Gaza is helping Muslims

A young man in Gaza who has lost twenty of his closest relatives cries out, weeping, shouting: where are the Muslims? You prick up your ears, and at first you assume he is asking for help for the survivors left in disarray amid the rubble. To tell the truth, that is what first comes to mind at the sight of a person crying out in such a scene. But two sentences later you understand that he is not weeping for himself; he is weeping and crying out for the ummah that has not come to his aid, that does not even think of coming. "I am not weeping for myself, for ourselves. I am weeping for the silence and the helplessness of an ummah whose dignity is being trampled as it is killed here. Otherwise death is real: whether you die like this or like that, in the end death comes and finds you."

"If only they had listened to us and had not gone out to this war that ends in death, they would be alive now," say the know-it-all strategic rationalists, just as they did in the time of the Messenger of God. And the Qur'an strikes them in the face with that most real truth: "Do you suppose that death would not come and find you even in your beds?" The struggle for freedom, honor and dignity is a struggle that may end in death. The travelers on this path do not call dying on it "death." On the contrary, they regard holding back from that path as precisely throwing oneself into danger, that is, being thrown into a dungeon whose walls are built of cowardice and whose exit is hell, and this is the very truth itself. What we take to be death is a testimony, by those people, to the condition of this world and of everyone who lives in it. Martyrdom is the name of the death that gives life to the human being and to humanity.

And so the valiant young man of Gaza, from the window of that life-giving death he tasted together with all his relatives, sees the dungeon the ummah is in, sees the danger, and weeps for it. What he asks for is not help that would keep him alive in this world for a few days, a few years, or many years. From where he stands, the state of those who gave him those strategic minds looks very dangerous. He weeps for the wretchedness into which they fall, those who are immersed in the three-day world and take paper tigers for a great power, while remaining heedless of the real great power, the infinite power besides which there is no other power.

He weeps because the Muslim ummah, with a population approaching 2 billion, does not see the wretched state Israel has fallen into before a small community like the Qassam Brigades, and still imagines that the real danger lies in Israel's power.

It is clear that the men of Gaza calculated what might befall them at the end of the undertaking they embarked upon. Perhaps they also calculated the new balance of profit and loss that would arise between the realities they live in and the breakout they made. Nor had they failed to calculate that Israel, which until now has recognized no moral or human rule, would commit the lowest crimes against humanity that humanity can record, and would, if need be, even attempt a genocide. They are not unaware, either, that when it does so, the usual America and Europe, that so-called civilized, democratic, contemporary world, will justify all its crimes, will not lift a finger even to defend it, and will declare it outright to be in the right. They will not lift a finger to defend, because here the victims of the crime against humanity are Muslims, who for a hundred years have not been seen as normal human beings. On behalf of Muslims there is no power that could make a defense or a claim before a human tribunal, and that would be taken into account if it did. So there is no point in wearing oneself out.

In a single week, with its tiny area, Gaza was hit with twice the bombs that the United States dropped on Afghanistan in two years after September 11. Civilian targets, children and women were targeted, and thousands were killed before the eyes of the world. It is not the children of Gaza who are being killed here; it is the honor, the dignity, the self-respect and, of course, the freedom of the entire Muslim world. The people of Gaza were already dying every day, being bombed every day. But there is a challenge in this, before the eyes of the world: that the blood, the lives and the property of Muslims are this cheap, and that crimes against humanity committed against them are a matter requiring no judgment whatsoever. And of course there is the silence of the Muslim world, close to 2 billion strong, in the face of this challenge. Should it not be asked, who is dying under the bombs here, and who is surviving?

Owning injustice, treachery, villainy, murder, baseness and lying is in fact much harder. But Israel's American and European friends did not hold back from doing this hard work right at the very beginning. Many of them announced without shame that they stood with Israel, the criminal against humanity that rains bombs on unborn children, on babies in their cradles, on the wounded being treated in hospitals. As if the war machine that attacks, with the most modern and most advanced weapons, the children of people it has for years driven from their homes and lands, slaughtered and oppressed, imprisoned in a narrow strip and bombed from air and land whenever it pleased, needed support. All of them together announced without shame that they stood with Israel with their weapons, their money, and, if that was not enough, their political stance.

These stances alone will suffice as a disgrace the modern world will remember. The one who was oppressed, the victim, the one in need of help, was never Israel. It was always Israel that victimized, oppressed, killed unjustly, and stole people's property, homes and lives. Yet the hypocritical "civilized" of Europe and the United States entered a race to declare that in this utterly asymmetrical fight they again stood with Israel.

US President Biden announced a 4.5 billion dollar aid package within the very first hours and sent a warship toward Israel. Secretary of State Blinken did not refrain from declaring, during his visit to Israel, that he had come to Israel "as a Jew, to express solidarity and to declare his side."

So while these scoundrels stand beside Israel with great appetite, risking so much disgrace, what is happening to the Muslims? Let alone declaring support, some of them have joined hands in presuming to give advice, seeing this outcome as the natural result of an aggression by Hamas that was unjust or, at best, lacking in strategic reason.

Hamas has no need of anyone's advice. The valiant men of Gaza have not asked anyone for help. On the contrary, with their stance they are helping people who have been put into a deathly torpor, who have made themselves infinitely small by magnifying the enemies of the Truth in their own eyes, and who have become enslaved. The help that will be given to Gaza is help that a person will be giving to himself.

In this state, Gaza invites people to salvation, invites them to revival. Even if nothing more is within one's power, seeing this light, kindled at a time when all lights of hope have gone out, is within anyone's power.