Madiba: through my lens

The great moment in history outside Victor Verster prison,
February 1990.

The actual annoucnement took everybody by surprise.

Shaikh Nazeem Mohamed reads a letter
 Madiba sent to the Muslim Judicial Council in 1989

                                                        The prison is near to the harbour.

 

 

                                                              Madiba's famous cell, home for over 20 years.

                                                             The morning after the release at
                                                                                   Bishop Tutu's house.

                                          The car that took Madiba from the prison. A Toyota Cressida.
                                                               No blue light convoys in the early days.

 

                                                    Masjid ul-Awwal, Cape Town, April 1994.

                                                        Former Justice Minister Dullah Omar (left)
                                                           and Shaikh Nazeem Mohamed in Awwal mosque,
                                                               first mosque established in South Africa 1794.

 

 

                                                        Sayyid Shaikh Muhammd al-'Alawi visits Robben Island.

                                                        Talking to local leaders, Bo Kaap.

                                                     Imam Amien Ahmed welcomes Madiba.

                                                           Greeting locals in Cape Town.

                                              Madiba is garlanded after talking to Muslim community
                                                                             in the Bo-Kaap, Cape Town.

                                                          Madiba leaves Awwal Mosque, April, 1994.



                                                              © Shafiq Morton  

The Obama question: his South African visit in focus

When President George W Bush II shuffled off centre stage, dragging his dangling participles and poor grammar behind him, he was a pathetic, crumpled figure. Even his customary Texas bravado was muted, and the contrived spring in his step was tired.

Historically the US’s worst president, he departed the Oval office in a trail of destruction. His legacy is indeed painful: the sinister but still unresolved conspiracy of 9/11, one of the greatest wars in modern times against an abstract noun called “terror” and the marginalisation of international law.

Then there was the matter of global financial meltdown due to his questionable financial policies. This led to market greed and speculation on a scale never witnessed before in human history. His administration’s massive tax breaks for the wealthy, which did not see a trickle down of wealth as he naively expected, created the US’s worst debt deficit in living memory.

But not only that; for under the watchful eye of his vice-president and string-puller Dick Cheney – a corporate vulture – he’d plundered Iraq, refused to sign the Kyoto protocol, devastated Afghanistan, destabilised Pakistan, ignored the Palestinians, hounded Iran, peddled Islamophobia and presented the discredited idea of a “clash of civilisations” as a fait accompli.

So it was no wonder that when Barack Hussein Obama was sworn in as a Democratic president in 2008 after nearly a decade of neo-con ignorance, imperious arrogance and darkness, there was hope in the air.

Here was a man who had a command of the English language and who appeared to understand the urgent issues at play. The US, via the Bush regime, had become one of the world’s most hated nations, particularly in the developing world and the Middle East.

The worst affected by global warming, the militarisation of international relations, neo-liberal economics and the plundering of natural resources by the major powers, it has always been their awareness that since 1967 US foreign policy has been dominated by Israeli interests.

Obama had two challenges facing him: firstly, the domestic situation and the economy, which was on the brink of a melt-down, and secondly, US foreign policy with regards to the “war on terror”, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Israel.

To be sure, Obama had an inbox from hell. But he did start out bravely, his address in Cairo giving the Muslim world hope. His undertakings to shut down Guantanamo Bay and to gradually withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq (where millions of civilians have died) were also widely welcomed.

Unfortunately, the adage that the road to hell is paved with good intentions applies to Obama. He not only had to immediately make concessions to Zionists and conservatives in appointing his administration, but he had to deal with a legislature that was Republican, and destructively antagonistic towards him.

This is not to excuse Obama, but to portray more the reality of his office, compromised from the start, and hog-tied by reactionary Republicans – and a right-wing Tea Party constituency that tried to make the case that he was a closet Muslim.

However, his daunting presidential challenges aside, the reality on the ground for most of the communities affected by US policy, the direct delivery of Obama’s pre-office promises have been inadequate. These were people who needed relief and they are bitterly disappointed.

