The puzzling discourse on Syria

The Muslim commentariat is seeing things in Syria that simply don't exist.

Over the past week or so I have come across some stunning discourse on the events in Syria. One hugely respected Islamic preacher said that the sight of Abu Mohammed al-Julani inside the historic Umayyad Mosque in Damascus gave him “goosebumps.” Three Muslim YouTubers with big followings compared the events of the last few weeks to the Mongol invasions of the Levant — which nearly wiped out Muslims from the face of the earth — to draw parallels with the current state of Muslims in the region in the hope that it is a harbinger of good things to come. One Muslim researcher in an interview on a popular YouTube channel was euphoric at Syria’s “liberation” at the hands of the “rebels” and saw the nascent developments as a prelude to the impending good times for everyone in the region. Another observer approached the topic through the lens of historical fiction, arguing that the wild popularity of the Turkish television show Ertugrul serves as proof that the Syrians living in Turkish-controlled regions wish to revive the glory days of the Ottoman caliphate instead of siding with Syria. The reasoning has been varied, but there is a near-consensus on the events in Syria being a good thing for the Syrians and their neighbours — and the underlying sentiment is one of triumph.

While these commentators have been barely able to contain their glee, the Israelis have gone on to destroy nearly all of Syria’s military capabilities with a sustained barrage of attacks on weapons depots, manufacturing plants, research and development centres, aircraft hangars, and naval bases; they have gutted Syria’s administrative archives and documentation by attacking various government offices with the aim of crippling the incoming rulers in their administrative tasks; and the Jewish supremacists have occupied even more sovereign Syrian territories with the intention of keeping them forever. These attacks have set back Syria’s defensive and administrative capabilities by a few decades at a minimum.

Meanwhile, instead of confronting the Jewish barbarians and their evil designs for the country, the new rulers of the historic Islamic lands have declared fomenting sectarian hatred as their raison d’etre, desecrated the tomb of long-dead leaders, carried out summary executions on Syrian streets, made overtures to the genocidal Israelis for friendly ties with their criminal colony, and communicated to the Palestinian factions in Syria to wrap up the their training camps, weapons capabilities, and offices inside the country, effectively ensuring that the Palestinians cannot count on Syria for any kind of support in their fight against the genocidal cult occupying their homeland as it carries out a genocide.

The glaring disconnect between the events on the ground and the positions taken by the commentariat is baffling.

That the Syrian “rebels” have been funded, aided, abetted, and protected by the Israelis and the Americans (and the Turks) is fact, not a conspiracy theory. The Zionist plan to break up Syria along sectarian lines and ensure that the different sects keep fighting among themselves has been in the making for decades with all the evidence in the public domain. The fact that genocidal Jewish supremacists see the boundaries of their state contain nearly all of Syria — and definitely Damascus — isn’t a secret — it’s out in the open. Moreover, the rebranding of the Western-funded and trained, head-chopping, trigger-happy thugs masquerading as some sort of representatives of Islam is a grave insult to the Islamic faith.

But somehow the chiefly Sunni discourse — with the exception of a notable few — on Syria has sidelined all of these facts to assert that the country has been finally liberated from the tyranny of the Assads and all that is left is for the erstwhile Bilad al-Sham — which encompassed all of Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, and parts of Turkey — to regain its faded glory and once again become the cynosure of the Muslim eye.

Bilad al-Sham under the Abbasid Caliphate in the 9th century.

I have tried to see from the lens of these triumphalist eyes, but have failed to find any reasons for optimism thus far as the Israelis are busy ensuring Syria will pose them no harm for the foreseeable future and at best be reduced to a rump state that will take years to recover from its relentless onslaught — let alone be a threat to their genocidal dreams. More egregiously, the newly-appointed governor of Damascus, a UAE-raised individual, has declared that “there is no such thing as Islamic governance.”

None of these developments should give the slightest bit of comfort to Muslims pining for Islamic governance after centuries under Western tyranny in a vast majority of their lands. Nearly all of the recent developments point to a Syrian fate akin to that of Iraq and Libya post-American invasions of 2003 and 2011, respectively. Iraq to this day is occupied by the US after the Americans invaded the country at Israel’s behest and have their entire oil revenues deposited in a single New York bank account only accessible with American permission. Meanwhile Libya, once one of the most prosperous countries in Africa, is mired in an internecine civil war as its natural resources are being plundered by the West and its people are sold in open slave markets or drown in the Mediterranean Sea as they take perilous boat journeys in the hope of finding refuge on more prosperous shores.

Closer to Gaza, the Arab Spring in Egypt deposed Hosni Mubarak to eventually bring Sisi to power. Sisi in many ways has been a tyrant worse than Mubarak, snuffing out whatever hopes the Egyptians harboured of a transition to democracy.

There is a long history of such false dawns of Islamic revivalism in the political sphere. Over a century ago, when Mustafa Kemal Ataturk took power in Turkey after the end of the Ottoman caliphate and booting out the European occupiers of Turkey, Muhammad Iqbal, the poet-philosopher and the foremost Muslim intellectual of the last century, wrote a riveting poem titled Tulu-e-Islam (The Rise of Islam), expressing hope for Muslims to regain their lost glory after being trampled under the feet of European colonialism for centuries.

The poem, spread across nine stanzas of 144 verses, starts with a vivid metaphor:

The twilight of the stars is evidence of the approaching bright morning
The sun has risen over the horizon; the time of deep slumber has passed

Iqbal, without directly referencing Ataturk’s ascent to power, goes on to pen a breathtaking exposition of just Islamic rule and the work Muslims must do to bring it to fruition and be ultimately rewarded by God for their efforts:

The believers are once more to receive from the court of God
the glory of the Turks, the intellect of the Indians, and the eloquence of the Arabs

It wasn’t to be.

Iqbal later wrote a much shorter poem titled Mashriq (The East); in the second of the three couplets of the poem, the poet-philosopher was more direct in expressing the lost hope as he saw the governance of Reza Shah Pahlavi in Iran and Ataturk in Turkey fail to live up to the Islamic ideals:

Ill lodged in Ataturk or Reza Shah,
the soul of the East is still in search of a body

It’s hard to understand how the current commentators — of both the erudite religious variety and the more politically inclined secular stripe — refuse to draw any lessons from the recent and distant past despite all the evidence of Israeli machinations being right out in the open this whole time. The current rulers of Syria aren’t even willing to pay lip service to the Palestinian struggle or utter so much as an empty condemnation in defence of their lands from Israeli aggression.

It’s one thing for teenagers to get excited about the supposed impending Islamic revival in Syria and hope for governance free from Western imperialism — a long cherished dream for many in the East, but it’s extremely puzzling to see the same discourse being peddled by learned individuals who should know better.

As these commentators get high swilling copious amounts of hopium, the Palestinians in Gaza continue to get slaughtered by the hundreds at the hands of the Jewish supremacists. Now the Palestinians’ screams and cries for help are getting lost in the din of the chest-thumping discourse on Syria. Moreover, Syria itself is being wiped out as we know it and might as well resemble a shell of its glory days by the time the Israeli savages are done implementing their barbaric project in the country.

Simply following the events on the ground and paying attention to the statements of the stakeholders in the region paint a picture of more impending pain and suffering for the people of Syria and their neighbours — not unlike the conditions the Palestinians have been enduring. Unfortunately, Syria has all the makings of another failed state and more Jewish occupation of Arab lands and resource theft.

If the soul of the East is indeed lodged in al-Julani or any of his band of merrymen, as many of the commentators would have us believe, it has refused to make an appearance so far and it’s doubtful it ever will.

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