Days and years pass by, but sometimes it seems that history has stopped moving, that the forces of tyranny have decided the destinies of peoples, and that there is no hope of confronting them or standing up to their tyranny. The situation in Bahrain can be cited as an example of what seems to be a stagnation in history. What is happening today is a copy of what happened half a century ago: arrests, torture, killing, displacement, and tyranny. Last month, the arrests continued, and dozens of people were arrested, including young men under the age of eighteen. As the people have been accustomed to since the seventies, the detainees were subjected to treatment that degraded human dignity, and the executioners did not show any respect for the Bahrainis. The arrests came after the Ashura season, which witnessed a large public presence and chants that were not devoid of veiled references to the Caliphate rule, which the Bahrainis see as a continuation of the Umayyad Yazidi rule. Therefore, the situation seems to be a struggle between successive generations, where tyranny is tyranny and injustice is injustice. As in the past, the victims of this tyranny are the group of believers who insist on following the path of the Messenger of God, being guided by his guidance, and working to establish his religion. This is what Hassan and Hussein and the imams and righteous people after them did, and what believers practice today in all parts of the world. It is the eternal struggle between truth and falsehood, between faith and disbelief.
In this chaos, feelings of sadness and grief continue in the souls of the righteous group who dedicated themselves to God and belittled the tyrant. This frozen history witnessed the deaths of heroes in Karbala and those who rose up to take revenge on their killers. It also witnessed the transformation of those graves into shrines visited by believers who wish to follow in the footsteps of the heroic mujahideen. The millions of people who walk miles to reach the grave of Hussein to draw inspiration from him for the meanings of faith, heroism and sacrifice are nothing but an embodiment of the concept of the mobilization mentioned in the Holy Quran: “It is not for the believers to go forth all together. Why should not a party of them go forth to gain understanding in religion and warn their people when they return to them that they might beware?” If the group that rose up with Al-Hussein and was martyred with him in Karbala embodied the essence of the prophetic giving represented by religion, the Quran and the Hadith, then this group expands with the passage of time to become a human flood that strikes fear into the souls of the tyrants from the heirs of Yazid and his project that is hostile to the project of Muhammad bin Abdullah, peace and blessings be upon him. It is enough to examine the roads leading to Karbala to clarify the features of the human renaissance following the path of Al-Hussein, peace be upon him. Bahrain represents a good model of the faith-based mobilization that derives its roots from Islam, its noble prophet and its great Quran, and inhales the fragrance of martyrdom from Karbala to transform into a giant movement of change in which the participants consider their lives and souls cheap and do not care about the calamities and misfortunes that befall them, and the inner voice of each one of them repeats the words of Ali al-Akbar: We do not care whether we fall upon death or death falls upon us. This Karbala breath injects life into dead souls to awaken them from their resentment and move them on the path of sacrifice and redemption, hoping that their movement will be crowned with martyrdom. Isn’t this martyrdom what immortalized Hussein and his cause and contributed to its expansion to become a slogan that is repeated throughout the world?
Faith, steadfastness, sacrifice and redemption are all values that were embodied in Karbala and reached their peak on the tenth of Muharram in the year 61 AH, corresponding to October 12, 680 AD. It is true that the one who embodied them at that time was an infallible Imam whose obedience was obligatory, but these are values that any human being can possess, transforming him from a slave to the world and its desires into a sincere believer who strikes terror into the souls of tyrants and despots, and if he ever threatens them, he strikes fear into the souls of the despotic ruler who takes such a person into account. So what do Hassan Mushaima, Abdul Wahab Hussein, Sheikh Ali Salman, Dr. Al-Singace and the rest of the Bahraini prisoners possess other than the word derived from Hussein’s speech during his uprising that changed the course of the nation and was the arbiter between right and wrong? It is one aspect of the conflict of wills and the race between two groups: one insists on clinging to the world and its adornments, and the other seeks only what is with God. This scene of conflict has been repeated many times over the past centuries, and it continues to be renewed and places one before his responsibilities. Tyrants still pursue the Husseinis and count their breaths, arrest them, torture them and execute them. At the same time, the Husseinis still carry the banner and chant in the name of God, Islam and revolution. The prisons are filled with prisoners of conscience in Bahrain, and every day a group of God’s soldiers are added to them. In Saudi Arabia, the beheading of innocent people does not stop. Here, this is done in the name of religion and its terminology, as most of the victims are slaughtered like sacrificial animals under the title of “discretion” or “the punishment for banditry.” The Saudis have doubled their crimes, using religious terminology to crush their opponents. For more than two centuries, they have been using religion for their political goals and seeking to dominate Muslims through religious bullying, but their efforts have failed and they will not achieve what they want because God does not correct the work of the corrupt.
The scene of the nation today is sad and disgusting if viewed from the perspective of the material balance of power only, but it changes radically if there are societal groups that aim for reform and change, provided that they are prepared to give and sacrifice. For example, the daily scenes of what is happening in Gaza have become a source of pain, anxiety, and perhaps despair of the possibility of changing the balance of power and stopping the ongoing Israeli aggression against the innocent. However, these scenes have been going on for more than three-quarters of a century, and the enemy has not been able to resolve the issue in its favor and destroy Palestine or crush its people. Perhaps the opposite has happened. International sympathy for the victims of the aggression has grown, and the Israeli force has become unable to resolve the situation and close the file of the case. After 76 years, the occupiers no longer have the patience, steadfastness, and the ability to confront the Israeli entity. The result here is that the Palestinian people still exist effectively, and the enemy still needs American protection and the weapons that the White House administration sends to Tel Aviv. So what is the secret of the steadfastness of this oppressed group? Why has the entity supported by America and its European allies failed to achieve a state of permanent security? How can these occupiers emerge from the ordeal that has continued for three quarters of a century, the most important manifestation of which is the steadfastness of the Palestinian youth in the face of the occupation tanks and its tools of killing? That child who moves between the tents in search of a refuge or a safe homeland, his ghost has come to haunt the leaders of the occupation and their supporters in the West, and challenges the legitimacy of the Arab rulers who have covered themselves with silence and have not risen up to support the oppressed, who is their brother in humanity, religion and Arabism.
Feelings of hope that the ordeal will end are not a figment of the imagination, but rather an expression of the sincerity of the Arab peoples’ orientation, especially the Palestinian people, towards freedom by relying on God first and on themselves second. These feelings have come to haunt tyrants, normalizers and submissives, and have inspired the peoples of the world to organize marches in support of and endorsement of the Palestinian cause. In parallel, scenes of repression in Arab capitals have become a source of discontent, especially among the deprived Arab peoples. The people of Bahrain have written their heroic epics that have not stopped for more than thirteen years, when the people went out in their great revolution demanding comprehensive change. After this long period, the Khalifa ruler failed to completely break the back of the Bahraini fighter, so the demonstrations and protests continued, and the people regained their confidence in their Lord, themselves and in the inevitability of victory for which they had made enormous sacrifices. When last month marked the fifth anniversary of the execution of three innocent young men, Ahmed Al-Mulla, Ali Al-Arab and a third person from Bangladesh, they were filled with anger and hope for the inevitable end of a bloody regime that kills innocents and tortures freedom fighters. These passionate feelings for change will continue until the people triumph over the criminal Al-Khalifa gang, with the help of God Almighty.
O God, have mercy on our righteous martyrs, and grant them a position of truth with You, and release our prisoners, O Lord of the worlds.
Bahrain Islamic Freedom Movement
August 23, 2024
2024-08-23 10:36:21