Guantanamo – that great moral wart – still remains open, drones still terrorise Pakistan, Israel still builds settlements with impunity, Israel still receives more US aid than Africa and Asia combined, the US still has to acknowledge the ICC, the US still has to lift the anachronistic Cuban embargo, carbon reduction is minimal and covert militarisation, particularly in Africa, continues.

This is what clouds President Obama’s scheduled visit to South Africa, certainly not helped by the DA-dominated Cape Town City Council slavishly awarding the US president – the only person to have been awarded a Nobel Peace prize for doing nothing – the freedom of the city.

These are just some of the issues that have galvanised a very broad spectrum of local civic society organisations from COSATU to the SACP to oppose Obama’s visit, the Muslim Lawyer’s Association going so far as to seek a criminal investigation against him based on the Stanford Report, the Rome Statutes and the Geneva convention.

For the South African government, Obama’s visit is a matter of development, economics and continental security. According to President Zuma, who addressed the media, the US is a major investor with 600 companies operating in the country. Zuma also added that 90% of SA products entered the US market duty-free.

According to economic commentators Obama’s second African visit – also to Senegal and Tanzania – is a belated effort to engage the continent against the background of Chinese dominance. Africa is a rising giant, and as one of the world’s most powerful industrial economies in spite of debt and recession, the US can’t afford to miss the boat.

 

Accused of wanting to combat “anti-Israel activity”: Ebrahim Rasool slams the Jerusalem Post

There is a huge difference between "anti-Israel"
and anti-Semitism.
© Shafiq Morton

Did Sam Sokol, Jewish world affairs and Diaspora reporter for the Jerusalem Post “SA ambassador, Ebrahim Rasool, assures action on anti-Israel activity” get his lines crossed? Or, was it calculated Zionist hasbara?

This is a question, to which only Sokol has the answer, and at the time of writing – a week after filing his story – he had not publicly clarified his position, and nor had his employers, the Jerusalem Post.

In his story (6 June, 2013) he had quoted the SA ambassador to Washington as saying that on completion of his diplomatic tour of duty in the US … “he (Rasool) would commit himself to… combating anti-Israel and anti-Semitic activity (as) a priority”.

These remarks were allegedly made at a breakfast hosted by the ambassador with the Islamic Society for North America (ISNA) and the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding (FFEU), a Jewish-Muslim interfaith group of 10-years standing.

The FFEU is headed by Rabbi Marc Schneier, the charismatic rabbi of the Manhattan synagogue in New York, and vice-president of the World Jewish Congress, an organisation that represents the interests of over 100 Jewish communities world-wide.

The FFEU, in conjunction with ISNA, had been hosting a dialogue on Capitol Hill between Jewish and Muslim representatives from southern hemisphere countries South Africa, New Zealand and Australia. Previous dialogues had been held with European and Latin American communities in 2009 and 2012.

The long-term goal of the FFEU, which has embarked upon a programme of “twinning” mosques and synagogues, is to facilitate a global movement of Jews and Muslims committed to communication, reconciliation and co-operation.

At the breakfast Rasool had re-iterated a theme of the FFEU – endorsed by ISNA president, Imam Mohamed Magid – of Jews and Muslims standing up for each other on matters of Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.

The ambassador had also observed that engagement between Muslims and Jews should be based on a rediscovery of the finest values of the Abrahamic tradition. The question was how those who valued peace, justice and mercy carried it over into this doctrinal space, one he said harked back to 1492 in Spain – a time when there had been productive Judeo-Islamic co-existence.

Using the term “human agency”, Rasool said contact should be based on this principle; a principle (of universal empathy) that could solve intractable problems unfettered by base instincts such as security, or who committed the first wrong.

An investigation by Al-Qalam has shown that nowhere in Rasool’s breakfast address did he speak about committing himself to combating “anti-Israel activities” as alleged by Sokol in the Jerusalem Post.

