Shabbir Rizvi
“Quds Day is a universal day. It is not an exclusive day for Quds itself. It is a day for the oppressed to rise and stand up against the arrogant.” – Ayatollah Khomeini.
The last Friday of Ramadan marks “Quds Day” — a day declared by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979 to be a day of international solidarity with the Palestinian cause, as well as the oppressed masses globally.
As Arab nationalist resistance efforts entered into an ebb-state, starting with the defeat of Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Syria in 1967 and further entrenched by the Camp David Accords in 1978, the Islamic Revolution in 1979 rekindled the fuse of resistance to Israeli hegemonic aspirations within the region. The fire of the ‘79 revolution was the fire of revolutionary Islam – political, anti-imperialist, militant, and forged in struggle against neocolonialism.
Overthrowing the US-puppet Shah regime, the Muslim victors of the ‘79 Revolution were not only tested in a struggle against neocolonial forces, but they also understood imperialism’s plans for the region. Thus, the shockwaves of the Revolution were felt throughout the region, not just in the reinvigoration of Islamic-based resistance but also in an anti-imperialist, anti-colonial resistance.
The grip of neocolonialism that was embedding itself into the region in the form of Arab comprador regimes was openly targeted in the arena of struggle: who are these regimes? Who do they really represent? How did they come into power? What is their orientation to imperialism, and what is their definition of liberation? Do they support taking up arms against the Zionist entity, or do they prefer capitulation?
Under the Husseini slogan of “Never to humiliation!”, the Islamic Revolution of Iran forced all of these questions to the foreground. As mentioned, Quds Day was established the same year as the victory of the Revolution, wasting no time at all to unite revolutionary forces within the region under the banner of Islamic anti-imperialism, forcing the question of whether state and non-state forces will accept humiliation in the form of imperialist-colonial domination, or will they fight back.
Quds Day Under Siege
“I invite Muslims all over the globe to consecrate the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan, which is a day of fate and which could also become the day on which the fate of Palestinian people might be determined as Quds day and to proclaim the legitimate right of the Muslim people of Palestine” – Ayatollah Khomeini.
Decades later, Quds Day remains a rallying point for not just the Palestinian cause, but the overall struggle against imperialism, wherever it may raise its sinister head. Observed throughout the globe — from Tehran to Karachi, from Kashmir to Zaria, from Quds itself to London, all the way to Los Angeles — Quds Day shakes its fist and rallies its progressive forces, demanding a new world to be born, and for the shackles of imperialism to shatter.
One can observe the power of such a rallying call by the forces deployed to deter it. Quds Day has not come without bloodshed at the hands of imperialist-colonial forces. In 2014, the Nigerian army committed a massacre when they targeted and opened fire on a Quds Day procession led by Sheik Ibrahim Zakzaky, martyring 25, including three of his sons.
Year after year, particularly in the West, Quds Day is demonized by Zionist movements as “antisemitic”, leading to its outright ban. In the states that are the so-called flagships of free expression, the very discussion of liberation of Quds and Palestinian rights is under siege — of course, because these states are the financiers and political stewards of imperialism-Zionism.
The German authorities have banned Quds Day multiple times while arming the Israeli Occupation with bombs and munitions in order to conduct their genocide in Gaza.
The UK has followed suit, banning Quds Day this year on the pretext of the US-Israeli aggression on Iran as well as the ongoing genocide in Gaza (despite a so-called ceasefire).
Assistant Commissioner Ade Adelekan, Public Order lead for the Met, said “The Al Quds march is uniquely contentious having originated in Iran and in London is organised by the Islamic Human Rights Commission, an organisation supportive of the Iranian regime,”
Quds Day draws a line between oppressor and oppressed. It allows for no gray area in which the politically and socially spineless can retreat. We must globalize this effort as forces of imperialism are on the march.
Solidarity with Palestine, Solidarity with the Islamic Republic of Iran
“Muslims of the world should regard the Quds Day as All-Muslims Day or the Oppressed People’s Day.” – Ayatollah Khomeini.
Since its creation in 1979, the Islamic Republic has always been a supporter of a principled Palestinian solution — not a two-state solution or a non-state solution, but rather a Palestine totally free from occupation, free to pursue its own destiny. Iran’s pursuit of its own sovereignty and its support of Palestine’s sovereignty, in the form of training and arming its resistance and insisting on its political rights, has ensured Iran remains within imperialist crosshairs for decades.
The lead-up to the American-Zionist aggression on Iran was marked by a propaganda blitz against Iran that was aggressive with dire material implications. After decades of sanctions, economic warfare, and sabotage, the American-Zionist plot to destabilize Iran escalated into a full-throttle coup attempt between late December 2025 and early January 2026. After years of arming and training seditionist cells inside the Islamic Republic, these agents were activated to deal an attempted fatal blow to state infrastructure, paving the way for the breakdown of Iranian society and the evisceration of the state.
Due to the steadfast support of the Iranian people who rejected these attempts – motivated by defense of their nation as well as the religious duty of jihad in self-defense – Iran’s security forces were able to upend this plot, liquidating hundreds of terrorists. However, the pain inflicted by the US-Zionist seditionists was hijacked by imperialist media. Egregious numbers were pushed into mainstream media, with fake stories to peddle the plight of the “people repressed by the regime.” A fake death toll number, 30,000 dead, was pushed into mainstream news by a fashion-blogger-turned-imperialist-journalist.
