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Daily News Analysis

Al-Quds: Future Capital of the Islamic Ummah

Kevin Barrett

Masjid al-Aqsa, the first Qibla of the Muslims in Al Quds (Jerusalem) currently under zionist occupation.

With stunning heroism and resiliency, the Resistance has put Palestine back on the map of burning global issues.

It was almost erased due to the corrupt complacency of most Muslim-majority countries and their compromised rulers.

That victory, won at the cost of tens of thousands of lives and an estimated $50 billion in property damage, must not be squandered.

The Muslim world must not avert its eyes from Palestine.

If it were to make that mistake again, even worse horrors would ensue.

The genocidal supremacist partisans of the ‘Greater Israel’ project have not relinquished their expansionist colonial ambition.

Their aim of completely exterminating the Palestinian people, appropriating all of their land, property, and resources, and then invading and ethnically cleansing neighboring countries so as to rule all the land between the Nile and Euphrates rivers is alive.

Such satanic messianic-millenarian extremists as Ben-Gvir and Smotrich plan to demolish the Masjid al-Aqsa.

On its ruins, they plan to build a blood sacrifice temple from which their so-called messiah, who would presumably be the Dajjal or Antichrist, would rule the world.

The Muslim world must unite to defend the Palestinian people and the people of the region.

It must unite in defense of the honor of the Arab and Muslim peoples.

And it must unite to defend al-Quds al-Sharif, home of Islam’s earliest and greatest architectural monument, the Masjid al-Aqsa, the primordial symbol of Islamic spirituality and ecumenicism, targeted for destruction by the satanic zionist legions.

The Resistance’s two-year struggle against the genocidal zionist criminals has won immense riches in the form of symbolic capital.

The essence of zionism—the sadistic cruelty of its lust for genocide—has been exposed for the whole world to see.

The nobility of the Palestinian cause has never been more evident, and the splendor of its martyrs has never shone more brightly.

Today, the world stands united behind Palestine like never before.

But that symbolic capital needs to be invested, not squandered.

And the best investment of that symbolic capital is not merely in “the path towards a Palestinian state,” but a much greater project: Enshrining Jerusalem al-Quds as the symbolic capital of a progressively uniting Muslim Ummah.

Pro-Resistance news networks like Al-Mayadeen have already taken the first step by scheduling their programming in accordance with Al-Quds Time.

All Muslims should carry this one step further by making Al-Quds Time “Universal Quds Time” (UQT) and using it as a universal temporal reference.

Whenever we communicate with people outside of our time zone, rather than using UTC (Universal Time Coordinated) which is just a euphemism for the old imperialist GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) we ought to use UQT.

When people ask why, we can explain that Jerusalem al-Quds is our capital and our lodestone.

Then, as soon as it becomes logistically feasible, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation needs to move its headquarters from Jeddah to al-Quds al-Sharif.

If the oligarchs who dominate the OIC are reluctant to take that step, ordinary Muslims worldwide should organize to establish a People’s Organization of Islamic Cooperation (POIC) and establish its headquarters in Al-Quds.

As we work to reform and/or establish the institutions that will lay the basis for Islamic unity, we must insist on one simple and inarguable point: With their immense courage and their almost unimaginable sacrifices, the Palestinian people have won for themselves the status of first nation among the Muslim nations, and future capital of United Islam.

If Muslims worldwide unite in conceding that point, and indeed insisting on it, the zionist entity will no longer have any hope of enforcing its will on two billion people.

It will then be forced to mutate into a far less toxic, non-zionist form willing to coexist with its neighbors.

We must be clear that al-Quds al-Sharif is not only henceforth the capital of united Islam, but also the capital of Islamic ecumenicism.

For almost 1400 years, Muslims have hosted Christians and Jews in Jerusalem al-Quds, protecting them and their holy places (not always perfectly) in accordance with the Covenants of the Prophet.

This was in harmony with the larger Islamic project that sees itself as a custodian of religious pluralism, not an enforcer of uniformity.

As we unanimously insist that al-Quds al-Sharif is and will henceforth remain the capital of the Ummah, we must insist with equal force that the Quranic edict لَكُمْ دِينُكُمْ وَلِىَ دِينِ (to you your religion, to me my religion) is fully respected.

Specifically, we must invite Christians who were ethnically cleansed by the zionists to return to the Holy Land of their Messiah, the Prophet Jesus, peace be upon him, and assure them that never again will they be spat upon or otherwise mistreated.

Indeed, Muslims ought to take the lead in raising funds—including through demanding and obtaining war crimes reparations from the zionist genocidaires—for rehabilitating Christian holy sites and facilitating the return of Christians to the land of the noble prophet Isa (Jesus (as)).

Ideally, the above-described campaign should be carried out according to principles of nonviolence.

It is avidly to be hoped that the “two-state solution” process that forms the basis of ongoing ceasefire talks will lead to the zionists’ quick withdrawal from all land occupied in 1967, including Jerusalem al-Quds.

This will allow Palestinians to end armed resistance in favor of peaceful activism.

In that case, al-Quds should become the site of gatherings and conferences aimed at establishing the Ummah’s capital there.

In the event of the two-state process failing, as it will because the zionists have rendered it unfeasible, Muslims should nonetheless continually insist on the fact that al-Quds is and will remain the capital of the Muslim Ummah.

They must demand that their leaders support armed Islamic resistance, while marshaling the diplomatic and military power to make the vision of al-Quds as the capital of the Ummah a reality.

(This is an abridged version of a paper presented by Dr KEvin Barrett to Beheshti University in Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran.)


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