The mischief starts when Sokol’s second paragraph in his article suggestively switches focus by bracketing “anti-Zionist” with “anti-Semitic”, thus neatly associating anti-Semitism with “anti-Israel”.

The ink had hardly dried on the pages before the Jerusalem Post story started to circulate in South Africa. It was picked up in an e-mail by Muhammed Desai of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign.

Accusing Rasool of being a sell-out, and of being out of sync with Muslim and local political sentiment, Desai asserted that the central issue (in Palestine) was not about religion, but human rights.

He insinuated that Rasool did not sufficiently understand this, and cast aspersions upon the credibility of the participants. According to Desai, it was political struggle that brought people together, not faith alone.

Desai, in turn, was criticised by Rasool’s World for All Foundation for blithely accepting the Zionist-friendly, if not reactionary Jerusalem Post, as being a trustworthy source.

When asked by Al-Qalam if Desai had contacted him to verify his statements in the Jerusalem Post, Rasool said he had received no calls.

In an angry letter to Rabbi Schneier (of which Al-Qalam has seen a copy) Rasool vehemently denied the contents of the Jerusalem Post report, complaining that he’d been falsely accused of saying something that was not even discussed.

“…the report is a travesty. I cannot believe it is the intention of the FFEU to destroy the reputation of those Muslims who enter into dialogue with Jews by distorting a complex discussion on inter-faith dialogue into just another sound-byte support of Israel,” he said.

Rasool also objected to the politically-loaded term “moderate”being applied to Muslims, a quote attributed to Rabbi Schneier in Sokol’s report. He said he’d stressed at the breakfast that those choosing the path of non-violence and peace could be “militant”, and not “moderate”.

He’d also observed that no-one in South Africa who’d survived apartheid could ever be immune to the plight of the Palestinians. South Africans, he said, had too “keen a sense” of what it meant for a people to be dispossessed of their land, and rendered strange in a place they called home.

Rasool emphasised that the biggest South African lesson was that you could not fight racism with racism. In the same breath, the anti-dote to the suffering of Palestinians could not be anti-Semitism.

He said he did not warn against extremism in the Muslim community to support Israel, but to prevent the distortion of the Muslim soul – and also what was being done in his name as a Muslim.

In response to Rasool’s letter, Rabbi Schneier apologised for what he also called a “travesty”.

"We were as shocked and as angry as you are and we have made it clear that this news brief was totally false and inaccurate,” he said in a texted message.

Reports in publications such as the Washington Jewish Week and the Forward corroborate that Sokol's interpretation of Rasool’s remarks differ markedly from those portrayed in the other Jewish media.

The Forward, the US’s biggest Jewish media mouthpiece, quoted Rasool as saying that during the anti-apartheid struggle, South African Muslims and Jews had worked together motivated by a common humanity, but that since 1994, the Palestinian situation had dominated the discourse and divided the communities.

This point was observed too by South African Jewish representatives and Rabbi Schneier, who said that South African Muslims were very passionate about Israel, and that rapprochement in post-apartheid South Africa was one of their biggest challenges.

 

Franchise Al-Qaeda

A report in the Daily Maverick, an online publication, by journalist De Wet Potgeiter “Al Qaeda: Alive and well in South Africa” (13 May) has caused stir and injury in the Muslim community.

Al-Qaeda is a loaded word, and when used implicitly to manufacture consent for a terrorist threat – as has been the case in Potgeiter’s article – it serves to conjure up the post 9/11 Islamic bogey that so unfairly associates a whole section of South African society with terror.

This is something that the Media Review Network, a Gauteng-based media watchdog, believes is Islamophobia – the creation of an irrational, racist fear of Islam.

Indeed, many South African Muslims have asked what exactly Potgeiter was trying to prove. That most of his information was old, re-cycled and already public knowledge, suggests that Google could have done his work in a day – and not in a year, as he claims.

At the core of his report are two things: firstly, the South African intelligence services’ apparent laxity in following up on unspecified local Islamic terror threats before the 2010 World Cup and, secondly, the existence of “Al-Qaeda training camps” near Vlakplaas and in the Karoo.

