led his horse to a nearby pond, he kept looking around himself in disbelief. Not a soul was present. But he knew someone had to live here, otherwise, this place wouldn’t be as well-maintained as it was.

“As-salamu alaykum!” he called as he entered the ornate veranda. No one responded. Yet everything was meticulously decorated and immaculately clean. The floors were made of tile and lofty pillars held up an intricately designed roof. A creeping sense of worry began to fill Aderfi’s mind. By all appearances, he might have stepped into a foreign soldier’s abode, and he could be arrested for trespassing.

An ornate oasis [PC: Mert Kahveci (unsplash)]

But a warm fire was lit up ahead, and the desert cold was unforgiving outside. He thought to sit and wait to explain himself. He cleared his throat again, and took a few more moments to compose himself by the fire. Perhaps his host was praying.

“I only mean to stay until ‘Isha. And then, I will set up camp outside,” he said aloud. Nothing but the empty air responded to him. Aderfi continued to look around at his surroundings. He was in the salon, and doubtless, there might be staff preparing for dinner. When he peered into the next room, indeed, he found a spread of food already laid out. A tajine with fresh chicken, apricots, and plums, bathed in turmeric and other spices. There were other delights around it; couscous with raisins, red onions, red bell peppers, fish chermoula, b’sarra soup, and a flaky b’stilla pastry. His mouth watered, but he returned back to the salon.

“Might I join you for your meal?” he asked aloud to his unseen host. “And then take rest for the remainder of the night? I only wish to wait until Fajr, and then I will be out of your way.” 

‘Isha came, announced by a clock loitering on the wall. After he prayed, Aderfi couldn’t restrain himself, and ate to his heart’s content. The master of the house never came to join him. He promised to recompense him, and went into the nearby room—clearly made up for a guest. Covers softer than his bed in Marrakech, with thread woven by only the most skilled weaver. 

Aderfi marveled at the sight. It was almost as though the master was waiting for him. A fresh djellaba and warm bathwater was prepared for him. Perhaps it was an angel? He thanked Allah profusely as he drifted off.

When he awoke for fajr, Aderfi could still hardly believe his eyes. His clothes from the previous night, now clean, had been laid out on the dresser for him, and there was fresh water for him once more. He made wudhu and prayed that the master would have everything his heart desired for his kindness.

Breakfast was light, but still wonderful nonetheless. Freshly picked mint tea and baghrir pancakes, with honey, cheese, and jam to go with it.

“I wish that you would join me, kind seedee,” Aderfi said before he ate. “We are brothers; it is only appropriate that we eat together.”

No response, still. Aderfi decided to pinch himself, and—no—still not a dream. Wanting not to trouble the kind master anymore, he tidied after himself as much as possible, and went outside. His horse was still waiting at the pond, although it was clear someone had gone to care for him. He was chewing on hay and appeared freshly groomed. Sadness consumed him. A merchant being unable to pay a master; truly, there was no humiliation like this.

Just as he turned to leave, he spotted something beautiful in the garden—bushes of desert roses. They had been masked only by the other flowers. Aderfi immediately remembered his promise to Jameela, and hurriedly rushed to pick one.

A terrible roar filled the air.

The Exchange

Aderfi felt his heart leap into his chest. Bounding towards him was a great werehyena, eyes glowing with fury. As the merchant stumbled back onto his legs, screaming in fear, he saw that the werehyena wore a torn cape. 

The master of the house.

“Ya Seedee—!” Aderfi cried.

The werehyena scoffed. An ugly sound; his black nostril flared and his garish teeth pulled back to show crimson gums. “I am no teacher. But you—” he said, leaning in closer, “are a thief!”

“Please,” he whimpered, “In Marrakech, I was the most famed merchant—”

“Then you would know how terrible of a thing it is to take from others!” The werehyena pulled back, snarling, his eyes two pupils of red fury. “A merchant who steals. Ha! And I thought I had experienced everything there was in this world.”

“Seedee, I swear by Allah—” 

“Enough of your lies and smooth talk! I know what you think of me. Foolish merchant, you flatter your customers in the hopes that they are generous to you. Call me how you see me. A beast. Now beg, and with sincerity this time.”