The result? The days leading up to the aggression against the Islamic Republic of Iran were met with ruthless condemnation of the anti-imperialist state, even from those within so-called progressive circles — and unfortunately, even from within the Pro-Palestinian camp.
Greasing the gears of the imperialist war machine (whether they knew it or not), these “enlightened” individuals and groups insisted that the revolutionary Iranian state deserved to be vanquished because it did not meet their rigid definition of what “democracy” looked like. Iran could have easily integrated into the Western liberal economic machinery and never raised a finger for Palestine, like its Gulf Monarch neighbors, but chose not to due to its revolutionary principles. For these lost souls, solidarity is a currency meant to be exchanged when the product is “right.”
Sitting in their homes in the belly of the beast that has sabotaged Iran for nearly five decades, the mentally captured Western Left insisted that “the regime” must go — discarding all lessons of the Syrian color revolution, discarding the immense sacrifice of the Iranian people in order to fend off imperialism and pursue sovereignty, discarding the material support Iran has given Palestinian resistance to upend Zionism while other countries within the region offer nothing but treachery, empty statements, and conferences where nothing happens. This rhetoric was observed even at the launch of the American-Zionist aggression on Iran.
However, material reality does not care for the verbal assault of those who carry water for imperialism. The Islamic Republic of Iran’s response, Operation True Promise Four, demonstrates the fruits of the Islamic Revolution. Iran’s arsenal of drones, missiles, and intelligence has allowed it to target and destroy not just military targets within occupied Palestine, but US military bases and objects in Kuwait, the UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.
Billions of dollars of the West’s most prized and mythologized equipment have been disabled or completely destroyed within one week of warfare, including THAAD missile systems and radar equipment meant to track missile and drone movements for thousands of kilometers. A CIA base in Riyadh has been razed to the ground, while the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain is pummeled daily. The Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed, sending global markets into disarray, and the intervention of Hezbollah and Iraqi Resistance factions has pushed the imperialist forces into a defensive position.
Quds Day 2026 – A Call for Total Solidarity
“The issue of Quds is not a private or personal issue. It is neither the exclusive problem of one country. It is a phenomenon concerning the monotheists and faithful people of all ages – past, present and future.” – Ayatollah Khomeini
While the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Axis of Resistance are materially decolonizing the West Asian region and strangling the imperialist global economy – fulfilling the duty of jihad through self defense – imperialism is responding by ensuring its populations stand against Iran in two ways: 1) by outright banning any act of solidarity via the form of the suppression of protests, and 2) manufacturing an anti-Iran propaganda campaign meant to prevent any words or actions of solidarity with a country that is materially fending off nuclear-armed imperialist powers, demonizing anyone that dares to stand with the final state in the region resisting US hegemony.
Thus, Quds Day 2026 is perhaps the most important Quds Day yet. The region is under the threat of a supposed final campaign to eliminate the Islamic Republic of Iran, led by an American-Israeli axis (that many refer to as the “Epstein Axis”) that has openly discarded the international law it has imposed on everyone else. The opening salvo of missiles launched by the Axis of Epstein targeted a girls’ school, martyring over 160 girls and their teachers in a “double tap” strike, and of course, targeted and martyred the leader of the Revolution – Ayatollah Khamenei. This demonstrates the criminal depravity of the onslaught that the Islamic Republic of Iran is withstanding and fighting back against.
The war is furthermore completely unpopular. At the start of the aggression, fewer than a quarter of Americans supported it. The number continues to drop as prices surge and economic futures remain uncertain, war crimes are committed by the American-Israeli Epstein alliance, and the US loses its credibility as a “security measure” for the Gulf regimes.
All of this continues as the Israeli regime drops hundreds of bombs into Lebanon and continues its genocidal campaign in Gaza.
Quds Day calls for standing with the oppressed against the oppressor. It sweeps aside secondary contradictions and non-issues and calls to the fore the primary contradiction in our world: imperialism. Where the call for Quds Day began in Iran in 1979, the principles of Quds Day, standing with the oppressed against the oppressor, now call for our total uncritical solidarity with the Islamic Republic that is quite successfully fending off an imperialism unchained.
This form of imperialism may be lashing out and adventurous, but that is precisely why global resistance to it must push back now more than ever. The United States, as a declining hegemonic power, is lashing out to consolidate any gains as it braces for an uncertain future in which it can no longer lead. Simply put, the United States is on its back foot. Its politicians are exposed as stewards for capital, and on another level, implicated within global child trafficking rings. The “Great Satan” is standing in the open, unapologetic over its criminality. If imperialism cannot control a country or region totally, it finds it profitable to destabilize and destroy it all the same. This must not be allowed to happen.
On Friday, Quds Day, stand with the oppressed against the oppressor. There is no gray area to stand in – in fact, there has never been a gray area. The primary contradictions of imperialism are laid bare, and its plots exposed: there are no more excuses. Beyond Quds Day, unite with forces that challenge the imperialist order, that do not cower when it comes to solidarity, that do not treat solidarity like a commodity. Globalize Quds Day: a blow to imperialism in one part of the world is a blow to imperialism everywhere.
Shabbir Rizvi is the Political Director and a co-founder member of VoxUmmah. He is also a contributor to Sovereign Media and has been featured on PressTV, Al Mayadeen, and Orinoco Tribune.