Potgeiter mentions Gauteng businessmen, Junaid and Farhad Dockrat, as funders and facilitators of the “Al-Qaeda” training facilities, which according to his intelligence sources, were providing military training and sniper skills.

He mentions allegations by the CIA in 2001 that the Dockrats had been channelling funds (R400, 000) to Al-Qaeda via the Karachi-based Al-Akhtar Trust, a trust that was listed by the US treasury as a terrorist organisation in 2003. 

The Al-Akhtar Trust, reportedly an offshoot of the Al-Rashid Trust that was listed in 2001, is believed by the US and European intelligence community to have had links with a person involved in the kidnapping and murder of the Wall Street reporter, Daniel Pearl.

A supporter of the Taliban (with rumoured covert Pakistani secret service support) the Al-Akhtar Trust  is also believed to have had links to the Kashmiri jihadi movement, Jeish-e-Muhammed (JeM), and – according to Stanford University – of having provided medical treatment for injured Al-Qaeda cadres in 2001.

Potgeiter writes that the Dockrats were the subjects of intensive surveillance by the police’s specialised unit, Crimes against the State (CATS) and the State Security Agency (SSA), in an operation named Operation Kanu.

In his report, Potgeiter equates Operation Kanu with Operation Waco, an apparently similar undertaking directed against the Boeremag, 22 of whose members who were arrested and brought to trial in 2003.

Potgeiter suggests that the prosecution of the Boeremag and cessation of the investigation into the Dockrats was irregular. It is implied that the government had acted in an unfair manner by going after White Afrikaners, and not wealthy Indian Muslims.

I can remember a very highly placed intelligence source saying before the World Cup that the terror situation was under control – there was no Al-Qaeda threat to South Africa – and that the Dockrats, who were definitely on the security radar, had been watched for a long time.

When I interviewed Potgeiter on a radio show he admitted to using the word “Al-Qaeda” generically to describe Islamic extremism. He did not provide proof of concrete links to Al-Qaeda, but promised more details in a follow up story.

However, what Potgeiter has failed to mention is that numerous intelligence think-tanks, and even intelligence agencies world-wide, agree that the old core of Al-Qaeda – Al-Qaeda “prime” – has been moribund and ineffective for years. 

At best, during its heyday, the core of Al-Qaeda was never more than several hundred men. The likelihood, then, of the colourless but shadowy Dr Ayman al-Zahawiri orchestrating an international network from his hideout is extremely unlikely.

It is not admitted often that even in Afghanistan during the Taliban era Al-Qaeda was regarded as exclusively “Arab”, a separate group, and was sometimes even a disliked guest.  

The idea – punted by neo-cons and jihadi alarmists – that Al-Qaeda is an international organisation with underground cells in over 100 countries is a wishful cast into the lake of terror speculation. Al-Qaeda – or what’s left of “prime” – has little capacity.

As The Independent’s Robert Fisk has observed: the presence of Al-Qaeda was conspicuously absent during the recent Arab uprisings.

But what grip Al-Qaeda has had, in spite of its hugely spectacular failure, has been to capture the imagination. If you’re a jihadi group fighting a forgotten local struggle somewhere in the desert just say you’re Al-Qaeda and the press will come running.

In other words, Al-Qaeda has become an ideological franchise that has slipped into the power vacuums and civil chaos of conflict zones in North Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

Inspired by extremist Saudi Arabian Wahhabism, groups such as Al-Shabab in Somalia, Ansar al-Dine in Mali, AQIM in Iraq, Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan, Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria, Boko Haram in Nigeria and AQAP in the Arabian Peninsula have all focused on regional issues.

The point is that Usama bin Laden may have inspired them, but their actual links to each other, or a central body called Al-Qaeda, are tenuous – if not doubtful.

What is significant is that if put together, all these groupings would not even constitute 0.5% of the world’s total Muslim population of 2.2 billion. And yet – as the al-Qaeda franchise – they capture almost 90% of world’s media coverage on Islam.