“I only thought of giving this to my daughter, not myself! If I could give back all of your kindness in exchange for this one rose, I would do so. You have been so merciful to me—”

“Indeed, I regret it.” The werehyena stood on its hind legs, towering above Aderfi, searching his eyes for any sort of sincerity. “Well, it should only be fair, then, that you should live to see her enjoy it—along with other roses, yes?”

Aderfi, dumbfounded, nodded.

“Bring her to me. That is your exchange.” Then the werehyena snorted. “And I swear by Allah… I can track down any scent. Should you disagree with our deal, our bargain will be replaced with you instead.” Another snort. “Take this compass with you, with your daughter’s name in your heart, and it will show you where she is.”

Horrified, Aderfi glanced at the compass. It began to adjust its true north and pointed in the direction of his home. He rode filled with dread, knowing that his return to safety would mean her doomed captivity.

It was ironic, then, to have his sons welcome him with great hugs and his daughters with kisses. With trepidation, he announced to the sons of their new positions of work under occupation. They groaned, but said alhamdulillah for the improvement of their fortune. Aderfi’s daughters responded in an opposite manner, enthusiastic at the sight of their gifts, and forgetting their father.

For Jameela, though, it was as though she had received a chest of gold. “Ma sha Allah,” she said in awe at the desert rose. She pressed it to her nose and inhaled deeply. “It’s beautiful. Jazak Allahu Khayran, Baba!”

At the sight of his beautiful daughter enjoying freedom for the last time, Aderfi burst into tears. “Ya binti,” he wept. “This was the most expensive gift of them all.” He then told his children everything that had happened on the mysterious veranda. His daughters could hardly believe him, but, ready to get rid of their sister (whom they had never been very fond of to begin with), cried crocodile tears. The brothers, in similar disbelief, thought their father was merely showing signs of age. Jameela, though, was quiet and contemplative.

“Alhamdulillah,” she said. “Our father found a way out from his predicament, and I am able to go in his stead. He can spend Ramadan in his home and not in captivity. Baba, let us go quickly. We should not fast from food while being unable to keep our promises to others.”

“Don’t leave!” her sisters wept, the corners of their mouths twitching with hypocrisy. “Our precious, beloved sister!”

“Yes, Baba, let us go with you!” His sons urged. “We shall slay that beast!”

“No,” Aderfi asserted. “You must stay and watch your sisters—”

“And I will stay by your side. I will follow you whenever you leave.” Jameela left immediately to pack her things and those of her father’s. He knelt quietly at his majlis, too stricken to speak.

Aderfi didn’t sleep well that night, but there was nothing that could be done by the time the sun rose. He and Jameela set off towards the veranda, with fear of the beast in their hearts. Their only comfort was the hilal that shone above them, marking the first night of Ramadan.

Upon their arrival, the veranda was empty. Aderfi thought, at first, that the beast had died. But as he wandered through the salon, the guest room, and the dining room, he found that it was all as he had encountered before. As though the house were being prepared for someone to visit.

“Ya Seedee,” he called out. “I have brought my daughter as part of our agreement. Have mercy on her and show her the same kindness you showed me. I beg of you.”

From the darkness of the room, the werehyena responded. “I have eyes, thieving merchant. Go, enjoy your meal with your daughter. It will be your last.”

The two of them ate quietly at another marvelous spread for dinner, though neither had much of an appetite. Both retired, and Jameela found that her room had been elaborately adorned. Not a single wall was uncovered; there were bookshelves filled from ceiling to floor and the most exquisite Arabic calligraphy she had ever seen. Finely-crafted lanterns were scattered all around.

The bed was the most comfortable she had ever slept in. Jameela dreamt that she was crowned the sultana of Al-Maghreb. At suhur, she told her father her dream. He succumbed to emotion; it was what he always wanted for his children.

 At last, the time came for her to bid farewell to her father. Both of them cried; she on her father’s chest and him on her shoulder. 

“It’s not too late for me to stay in your stead, Jameela,” he whispered. “Let this Ramadan be my last. You have many more to look forward to.”

But Jameela shook her head and fought back more tears. He rode back out in the desert, and when Jameela turned around again, she found the werehyena just a few inches away.

“Bismillah,” she exclaimed. “The beast!”

