Hajj and Umrah while Gaza burns

While the Zionist-terrorist Israel continues to commit genocide in Gaza before the eyes of the world, it is at the same time crushing all of the world's sensibilities, feelings, values, honour and dignity. To witness so great an injustice and do nothing, or be unable to do anything, is nothing but the crippling of a person. Those who could do something yet do not, who could stop it yet do not, are directly complicit in this crime anyway.

The United States and Europe are direct partners in these crimes against humanity. But the rest of the world, which objects yet stops at objecting, internalises as a kind of fate the helplessness it experiences in the face of these atrocities that raise the bar every day. Yet the Gazans showed them on 7 October that this helplessness is not a fate. They had shown them that the invincible Israel narrative was hollow and not an unchangeable story. With their extremely limited means, within a few hours they had disgraced Israel. Thus they showed the whole world, held captive by Zionism, that if they wished they could easily free themselves from the Israeli chain.

For 7 months now, the brave men of Gaza, who take Allah and Allah alone as their guardian, have been showing with their magnificent dignified stance that this lesson is not an empty dream. But those who should learn this lesson still go on not learning it. There is still not a sound or a voice from the leaders of the Islamic world, who have drowned themselves in wretchedness before the killer Israel and its patron.

Because the rulers of the Islamic world and the peoples of the Islamic world play on very different strings. Let us speak openly: it is not only out of fear of Israel and the forces behind it that the leaders of the Islamic world do not act. The Gazans have shown sufficiently, and are still showing, that those forces are nothing to be feared.

Though what escapes attention at precisely this point is that these rulers are themselves already in cooperation with Israel. Unfortunately, the leading, most powerful countries of the Islamic world

have been eagerly waiting since 7 October for the Israeli genocide machine to destroy Hamas as soon as possible. Their hostility toward Hamas, or toward the mission it represents, is no less than Israel's. In fact perhaps it is not Israel that is using them; on the contrary, they are using Israel to keep their own sultanates going. That is why the matter's having dragged on so long disturbs them greatly too. Unfortunately, the struggle they wage in the countries they govern against people sympathetic to Gaza and the Palestinian cause is a struggle that only Israel could wage. What is meted out to the Muslim scholars who are currently detained in the prisons of these Islamic countries, completely unjustly and without cause, is no less than Israel's politics of hatred against Muslims. Killing their scholars is the historical character of the Children of Israel. By imprisoning, or silencing and killing, their own scholars, Islamic countries are following in Israel's path.

Truly, while demanding that all Muslims unite against Israel, it is necessary, as strongly as that, and perhaps first of all, to invite the Islamic countries to a line of conduct toward their own peoples befitting human dignity

to invite them.

The Egyptian Moataz Matar, who in past years received an award from Al Jazeera as the most successful television presenter, has caught the helplessness displayed in Muslim countries against Israel from a very striking angle. While Muslim children, women and the elderly in Gaza are being criminally slaughtered by Zionist Israel, while its hospitals, schools and mosques are being bombed and Gaza is reduced to ruins, hundreds of thousands of people are performing Umrah at the Kaaba at the same time. Moreover, because the inner area of the Masjid al-Haram cannot hold such a crowd, the avenues and streets are constantly overflowing with Umrah pilgrims. Of course, hundreds of thousands who misunderstand their religion. Instead of spending the money they spend on Umrah on Gaza, the only region that keeps jihad standing on earth, they go and spend it on Umrah. During Ramadan, in this very context, there were more than a million people praying and performing i'tikaf at the Muslims' Kaaba. So in the face of all these contradictions, how can the imams who lead the prayers recite the Surahs of Tawbah, Anfal, Ahzab and Muhammad? How do they understand verse 14 of Surah Tawbah, which commands: "Fight them; Allah will punish them by your hands, disgrace them, give you victory over them, and heal the breasts of a believing people!"
How do they understand verse 13, which says "If you are (true) believers, (know that) Allah is more worthy of your fear," verse 41, which says "Go forth, whether it is easy or hard," and verse 19, which says "(O polytheists!) Do you consider giving drink to the pilgrims and maintaining the Masjid al-Haram equal to the faith of those who believe in Allah and the Last Day and strive in the way of Allah (make sacrifices)? (Yet) they are not equal in the sight of Allah. Allah does not guide the wrongdoing people"? They understand, and yet how can they stay in place in the face of this contradiction?

In general I never find it right to substitute one act of worship for another. Every act of worship certainly has its own place. One act of worship cannot be substituted for another. But in the face of this contradiction being lived especially in Gaza today,

it is certain that our understanding of worship also needs a radical reconsideration.

Truly, while Muslims in Gaza are subjected to unparalleled oppression, savagery and genocide, and Muslim blood is shed so easily, in the Hajj and Umrah worship being performed a deep contradiction, utterly incompatible with the spirit of these acts of worship, stands out all the more.