In the same breath can there be much difference to when people hear about Islam and think Al-Qaeda, to hearing about burgers, and thinking McDonalds?  It doesn’t mean to say that everybody eats McDonalds, and it doesn’t mean to say that all Muslims are Al-Qaeda.

 

Welcome to Planet Jihad

© Shafiq Morton

“Those who claim that the greater jihad is the jihad of the self are apologists,” said one of the many fear-wagon websites pronouncing a pox on the house of Islam after the Boston Marathon bombings.

This sound Prophetic tradition, which records the Prophet (SAW) saying after a battle that the Muslims were proceeding from the lesser jihad to the greater one, is always a log in the road for the Islamophobes convinced of our bloodthirstiness.

So it’s a case of if the stereotype doesn’t fit, then just fit the stereotype. I’m sure that uber-Muslim-haters such as Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs, Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch and Fox’s Bob Beckel would have been happy.

But obsession, says a sage, has only one eye. Ignorance is its light and confusion its friend.  Those fixated on slandering Islam – like the blessed Prophet’s uncle, Abu Lahab, and the Gellers of our world – will carry their prejudices with them to their graves.

However, bigots and scoundrels are not really my concern here. These people will always be throwing trash on us from the sidelines, and once we realise it, we should just move on. That, at least, was my response to the question of arguing that the primary jihad is of the nafs (our undesirable traits).

But it did get me thinking.  For a small group of extremists in our midst, a military jihad against what they regard as an unbelieving non-Muslim world is the sixth pillar of Islam. In other words, this group – ironically like the Islamophobes – would also have regarded me as an ‘apologist’.  

This innovation of jihad being the sixth pillar of Islam was the view of the Egyptian polemicist, Sayyid Qutb, who was hung by Nasser in 1966. Qutb saw the west entirely at odds with Islam, and his writing influenced a whole post-colonial generation.

I believe it was his analysis that inspired elements in the Egyptian ikhwan such as Ayman al-Zahawiri, Usama Bin Laden’s mentor. This, in turn, has led to one toxic extreme feeding off the other toxic extreme – a vocal minority in the US and Europe mischievously portraying the fringes of Islam as its centre.

In so doing, tremendous damage has been done to the original Prophetic concept of jihad, and the fact that according to Shari’ah – and international law – Muslim communities do have the right to defend themselves.

It’s ground requiring strict Shari’ conditions (which I shall not traverse due to space constraints). But suffice it to say that the brand ‘extremism’ has been used to marginalise legitimate strivings against injustice.

One thing that I must mention, though, is the famous Mardin fatwa of the 12^th century scholar, Ibn Taimiyyah. It sets out that Muslim minorities are fully obliged to obey just non-Muslim governments.

Scholars also urge that in these societies Muslims should contribute positively to civic life. This was mooted at the recent Paris colloquium hosted by the World for All Foundation and the International Union of Muslim Scholars.

Jihad – seen in the context of a globalised, multi-creedal world – is a complex issue. Planet jihad cannot be expressed in absolute terms. This is why the Palestinians, who are predominantly Muslim, have so wisely called their struggle an ‘intifadah’, or a ‘shaking-off’.

Interestingly, what I’ve found in the Muslim street since the 1990’s have not been aspirations of jihad and messianic Caliphates (as the Geller’s would have us believe) but rather a deep anxiety about poverty, and frustration at the plundering of state assets by unaccountable elites – hence the Arab uprisings.  

People’s primary concerns in the Muslim world have been socio-economic, these being followed closely by a deep-seated suspicion of Zionist agendas, multi-national corporations and the machinations of the major powers.

In hundreds – if not thousands – of interviews I’ve conducted from Cairo to Karachi, the word jihad has hardly cropped up. In fact, if the truth be told, I’ve heard the word jihad mentioned more by non-Muslim commentators! The average Muslim is just not fixated by jihad.