***

[to be continued…]

 

Related:

– The Apiary – A Short Story

– Asha and the Washerwoman’s Baby: A Short Story

The post Bismillah, The Beast [Part I] – A Short Story appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Kirklees residents are likely to punish both the Tories and Labour for their stance on Gaza in the 2 May local elections

Of all the issues being discussed and debated among voters in the lead-up to local elections, there is one that has taken precedence for some residents of the West Yorkshire borough of Kirklees: the conflict in Gaza.

This week’s votes are predicted to bring damaging results for Rishi Sunak – whose personal ratings have reached a record low.

Continue reading...

by Israa Mohammed Jamal

We may have lost faith in governments, but we haven’t lost faith in Allah.

 

A “Warning”

When my son came back from the Taymya mosque, he was puffing and could hardly breathe. “The Israelis said they are going to target near the mosque now,” Mahmoud said. “They ordered us to evacuate the area!”

“Where is your father and the others?” I asked. Mahmoud hid his face in his hands and cried.

This was during the month of Ramadan, which is the month of saying prayers more than any other time of the year. Ramadan makes us feel closer to Allah , as we put all our efforts into worshiping him, and in return, we ask for Allah’s Blessings and Support. This month is always very important for us because it is the month which has Laylat al-Qadr – the Night of Power –: the night when Allah first sent the Quran down from heaven and revealed the first verses to the Prophet Muhammad .

It was during the Maghrib prayers when my son went to the mosque with my husband, Mohammed, and his cousin. I was preparing Iftar – the evening meal – for when they would return. Only five minutes after they had left, my son ran back into the house crying. “I was sitting by the door and talking with my friend when the man came and told us to leave,” said Mahmoud. “I rushed back to the house so quickly and forgot that I had left Baba there.” 

Even though I was terrified something had happened to Mahmoud, I wanted to calm him down. “Don’t worry,” I said. “He is coming back, just calm down.” Mahmoud went to wash his face and I went to the door to wait for Mohammed.

In what felt like an eternity, but was only a few minutes, Mohammed appeared. “Your father is back! He is okay!” I shouted back into the house. Mahmoud and his father discussed what had happened and embraced each other with relief.  

As we gathered around the food, we all tried to calm down, but our hearts were still pounding.  

Not long after finishing Iftar and saying our prayers, the Israelis targeted the area near the mosque with two rockets. 

We were terrified. We couldn’t do anything except pray to Allah to protect us. 

Normally, during Ramadan, whether in the morning or at night, we would walk the streets together listening to the songs of Eid, enjoying the decorations strung up everywhere. We would then go to the mosque for Taraweeh prayers. 

But this year we couldn’t enjoy the streets, we couldn’t enjoy the songs, we couldn’t even enjoy the prayers. We couldn’t even feel the significance of this month while others were dying from cold, hunger, or Israeli rockets. 

This is what just some of our days were like during this year’s Ramadan. 

In Search of Cure

On one day, I had a severe stomach ache. I couldn’t eat or drink or even comply with fasting. I had to go and see a doctor. 

In a playground nearby, the Red Crescent set up a field clinic because there are no hospitals in Rafah; only two small centers for pregnant women and for basic first aid. 

While I was walking to the hospital there was a man shouting “Please help! My children are hungry. I came out of northern Gaza four days ago and I can’t feed my children!” Another man went to him, asked him his name, and tried to calm him down. It’s powerful to see that we can still support each other even though we are all suffering so much. 

While sitting in the medical clinic queue, clutching my stomach, an old woman started talking to me. Part of her face was caved in, and it was hard to understand her. “What happened to you?” I asked. 

“I’m from Khan Younis. We were inside Nasser Hospital when a bullet from an Israeli sniper hit my face. It went in under my ear and went out from here,” she said pointing to her cheek. 

“I’m so sorry,” I replied. “May Allah help you. How can you eat?” 

“Through this tube,” she said, pointing to something attached to her face. Then, my name was called and I left the woman with the hole in her face in the queue.

I explained to the doctor what I was feeling and how I had never experienced anything like this before. He told me that it could be because of the poor-quality water or food that we are all consuming. He couldn’t help me, as the clinic was just for wounds. He told me I needed to see a specialist and get medicine, which they didn’t have there. 

“Where can I go to get the medicine?” I asked. 

