Beirut Daily Star reports on a meeting of leading Sunni and Shiite figures in Beirut this week. Where to start? At a conference held in the Commodore Hotel, some 130 clerics from the Far East, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East were in attendance.Speaking during the opening of the two-day conference for the Saving Jerusalem and Support for the Palestinian People, the heads of the Lebanese and Palestinian resistance movements and senior Shiite and Sunni clerics stressed the role that clergymen could play in promoting the Palestinian cause. It seems the involvement of the clergymen - the ayatollahs, mullahs, emirs, muftis and whatnots - has been the factor that's inflamed the situation from a frustrating localized dispute to the status of a world war.
Hizbullahâs Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah spoke about âthe need for honest fatwas,â and also the threat of âkilling the essence of the resistance.â
âThis threat can only be overcome with the help of the ulema all around the Muslim world,â Nasrallah said.
Over the last two decades, resistance movements in Lebanon and Palestine have been recognized as groups âqualified for victory,â Nasrallah said, citing their suicide operations and unceasing willingness to undertake resistance activities. This piece of seemingly meaningless blather actually states that the Lebanon and Palestine thugs have been leading the fight and that they are the ones who should be in charge when victory comes their way. Arafat and his PLO aren't mentioned. To use an Israeli term, he's "irrelevant."Nasrallah argued that the main character of a âmujahidâ is his strong belief in God and his will to die in his name. âThis belief creates inside of him an unimaginable ability to tolerate pain,â he said. Well, yes. Allowing oneself to be detonated would seem to indicate a willingness to tolerate pain, at least briefly. Unaddressed is whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. âWhen voices hired by leading news televisions and satellite channels come and say that suicide attacks are against religion, that they are not a form of martyrdom, and that standing in the face of Israel under the prevailing circumstances will lead to destruction of the nation, they shake the belief of resistance fighters,â he said. Truth or falsity isn't addressed, merely the desirability of the fatwah from the standpoint of propaganda. If in fact the suicide attacks are against religion, and the suicidists do in fact go to hell rather than cavorting with almond-eyed virgins for eternity, that would tend to discourage self-detonation, thereby harming the Cause. The Cause, in good totalitarian tradition, is more important than the individuals making it up and in whose name it is purportedly being run.âWe are not asking for political fatwas that justify the strategic decisions that we have already adopted. We are only asking for honest fatwas,â Nasrallah said. Unless the fatwahs run counter to the strategic decisions, of course.The head of Hamasâ politburo, Khaled Mashaal, invited clergymen across the Muslim world to âarouse the nationâ to interact and support the resistance. He also stressed the importance of talking about suicide operations and their status regarding the concept of jihad. One could point out that they talk about little else in Hamas circles. But the Learned Elder of Islam is addressing the fact that suicide bombing is in danger of falling out of favor, along with the jihad mentality, in the wake of the thumping it has received from the US.Mashaal also underlined the necessity of finding a Muslim definition for terrorism âin the face of the American and Zionist definition of the termâ and expressed his hope that international events would not shake Arab and Islamic values, goals and principles. âThe resistance will continue, it is our destiny, and our strategic alternative,â Mashaal said. In other words, "It's what we do." Finding a "Muslim definition of terrorism" involves some sort of semantic convolution which will exclude active terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, and somehow include "state-sponsored terrorism" by the USA and Israel. The ideal definition by these lights will include a statement that no act perpetrated by a Muslim can be defined as terrorism unless it is directed against other Muslims.As for the regional peace process, Mashaal said it was insufficient to merely reject the settlement and announce the failure of the negotiations. He found it necessary to assess the peace process âas a reaction to those who are still trying to promote it and the insistence of the Arabs to support it and to give it a chance.â In other words, not only must the peace process be discredited, but so also must those trying to support it - another dig at Arafat and his "moderate" factions. Note here that there is no suggestion of offering a counterplan to portions of the "peace process" that don't meet with the Learned Elders' approval. Peace motions are to be accepted or rejected in toto. The exchange of opinions goes only one way.âThe project (to establish a political settlement with Israel) has torn our people apart, destroyed our national unity, and turned a part of our people into servants of Israelâs security,â Mashaal said. They should be killed or at least discredited. If discredited, they can be shot after victory.He said the peace option has weakened a part of the political leadership of the Palestinian people, âmany of whom have become professional beggars.â That doesn't mean their funding has been cut off - that won't happen - but that they're begging for crumbs of peace from the negotiating table. Senior Shiite cleric Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah invited clergymen to educate Muslims about the essence of the Palestinian cause, because âthe Islamic world lacks awareness and cultural appreciation of this issue.â Yeah. Sometimes they think about eating or something. They've got to drop those bad habits and concentrate on the important stuff, like jihad.Discussing the history of the Palestinian issue, Fadlallah said that the problem with Arabs is that they always react rather than have their own plan. He lamented their disorganization in the face of the Zionist project, which was carefully designed 100 years ago. Yasss. Obviously Zionism is a carefully laid plot, a hundred years old, perpetrated against the innocent Arabs, and they have to form their own counterplot to foil it. This is a world view that gives psychosis a bad name.âThe international game began, and Zionism started interfering in the Arab and Islamic world, instigating sectarian friction and introducing the fever of military coups and ideologies,â Fadlallah said.