And even where people have been in ‘jihadi situations’, there has never been a mention of internationalising their cause  – another false flag flown by the super-bloggers and neo-con grizzlies, who see the crescent as a scythe threatening to mow down civilisation.  

Not once has a spokesman from Hamas or Islamic Jihad ever told me – or any other journalist – that they wanted to export the Palestinian intifadah. Not once has a representative from any other credible movement suggested they wanted to deal with any conflict other than their own.

In fact, I believe the internationalisation of jihad can be laid at the feet of US President Ronald Reagan, whose CIA officers in the 1970’s trained Salafi-Wahhabi militants from Saudi Arabia and the Muslim world to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.

Lauded as being reminiscent of America’s ‘founding fathers’ by Reagan, they were set loose with their skewed beliefs and Sam missiles. These are the fighters who became the famous data-base (or Al-Qaeda). These are the people who became the face of jihad.

They are also the genies that the west (and Saudi Arabia) let out of the bottle in 1989. These men – representing less than 1% of the world’s 2 billion Muslims – have internationalised a project that they call jihad, and with easy access to petro-dollars and impressionable young minds, have blighted us all.

Usama Bin Laden, the bête noire of 9/11, was a creature of the Cold War too. The US had wished for a Saudi prince to join the international force in Afghanistan to give it some credibility. When, predictably, not one prince had desired to abandon his indolent life, Usama Bin Laden – a son of one of Saudi’s wealthiest families –had become the next best bet.

Bin Laden’s mistake was to issue a press statement declaring war on the US in 1996. But if conspiracies are to be believed, he had his iconic uses alive – until President Barak Obama shut him down in 2011.  Robert Fisk – who’d met Bin Laden – commented that his jihad to convert the world had been a failure, and that he’d been outstripped by history. 

 

 

Jabhat an-Nusra - the darkness in Syria

There is a great darkness over Syria. As one of the territories of Bilad ash-Sham, a land blessed by the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) and the Holy Qur’an, one sometimes wonders whether we’re not facing an Armageddon.

Right now the realities are stark: the numbers of casualties have become meaningless in the face of human disaster. Syria is tearing itself apart in a vicious civil war, a war that started off as a peaceful uprising against a despotic regime two years ago.

And not only that, the long shadow of the conflict is beginning to extend everywhere. Shi’ah-Sunni sectarianism (which is now bedeviling Iraq and Lebanon) has even reared its ugly head locally, and reporting on Syria has become a loaded question with the messenger in the crosshairs.

Since April I’ve been badgered almost on a daily basis to condemn the Free Syrian Army, especially the Salafi-Wahhabi Jabhat an-Nusra – but not President al-Asad. One person, Adil, has even suggested that together with the Muslim Judicial Council (and the Gift of the Givers), I’m guilty of a conspiracy of silence.

Far from it – there’s been no silence. I’ve written copiously on Syria and have conducted a wide range of on-air interviews. My job is not to release daily communiqués, but to expose the issues without becoming bogged down in the mire of agendas that curse Syria.

I have written, for example, that FSA commanders have expressed concern about the extremism of An-Nusra, but what also has to be conceded (as I’ve been told by studio guests) is that An-Nusra – a militarily capable entity – does enjoy a measure of support amongst Syrians too.   

Or as GlobalPost journalist in Syria, Tracey Shelton, observes: with Jabhat an-Nusra one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. In other words, the maxim that ‘your enemy is my enemy’ applies very much to the Syrian crisis.

Those who see me as one-eyed don’t seem to realise that the FSA is very often a disparate collective of Syrian civilians trying to protect themselves against a belligerent dictator. The point is that the FSA is not a standing army with any measure of military equipment, let alone combat training or a single, coherent voice.

Gift of the Givers CEO, Dr Imtiaz Sooliman, told me this was why President Asad has attacked civilian installations such as hospitals and, yes, bread queues. In Syria there are few, if any, genuine military targets. There are no FSA tanks, there is no FSA artillery and there are no FSA fighter jets taking to the air.