“I have no idea,” he replied. 

His answer made me want to cry. Now I knew the problem but couldn’t get any help. Just last year, a close friend of mine, Rana, died from stomach cancer, which the doctors discovered too late. I worried that something like this would also happen to me.

In Gaza: Still Thankful to Be Alive

To help me feel a little better, I decided to visit my siblings nearby. They could support me and lift my mood. While I walked to their house I was shocked to see the huge numbers of tents constructed in the area. There was rubbish, polluted water, and waste everywhere. There were no decorations and no songs welcoming Ramadan; no smiling faces greeting each other, saying “Ramadan Mubarak”, “Ramadan Kareem” or “Ramadan Sa’id” this Ramadan. Just unfamiliar faces in the crowds, internally displaced people from all over Gaza, trying to survive. 

Everywhere, children were asking for money. Men and women were sticking notices on shop walls looking for missing children. And in the background was the constant sound of rockets and warplanes.

When I arrived at my brother’s house, my nephews ran up to me and hugged me so tightly. We hadn’t seen each other since the war started. 

The house they were in was full of our relatives who had fled from Gaza City. There were about twenty of them all together. Some were trying to fix the network connection and other things that had been destroyed in missile strikes near the house. 

One of my cousins told me that this was the first time they had spent Ramadan without their mother. They were miserable.

We all spoke about how we couldn’t see this war ending, how we had nothing to look forward to, and how we didn’t know how to get through the days. but despite this, we continue to support each other and those around us. Every day we tried to enjoy Ramadan, prepare for Iftar, come together, and be thankful that we were still alive. 

I managed to find another clinic that had the medicine I needed for my stomach ache, and I feel a bit better now. 

Ramadan is now over, but we still believe that Allah will help us. We may have lost our faith in the governments and the people in power all around the world, but we haven’t lost faith in Allah . There is still hope. 

***

Life is unbearable in Gaza. Israel is threatening to attack Rafah, and it’s hard to imagine a future in Gaza anymore. Israa has created a fundraising campaign to raise money for her cousin who lost her mother, husband, sister, and four children in Israeli airstrikes. Please consider donating here.

 

Related:

– We Are Not Numbers x MuslimMatters – Ramadan In The Time Of Genocide

– We Are Not Numbers x MuslimMatters – Faith Is Our Way Of Resistance

The post We Are Not Numbers x MuslimMatters – Ramadan While Under Attack In Gaza appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

The American invasion of Iraq met its toughest battlefield in the campaign twenty years ago this month (April), when insurgents took the city of Fallujah after a bloody battle and held it for seven months until an even bloodier American conquest.

Similarly to the Palestinian city Gaza in the period since, Fallujah in that period came to symbolize the tragedy of foreign intervention in the region and the spirit of local resistance. Its rise and fall marked both the climax and a turning point in the Iraq war: before its fall, the Iraqi insurgency had the occupation on the ropes; afterward, Iraq steadily descended into a mire of sectarian bloodshed that ensured the occupation of Iraq would last far longer.

Background

Iraq in the last decade has in large part seen a power struggle between the beneficiaries of the 2003 invasion – Iran, claiming “Islamic resistance” against the “Great Satan” after riding to Baghdad’s corridors of power on American tanks, and the United States, who did the grunt work of the invasion. A third major element, the extremist Daesh group that grew out of the invasion, has now been virtually wiped out, but so too has the role of pre-Daesh resistance, which fought the Americans to a near-standstill in the occupation’s early years, been almost erased.

In imposing an ethnosectarian parliamentary regime, the United States split Iraq into a patchwork of Sunni Arabs, Shia Arabs, and Kurds. From these three supposedly homogenous blocs, the pro-Israel neoconservatives then so influential in Washington synonymized the Baath regime with a historically central Sunni Arab community – ignoring how the secularist Baath had originally emerged among non-Sunni Arabs and how even Saddam Hussein, whose regime recruited heavily from his Sunni hometown of Tikrit, crushed any number of Sunni Arab rivals. Sunni Arabs were especially well-represented in the military, a rival of the Baath party since the 1960s that Saddam was determined to tame: thus by the 1990s various Sunni Arab opposition, both backed by Washington and independent, were repeatedly crushed by the Baath regime just as it had crushed Shia and Kurdish rivals. Two are relevant: in 1996, an American-backed coup attempt, linked to an exiled former Baathist Iyad Allawi and led by Abdullah Shahwani, a defecting commando, and cavalry corps commander Abdul-Qadir Jasim, failed. The previous year, Saddam had quashed a tribal revolt in the western province Anbar.

