Viktor Vaughn
“…bring about the freedom of these people by any means necessary. That’s our motto. We want freedom by any means necessary. We want justice by any means necessary. We want equality by any means necessary.”
Shortly after El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, formerly known as Malcolm X, left the Nation of Islam and performed that act of radical submission and spiritual equalization known as Hajj, he delivered a speech. His words in that speech resoundingly echo through the halls of history that succeed him. “By any means necessary”.
Malcolm X understood that fighting oppression and eradicating injustice is a core tenet of the Islamic faith. It is divinely obligated upon every Muslim to fight in the face of injustice, no matter the perpetrator. Muslims hail from a long, storied tradition of those who stood against colonialism, imperialism, slavery, and all other kinds of injustice. In modern history, we are currently witnessing another mass casualty event against our Muslim brethren of hitherto unseen cruelty. For the first time in history, we are seeing a livestreamed baby murder holocaust in front of our very eyes. Regrettably, most Sunni Muslim countries are either complicit or remain marasmic in the face of genocide. This inaction is a fundamental betrayal of the Islamic ethical core, and Muslims must be at the forefront in calling for these countries to account.
First and foremost, we must acknowledge the characteristics of the ongoing genocide. Israel is a belligerent occupier and is engaged in neo-colonialism at the behest of the American empire. Without American material and ideological support, Israel would cease to exist, and the occupation of the Palestinian people would have to end. Israel functionally operates as the 51st state of the USA, furthering the empire’s goals of hegemony in that region. Sitting at the crossroads of strategic shipping lanes and in an oil-rich environment, American interests lie solely in upholding the Israeli state.
The fundamental nature of Zionism is colonial. Colonial ethno-supremacist ideology runs through its veins and serves as the essential building block for its DNA. The progenitors of Zionism, the likes of Theodore Herzl and Jabotinsky, openly communed with the likes of Cecil Rhodes and explicitly described Zionism as “something colonial”. Being that Zionism is a fascist settler colonial project, I look to Frantz Fanon, who was a Martinican decolonial psychologist involved in the Algerian revolution and wrote extensively on colonialism.
In his seminal work, The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon discusses the nature of colonialism and decolonization. Decolonization, simply put, is when “The last shall be first.”. The last—the colonized—shall usurp the first—the colonizers—by any means necessary. The nature of these means is inherently violent. It is a dialectical reversal of the violence wrought upon them by their colonizers. It is as Sartre stated in his preface to The Wretched of the Earth: “violence, like Achilles’ spear, can heal the wounds that it has inflicted”
”In its bare reality, decolonization reeks of red-hot cannonballs and bloody knives. For the last can be the first only after a murderous and decisive confrontation between the two protagonists.”
The modern analog of this analysis must be applied to the plight of the Palestinians under occupation by the Zionist entity. We must be ideologically and materially opposed to the existence of a Zionist state. We must reject the mythological Zionist proposition of a two-state solution. All resources must be poured into the demolition of the Zionist state. Broad and unilateral coalition amongst Muslim states, regardless of sectarianism, must be the priority. As it stands now, the only meaningful resistance to the genocide has come from Shia nations, who are firmly committed to opposing Israel.
Concerning material resistance to American imperialism and the Zionist occupation of Palestine, we can only look to the Axis of Resistance—the informal coalition of majority Shia nations allied with Iran—to serve as a counterbalance in the region. The Yemeni’s, despite being one of the poorest countries in the world and enduring their genocide at the hands of Saudi Arabia, have launched a devastating shipping blockade against the Israeli occupation. Many such examples of these allied nations standing up to the Goliathan Empire exist, enough for us to contrast them to the complicity of Sunni nations. It is to my great consternation that we see the popular discourse in Sunni circles to be one of apathy and, in some cases, anathematization when it comes to offering ideological support to these nations. The Sunni milieu of religious discourse regarding the Shia has become repugnant, with some offering outright Takfir and others offering scathing hatred. We have forgotten that the great unifier of the Shahadah ties us together by a bond deeper and stronger than even blood. It is our duty, both as Shia and Sunni, to stand arm in arm, locked in solid ranks as if we were one solid structure.
As an estranged Sunni myself, I look upon the current state of affairs in the Sunni-occupied nations with great horror. We have lost that revolutionary spark of Islam that once set the Hejaz ablaze, tilting the scales of power upside down, allowing the Prophet ﷺ to radically transform a society of child murderers into a society of warrior-poets. With the advent of Wahhabism polluting popular Islamic discourse through its dissemination via the Saudi government, this spark has been snuffed out into nothingness.
