The assassination of Imad Mughniyyeh, the Lebanese Hizbullah’s most senior military commander, who died on February 12 in a bombing in Damascus, is probably the most serious blow that Israel has so far managed to deal the Islamic resistance movement.
Muslims today find themselves facing a curious paradox. While some Muslims are involved in intense struggles to throw off the yoke of foreign domination and oppression - in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan, for instance -others in these very societies and elsewhere are busy facilitating the re-colonization of the Muslim world.
The fighting in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp outside Tripoli last year drew attention to a little-noticed phenomenon in Lebanon, the growth of salafi jihadi influence among the Sunni community. NASR SALEM discusses the background and implications of this development.
The long-simmering crisis over the election of a new president for Lebanon refuses to go away. As President Emile Lahoud's term came to an end without an elected successor at midnight on November 23, Lebanon stared into a power vacuum unprecedented in its history. Months of intense international mediation and backroom negotiation between rival politicians from the two main opposing factions – the Western-backed March 14 coalition, which holds a narrow parliamentary majority, and the opposition spearheaded by Hizbullah – failed to break a tense stand-off over the choice of a compromise presidential candidate.
When Hizbullah drove the Israeli military out of southern Lebanon in August last year, winning a stunning victory in a war by which the US and Israel had hoped to destroy Lebanon’s main Islamic movement and secure control over the country, it was a defeat not only for Israel but for the US as well.
An uneasy calm settled over Nahr al-Bared camp when Lebanese defence minister Elias al-Murr declared on June 22 that government troops had captured all the positions of the Islamic militants holed up on the outskirts of this refugee-camp outside the Lebanese city of Tripoli. The announcement marked the end of a fierce battle in which the thud of bombing and the clatter of machine-gun fire echoed almost continuously around Nahr al-Bared while most of its 40,000 residents sought refuge mainly in the nearby Beddawi refugee camp.
When bands of pro-government hoodlums and thugs, armed with sticks, chains, knives and assault and sniper rifles, attacked students in and around the campus of the Beirut Arab University on January 25, Lebanon again peered into the abyss of civil war. But it backed away, mainly thanks to the rigorous exercise of self-restraint on the part of the opposition
If anyone needed evidence that the deepening political crisis in Lebanon has entered an unpredictable phase, the government of Lebanese prime minister Fouad Siniora provided it on November 25. Siniora defied warnings from the opposition and other leading politicians and high-ranking officials, including president Emile Lahoud, and called for a cabinet meeting that approved a draft United Nations document for an international tribunal to try suspects in the assassination of former prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri, who was killed in a massive truck-bomb on February 14, 2005 in Beirut.
The guns of Israel’s war of aggression had hardly fallen silent in August when Hizbullah, which emerged victorious after its fighters fought the most powerful military machine in the Middle East to a standstill, found itself in a number of domestic political battles. Some of the bones of contention are related to post-war reconstruction and the future makeup of the Lebanese cabinet; other issues are enmeshed with US-led efforts to disarm Hizbullah and put an end to its role as a resistance movement.
At the same time that Muslims are elated at Hizbullah's brilliant victory over Israel's war machine, they are deeply troubled by the mayhem in Iraq. Although much of the trouble is Iraq is foreign-instigated, the Iraqis themselves are not above blame. The two countries offer stunning contrasts in acceptable and unacceptable behaviour, and important lessons for the global Islamic movement. In Lebanon, Hizbullah has achieved with a few thousand fighters armed with iman triumphs that have eluded hundreds of thousands of heavily armed Arab soldiers fighting under the banner of nationalism. In Iraq, what seemed to be and opportunity for the Islamic movement has become a disastrous mess.
Hizbullah leader Shaikh Hassan Nasrallah has come to symbolise the Islamic movement, thanks to Hizbullah’s resistance against the Israelis. NASR SALEM profiles the Ummah’s latest hero.
I seek God's protection against the cursed Satan; in the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate; praise be to Almighty God: blessings and peace be upon our master and prophet, the last of the prophets, Muhammad, upon his good, righteous, infallible family, upon his noble companions; and upon all the prophets and messengers.
With their zeal, courage and discipline, Hizbullah's intrepid fighters stood off Israel's military juggernaut in the hilly, forested landscape of southernLebanon. Ensconced in villages and towns throughout southern Lebanon, Hizbullah's fighters weathered 33 days of intense Israeli air-strikes and a series of tank-led ground incursions, and emerged victorious.
Hizbullah's stunning victory over Israel has boosted many people's morale, especially Muslims who are struggling for peace and justice all over the world. By defeating the most powerful military machine in the Middle East, Hizbullah has not only demolished the myth of Israel's invincibility but also shaken the Arab potentates in their huge palaces to their boots.
Hizbullah has won a stunning victory over Israel in its first all-out military conflict with the zionist state. Between its formation in the early 1980s and its victory in 2000, when Israel was kicked out of most of occupied Lebanon, Hizbullah was in resistance mode.
The victory of the Hizbullah over the Israelis and their Western supporters has been celebrated by Muslims all over the world. SHAIKH SAYYID HASSAN NASRALLAH made a number of speeches during the war, outlining Hizbullah’s position, that were remarkable for their clarity and frankness. Here we publish the translation of the speech he gave on August 14, at the end of the war.
The unity of the Ummah has been a major theme of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. The Majma-e Taqrib Bain al-Madhahib al-Islami (Organization for Convergence between Schools of Thought in Islam) convenes an annual Unity Conference to discuss themes of relevance to all Muslims. This year’s conference took place from August 20-22. ZAFAR BANGASH, director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought (ICIT), was there.
Since launching its murderous assault on Lebanon on July 12, Israel has destroyed 55 bridges, ripped up almost all the major roads in Lebanon, blasted scores of apartment buildings, and bombed Beirut's brand-new $600-million international airport, a power plant, milk factories, grain warehouses and hundreds of homes of the Lebanese: all ostensibly to "expel" Hizbullah, the Islamic resistance movement, from Southern Lebanon.
Crises bring out the best and worst in people. While Muslims everywhere have rallied in support of the Palestinian and Lebanese peoples facing the Israeli onslaught, the Arab regimes have joined the West's propaganda campaign against the Islamic resistance movement, Hizbullah.
One feature of current events in the Middle East is that the three Islamic movements that perhaps deserve the greatest respect and recognition from the global Ummah are standing together against the onslaught from the West.