A mixture of riverine towns and yawning desert, it was Anbar that quickly became the centerpiece of the insurgency against the Americans. Its autonomous, well-armed Arab clans, whose links reached far beyond Iraq’s borders, resented the brutality of the American clampdown and quickly formed insurgent networks whose logistics ran into neighboring Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. Along with border towns Qaim and Husaiba and provincial capital Ramadi, Falluja became a key insurgent hub, perched on the Euphrates at the province’s east not far off Baghdad. Known as the city of mosques, its preachers openly castigated the occupation.

The Americans preferred to paint the insurgents as either Baathist desperadoes loyal to an ousted dictator or extremists epitomized by the Jordanian militant Fadil Zarqawi, whose brutal sectarianism and talent for headline-grabbing suicide attacks had only been amplified by American propaganda. A snapshot of the insurgency at Anbar, however, shows a far wider array. There were irate clansmen, Sufi networks, Salafi networks, border smugglers, Sunni Islamist militants, officers of the disbanded Iraqi army, Baathists, and in many cases combinations of the above. Even many officials, including successively sacked provincial police chiefs in Anbar, tacitly supported the insurgency. While veterans of the ousted Baath regime played a key fundraising role, the party’s actual role was minor; even many of its adherents emphasized their commitment to Islam, which along with clan honor and Iraqi patriotism was a central focus of the insurgency.

The Ulama Association, an umbrella group of Sunni scholars who opposed the occupation, was the closest that the insurgency had to formal representation: its leader Harith Dari had a son, Muthanna, in the insurgency. Insurgent “factions”, with names like “Islamic Army” and “Mujahideen Army”, were often formally led by a spokesperson, but in practice relied on highly diffuse networks of local insurgents with little central control. The main exceptions to this lack of central control were the shrinking remnants of the Baath party; Zarqawi’s originally small group, which would grow and posthumously turn into Daesh; and Ansarul-Sunnah, an originally Kurdish Salafi militia that unsuccessfully competed with Zarqawi for Al-Qaeda support but also expanded into Arab-majority regions to oppose the occupation. At this stage, none of these three groups had a particularly strong presence in Anbar.

The Climax of Resistance

It was the Issawi clansmen of a recently imprisoned tribal leader, Barakat Saadoun, at Falluja who brought the Iraq war to its climax in spring 2004 when they killed several mercenaries on which the American defense department, under the euphemistic moniker of “contractors”, was increasingly reliant. Enraged, the Americans determined to make an example: they called in the crack praetorian marines, led by the ruthless James Mattis, and assaulted the city indiscriminately for a month against surprisingly fierce resistance. Leading the insurgents was Omar Hadid, a former electrician, supported by preachers Abdullah Janabi and Zafir Subhi. Other insurgents from in and around the city hurried to join the fray: they included fronts led by pietistic doctor Yasin Assaf; Abed Nayel, a career soldier from the Khalifawi clan; Muhannad Ulayyan, the son of a prominent Khalifawi leader, Khalaf; and Baathist notable Nuri Zibar. Contrary to American propaganda, which breathlessly speculated on which neighborhood might be housing Zarqawi, the Jordanian commander was not even in Falluja, though his aides Omar Jumaa, a Palestinian preacher, and Abdullah Jawari were present.

A relative mourns a slain family member

The American assault provoked an uproar. So packed was Fallujah with dead that its football stadium was repurposed as a graveyard. While Washington originally tried to castigate media, such as Qatar’s state broadcaster, for its unflattering accuracy toward American operations, it soon became clear that the attack was neither politically nor militarily feasible. Even as the battle raged, insurgents in other parts of Anbar launched attacks to divert the Americans. At Husaiba, the entire police force defected to join insurgents Riad Matloub and Ghanim Hashim, who had unified border networks into a militant front. At Ramadi, Islamic academic Mahmoud Latif and local enforcer Muhammad Dahham founded an influential front that attacked the occupation forces head-on. Politically, the attack was equally unsustainable: in Baghdad, United Nations envoy Lakhdar Brahimi and several members of the American-installed junta threatened to resign. Eventually, to the disgust of an unrepentant Mattis, the attackers had to withdraw, leaving about two hundred insurgents and thrice that number of civilians slain.

