07/12/2022
07/12/2022
WHEN we ponder over what is happening in Iran today in terms of the massive popular uprising, we find that the regime that had declared 43 years ago that it is Islamic in model has violated the most basic teachings of the true religion, which is the conveyance.
Almighty Allah said in His Holy Book that, “ Whether We show you (O Muhammad PBUH) part of what We have promised them or cause you to die, your duty is only to convey (the Message) and on Us is the reckoning.”
The Almighty did not order repression, spying on people, and exposing their privacy. This is because of the fact that, “Indeed! You (O Muhammad PBUH) guide not whom you like, but Allah guides whom He wills, and He knows best those who are the guided.”
It is this deviation from Islam that made this large country sink into international isolation, especially after the ruling regime sought from the beginning to deceive in its political and social discourse on its people and the world, and took terrorism as a path for it, under the illusion that it would be able to subjugate the world, and that it would be able to prevent the river of popular rejection from flowing, and maintain its eternal hold on people’s decisions and behavior.
What is happening in our neighboring country is caused by intransigence and failure to learn from similar experiences. This is also seen in Afghanistan, which is ruled by an iron-fist regime whose leaders live in caves of the Middle Ages, in Iraq under the rule of militias, and in Yemen which has been pierced by the daggers of Houthi gang that seeks to impose the distorted Iranian culture on the Yemenis who are described as wise. All of these led to destabilizing the security of those countries.
On the other hand, there is a Muslim state, which is the largest in the Arabian Peninsula, where enlightened leadership, after long suffering, realized that the culture that groups of backwardness and religiosity had established in appearance constituted a major obstacle to the development of society.
However, the group of “above-the-ankle garments, long beards and trimmed mustaches” made it a fertile environment for extremism for several decades.
The current Saudi leadership worked on correcting the path and religious discourse, and consolidating the great values that Islam brought among the people. It launched a broad campaign to combat corruption not only in state institutions, but also to hold accountable those who took religion as a pretext for plundering public money. It began to hold imams and clerics accountable for the crimes they committed, which led to this great intellectual, social and cultural renaissance within a few years.
The difference between the two models is that the first one sought to suppress and kill people for the sake of a handful of mullahs who distorted Islam for 43 years, while the second one, which fell victim to a fragmentation of the followers, resulted in its leadership being able to correct the course.
Instead of the painful scenes that we see in Iran every day of oppression, killing and imprisoning people, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has today become a destination for the whole world to enjoy cultural and heritage festivals that were absent from that country in the past.
Kuwait currently seems to be at a crossroad between the two models. Either it will be “Tora Bora” and “Tehran of backwardness and isolation,” or it will return to being a model of cultural and artistic leadership and openness in line with the correct Islamic moderate approach on which it was based 400 years ago, and to which its people still adhere, such that they do not need someone to teach them their religion.
In the past three decades, there have been many laws and decisions that restrained people’s freedoms, all because of a section of parliamentarians who were able to impose their will on the state through the exploitation of democracy in horrible manner, and the practice of intellectual terrorism and political blackmail on successive governments that were afraid of any sound because it renders their bodies to tremble and submit.
That is why we saw how the country was closed to everyone, and its people fled to neighboring countries for enjoyment.
This is what happened in the case of the marathons, and the intervention to prevent this innocent recreation, a move that neither represents Kuwait nor its faithful people who know their true religion, free from any impurities that the Muslim groups - either Sunni or Shiite - are trying to impose on them.
Therefore, a moment of contemplation must be taken to choose between Iranian Mullahs’ oppression, or Saudi wisdom of the moderate approach, which is mainly of Kuwaiti origin.
By Ahmed Al-Jarallah
Editor-in-Chief, the Arab Times