Despite much rhetorical posturing, the majority of OIC nations are materially complicit with the genocide of Palestinians. These nations may issue condemnations and symbolic gestures of aid. Still, these regimes refuse to take any action that would meaningfully disrupt the Zionist occupation or Western hegemony in the region. In stark contrast to being a counterbalance, the majority of these complicit nations are the biggest customers of the American military-industrial complex. This structural failure harkens back to the Sykes-Picot agreement and further colonial fragmentation. Western economic and military interests depend on these nations’ inaction to maintain power.
Dialectically, we must see their inaction, not as passive, but as active counter-revolution. Their normalization of ties with Israel, economic ties to a settler colonial project, and their refusal to enact oil embargos or military pressure all demonstrate a material alignment with the overreaching agenda of American Imperialism.
While Islam commands the eradication of oppression, these nations have chosen to remain entirely inert. The Qur’an frames fighting in the face of oppression as a divine imperative, yet these nations engage in selective piety; they wrongfully weaponize a misinterpretation of Islam to suppress dissent at home while choosing to ignore issues abroad. This is not Islam; this is a commodified shell of Islam, gutted and deployed as political theater.
Ali Shari’ati, in his essay Red Shi’ism vs Black Shi’ism, warns us against this insidious plot that aims to taint the primordial essence of the faith.
“…the present Islam is a criminal Islam in the dress of ‘tradition’ and that the real Islam is the hidden Islam, hidden in the red cloak of martyrdom.”
This is an interpretation of Islam that has been hollowed out by regimes that fear martyrdom, that fear the revolutionary essence of Karbala, and that fear the moral clarity of those like Fanon, Malcolm, and countless other anti-colonial revolutionary tradents. Photo ops do not pave the path to a free Palestine at political summits; in stark contrast, it is a path that is soaked with the blood of martyrs and revolutionaries who dared to break with the systems that aim to humiliate the Muslims of the world cyclically. Until these regimes are either transformed or toppled, Palestine will remain under US-Israeli occupation and will be continuously betrayed by the cowardice of those who call themselves brothers.
The ideological rift that demarcates Sunni inaction and Shia revolution lies in the political legacy stemming from the martyrdom of Hussein RA. It was through a recontextualization of the events at Karbala that I found myself viewing Islam as a divine vitalist force that calls for us to use our creative power bestowed upon us by Allah to establish his vicegerency on earth. It is through the courage of Imam Hussein RA that we learn to stand up in the face of evil leadership, no matter the worldly cost. To lay down one’s life at the behest of taking that step forward to better the future for others is intrinsic to Islam. Hussein RA’s unwavering courage in the face of unassailable forces and his decision to fight the forces of Yazid— may Allah’s curse be upon him—is something that every Muslim should seek to honor and uphold regardless of sect. The Shia uphold this guiding principle, which allows them to maintain their dedication to fight against the Empire. Sunnis should cower in shame for the fact that we have abandoned the legacy of Hussein RA. The Sunnis should have more allegiance to the Ahlul Bayt and should seek to uphold their principle; we should be ashamed that we have left that behind us. Just as reviving our bond with the Ahlul Bayt reclaims our tradition’s soul, so must we draw on Fanon’s decolonial vision.
Approximately one year before his untimely and tragic death, Frantz “Ibrahim” Fanon gave a speech to a Ghanaian audience in 1960. The legacy of Fanon’s works serves as an eternal lighthouse for oppressed peoples across the globe.
“Violence in everyday behaviour, violence against the past that is emptied of all substance, violence against the future, for the colonial regime presents itself as necessarily eternal. We see, therefore, that the colonised people, caught in a web of three-dimensional violence, a meeting point of multiple, diverse, repeated, cumulative violences, are soon logically confronted by the problem of ending the colonial regime by any means necessary.”
Fanon spoke those words, and Malcolm echoed them into the minds of future generations. We hail from a rich and storied tradition of noble individuals who passed down to each other the legacy of eradicating oppression in the face of insurmountable odds. Handed down from the blessed hands of the Prophet ﷺ himself, to the noble hands of the Master of Martyrs, Hussein RA, all the way down to modern revolutionaries like El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, we inherit this rich tradition of revolution and transformation. Let us seek to uphold this divine responsibility and not betray it by getting lost in sectarian divides and tired, asinine concerns about not revolting against the ruler.
Viktor Vaughn is a student and aspiring writer who strives to understand the world through dialectical materialism while preserving Islamic metaphysics