Falluja became something of an anomaly in the occupation: a large city not far from the capital openly controlled by the insurgents. A council was set up by preachers Abdullah Janabi and Zafir Subhi, with Hadid as its commander. The flailing government turned to pro-American Sunni leaders, such as the 1996 coup veteran Abdullah Shahwani – now promoted to spymaster – to negotiate. Shahwani secured an agreement from the insurgents to put a militia in the city, yet the government balked at the alleged Baath history of its commander, Jasim Habib, and eventually the militia, dissipated into the insurgency.

Elsewhere in Iraq, other opponents of the occupation were emboldened: notably Muqtada Sadr, the populist Shia cleric, supported the Sunni insurgents and threatened to take Najaf, a city sacred to Shias. This surprised the neoconservatives, who had expected the Shia population to greet them as liberators and thus be weaned off any Iranian sympathy. By the end of spring 2004, the occupation was at its flimsiest: not only was Falluja lost and Najaf under threat, but interim prime minister Izzuddin Salim was assassinated, and publicized evidence of grisly mass torture by the Americans further inflamed the situation. Expeditionary commander Ricardo Sanchez gloomily highlighted a joint Sunni-Shia resistance as the occupation’s biggest threat.

Within Anbar, governor Abdul-Karim Barjas was forced to resign and disavow the occupation after his sons were abducted. Hadid, the Falluja commander, set about imposing control – at one point executing the pro-American commander of a paramilitary unit, Sulaiman Marawi. But in political terms, the insurgents dramatically failed to capitalize amid suspicion and factionalism. Contrary to American claims that he had masterminded the Falluja insurgency, Zarqawi’s local lieutenant, Jawari, was expelled by the Islamists on the council. Suspicion also abounded around former Baathists: a purportedly religious group founded by Muayyad Aziz, a clansman of Saddam, never managed to dispel suspicions about where its loyalty lay. The Ulama Association, whose member Fakhri Qaisi also joined the council, was unable to steer the insurgents, especially when forced to distinguish between “honorable resistance” and the frequent brutalism employed elsewhere by Zarqawi, who seemed to view the American occupation as a footnote in a total war with the Shias. Even Al-Qaeda, who formally embraced Zarqawi as its local representative in the autumn, was uneasy about his sectarianism, vainly urging him to focus on the occupation. This sectarianism was one reason that the joint Sunni-Shia resistance feared by Sanchez never materialized.

The Shia senior establishment, such as Shia cleric Ali Sistani who persuaded the hotheaded Sadr to stand down at Najaf, helped the Americans salvage the situation: so, ironically, did the pro-Iran factions. The Dawa and Badr political-military networks – patronized by Tehran since the 1980s – threw their weight behind the occupation, correctly judging that, as the most established pro-occupation political parties, they would be able to win the forthcoming election. But Sunni collaborators, vainly trying to get a piece of the election pie and often aided by Jordan, hardly helped: many supported interim ruler Iyad Allawi simply because he opposed Iran – even though, with a longstanding relationship with American intelligence, he favored a heavy-handed crackdown on Fallujah. Similarly, the paramilitary groups that would later become coopted by Shia militias were actually founded by Allawi’s Sunni lieutenants, interior minister Falah Naqib, and his uncle Adnan Thabit, another veteran of the 1996 coup. When insurgents attacked large cities such as Mosul and Samarra in autumn 2004, it was collaborators such as Naqib and Thabit who provided the Americans with key support against other Sunnis, wrongly expecting that they would benefit; instead, the pro-Iran Badr and Dawa militias would reap the rewards.