So it begs the question: who, then, has done the killing of 70,000 plus Syrians, mainly civilians? Who has destroyed Syria’s cities and towns?

The Quilliam Foundation, a UK-based foundation, has estimated that Jabhat an-Nusra has the support of about only 5,000 fighters.

“You know  sh.. about the Middle East,” Shaista informed me on Facebook when I tried (obviously unsuccessfully) to explain the complexities of the Syrian cold war between the US, the EU, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iran, China and Russia.

But back to Jabhat an-Nusra, declared a terrorist organisation by the US in December 2012, and said to have links to Al-Qaeda groups in Iraq.  

“If the US wants to make peace in the world, then we are with them. We are on the side of peace and justice and whoever brings it,” are the words of an An-Nusra commander to Tracey Shelton last year.

However, what the commander fails to mention is that An-Nusra has been responsible, like Asad, for attacks on civilians. As an organisation claiming to be fighting for a Shari’ah-centric Caliphate, Jabhat an-Nusra is a blatant contradiction in terms.  

The killing of civilians via suicide bombings, the slitting of the throats of POW’s (and if the New York Times is to be believed, the use of nerve gas) directly contradicts Shari’ah, or Sacred Law.  In Sacred Law the means can never justify the end – never.  

This is something that the late Shaikh Ramadan al-Buti, the renowned international scholar and author of over 60 books, preached in his Damascus mosque. A politically cautious man, he had also evoked the mainstream Sunni ruling that if the overthrow of a dictatorial regime led to worse suffering, the wise choice would be to seek the lesser of the two evils.

In a conflict now renowned for its unbridled violence, Shaikh Buti was murdered whilst teaching his evening class. Shaikh Muhammad Yaqoubi, another Syrian scholar, had disagreed with Shaikh Buti, but had done so with absolute decorum – and not a bomb blast.

And whilst there has been a mysterious silence on who actually killed Shaikh Buti, there was an open admission recently from Jabhat an-Nusra when the 7^th century tomb of a Prophetic companion, Hajr ibn ‘Adi al-Kindi, was desecrated in Damascus.

According to the New York Times, Ibn ‘Adi’s body was exhumed and buried ‘somewhere else’ (to prevent Muslims from worshipping the grave), a Salafi-Wahhabi chestnut that has seen historical tombs vandalised by Saudi-indoctrinated ignoramuses with AK47’s in almost every conflict zone in the Muslim world.

This, together with rumours of covert US ‘lethal arms’ support for Jabhat an-Nusra, is yet another disconcerting development in an already disturbing conflict. Jabhat an-Nusra may not rape the enemy, it may not utilise 45 different methods of torture like Asad, but the damage it will cause to the Syrian struggle in an Islamophobic world will be immeasurable.

Once again, the centre of Islam will be judged by its extremist edges – stereotypical 'jihadis' will become our representative faces in the market-place.

We have to remind ourselves that the Salafi-Wahhabi concept of a Caliphate, a so-called Shari’ah-centric nation sans madh-haib (legal schools of thought) and freedom of speech – but resplendent with public stoning, soccer stadium hangings, the marginalisation of women and limb amputations – will be nothing more than an Islamo-fascist state.

Indeed, it is my prediction that Jabhat an-Nusra, today’s ‘heroes’ in Syria, will become tomorrow’s problem.

Habibia celebrates 100

Over the weekend the Habibia mosque in Cape Town celebrated the 100th  anniversary of Maulana Abdul Latief al-Chistiyyah (ra) the founder of the institution, which includes a mosque complex, an orphanage and a school. It started as a corrugated iron shack in a then desolate area of Cape Town called the Cape Flats.

The Maulana predicted that it would eventually become a "city", and today the mosque complex is situated in the flourishing suburb of Rylands Estate. His 100th anniversary also marked the renovation of his mazaar, which is in the mosque grounds. Guest speaker was Shaikh Ahmad Sa'ad al-Hasani, a descendant of the Holy Prophet who spoke about ihsan, or character excellence.

 

 

 

© Photos Shafiq Morton