Over the last 50 years, the Arabs chose to act within small circles that eventually crippled them and induced them to fight wars against each other and boycott one another, Fadlallah said. Damn those Jews for introducing military dictatorships, assassination, bad faith, wars, pestilence, a crummy educational system, and mistreating women! Wait. Strike that last one. Arabs don't mistreat women. Anyway, all the problems of the Muslim world can be laid at the door of the Jews, except for the ones that can be laid at the door of the Americans.Iranian cleric Sayyed Ali Akbar Mohtashami, invited ulema to promote the creation of a fund for the support of Palestine. He also criticized the American bias toward Israel as well as Americaâs actions in the United Nations. Yes! Yes! We need more contributions! Why, there are holy men living on meager salaries. There are gunmen whose families are going hungry. Give 'til it hurts, brother! (that's a quote from the eminent Muslim cleric Ali Akhbar Gantry)âMany countries and organizations have been urging the United Nations and the Security Council, since the beginning of the uprising, to send supervisors to the occupied land and to put an end to the massacres taking place there. This has repeatedly been vetoed by the United States,â he said, asking rhetorically whether the US was a member of the UN or controlled the world body. Yes to the former, no to the latter. It would seem that people who practice self-detonation would be able to control the urge themselves. And when peacekeepers were sent to Lebanon they were blown up by suicide bombers. Mohtashami also said the international community was well aware that Palestinian resistance was a legitimate right, âa right also stipulated by the UN charter.â Just as Israel's right to exist is recognized in a UN resolution, though not quite as unequivocably. Clausewitz described war as diplomacy by other means, but then he was a westerner, so what the hell did he know?Sheikh Yehia Ismail Ahmad, secretary-general of the Azhar Ulema, invited all Muslims and Arabs to join forces and criticized Washingtonâs handling of the Palestinian issue. And Washington should roundly criticize the Arabs' handling of the Palestinian issue. There's a tit for your tat.Ahmad said that while many Palestinian mothers are not able to find anyone to cry with them over the loss of their sons and daughters in the conflict, former US President Bill Clinton recently issued a statement to mark the loss of his dog. The dog was hit by a car. He didn't blow himself up. Well, maybe he did stage a suicide attack on a Buick, but he didn't know any better. Perhaps the Palestinians don't, either? Speaking on behalf of the Syrian Mufti Ahmad Kaftaro, Sheikh Raja Dib invited Arabs and Muslims to overcome their differences and to cooperate in order to reach victory. âOur world is witnessing a peculiar situation where the colonial media describes the resistance of unarmed citizens as terrorism,â Dib said. Our world is also witnessing a peculiar situation in which the Arabs somehow confuse Kalashnikov-totin' yahoos strapped with dynamite with unarmed citizens. If they were truly unarmed, if they were (dare we suggest it?) non-violent there would be lots of room to talk and lots of room to criticize Israel. But you can't have "armed struggle" without occasional 50-ton shipments of armaments, can you? |