Not a week after having won a hard-fought election wherein his Iraq conduct was a major issue, Bush called in a full-scale assault on Fallujah, now led by Richard Natonski. The resultant battle was the most brutal round of warfare for the Americans since Vietnam. Along with massive bombardment, the attackers plowed into the city and engaged in ferocious streetfighting that even dwarfed the spring campaign. They were supported by Abdul-Qadir, the 1996 coup commander, and Kurdish commander Fadil Barwari. In the six weeks’ combat, over a hundred attackers – mostly Americans, for whom such a body count was highly unusual – were killed, as were perhaps over two thousand Iraqis. Among the slain were Hadid and Ansarul-Sunnah commander Hemin Saleem; Muayyad was captured, while the rival Abdullahs Janabi and Jawari made good their escape. Still more galling than the slaughter, was the biological legacy of American weaponry: since then, birth defects have spiralled among Fallujan children.

Turning Point

The downfall of Fallujah marked a turning point in the Iraq war. In the first place, it gave the occupation government a breathing space to hold elections in 2005 and set up a constitution that would institutionalize ethnosectarian politics. The first such election was widely boycotted by Sunni Arabs, but when the Dawa and Badr parties benefited a number of Sunni leaders, including former insurgents, scrambled to reconcile in order to participate in the second. In so doing they drained the insurgency and essentially bought into the same framework that the occupation had imposed. The fact that many Sunni Arabs were willing to ignore Allawi’s role in the sack of Falluja and support him as an anti-Iran candidate summarized both the limits of the official framework and the political failure of their leadership.

But the alternatives were hardly appealing. Over the course of 2005, pro-Iran militiamen increasingly dominated the American-installed security and engaged in relentless abuses, including torture and murder, against Sunnis. On the other hand, Zarqawi plunged into a series of bloody suicide attacks on Shia civilians, each killing scores of people. This vicious cycle of sectarian violence by state-enabled Shia militias – including even Sadr, whose largely urban underclass of followers proceeded to expel, loot, and murder Sunnis in Baghdad – on one side, and anti-state Sunni militias on the other, saw the Iraq war slip from a straightforward case of resistance to a bloody sectarian war.

Against this backdrop, many Anbar insurgents, like the Islamists Latif, Zafir, and Yasin retired from the maquis. Others, out of opportunism or desperation, switched sides, fighting former comrades in return for autonomy and formal representation: these included Mahlawi chieftain Sabah Sattam, who switched sides immediately after fleeing Falluja to set up a border militia, and Issawi chieftain Barakat’s brother Aifan Saadoun. Khalaf Ulayyan, the Khalifawi leader whose son Muhannad remained in the insurgency around Falluja, himself accepted senior office, as did the new assembly speaker Mahmoud Mashhadani, a former insurgent ideologue, in a futile attempt to negotiate a withdrawal. These defectors had an uneasy relationship with pro-American leaders of Sunni background such as Abdul-Qadir, who was rewarded for his role at Falluja with the defense ministership.

Yet while they played a key role in stamping out the insurgency by the end of the 2000s, the defectors – condescendingly named a Sunni “Awakening” by their American beneficiaries – had no solid guarantees from either the Americans or an openly sectarian regime whose enemies they had helped eliminate and which had no incentive to support them once they had outlived their use. The fallout would reverberate into the 2010s with the return and growth of the group Zarqawi had founded, now rebranded into a self-styled caliphate as Daesh, who would return, along with a rejuvenated Abdullah Janabi and a Sunni militant coalition, to the city in 2014.

The aftermath of the Fallujah campaign, then, was a dispiriting one, Iraq sliding into a vicious sectarianism that increasingly offered a stark choice between millenarian violence and obeisance to one of the camps – the United States and Iran – who had played so integral a role in the actual invasion. Where the occupation had been on the ropes, its structures now pervaded, and continue to pervade, the country that it had occupied. Yet for a few heady months in 2004, the city of mosques – not opportunistic or bloodthirsty leaders, but the courageous and faithful men of Anbar – had given an illegal occupation the fright of its life.

 

Related:

– Iraq Crisis | From an Arab Spring to a Desert of Desperation

– FP: Tony Blair admits Israel’s role in the invasion of Iraq

The post Fallujah Aflame: Remembering The Bloodiest Battle Of The Iraq War appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

My father, Roger Boase, who has died aged 77, was a scholar of Spanish 15th- century cancionero poetry and history.

Roger’s magnum opus, published in 2017, was Secrets of Pinar’s Game, analysing across two volumes a single Iberian poem from 1496 and all the literary, historical, botanical and heraldic references therein.

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