Imagine! Foes as Friends and the Lost Arab World

MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA, 2 Jun 2025

Mahboob A. Khawaja – TRANSCEND Media Service

A staunch Divine reminder ( the Quran: 40: 21), to those claiming to be the most powerful nations or leaders on Earth:

Have they not travelled around the earth and seen what the outcome was for those who preceded them?They were even stronger than they are and left more remains on earth. God seized them because of their sins and there was no one to shield them from God.

History will hold Arab-Muslim Leaders Responsible for Inaction

 Do people and nations learn from critical challenges and misfortunes of time? One rational thought would be to be truthful to our words and actions and hold greed and glory at bay while striving for the good of missionary zeal and goals of public good. The oil discovery propelled fake economic prosperity across the Arabian gulf region and masses fell victims to consumerism and its aftermath. Often people and nations go astray, galvanized by superficial economic prosperity. Western opportunists encouraged authoritarianism and militarization to produce tyrants from systematic tyranny across the region. Islam made Arabs One Ummah – a Nation of moral and intellectual characteristics to influence the 15th-16th century European Renaissance of knowledge, scientific discoveries, medicine and human development and beyond – as one of the leading forces Arab thinkers and intellectuals influenced European thinking hubs, intellectual cultures and scientific -technological advancements. The Arab cultures lost all when they left Islamic heritage and adapted copy-cat Western traditions of materialism. The modernization plan ignored human development by design to keep the people divided in tribalism and conflicts. Once they cared for the good of humanity, today foreign mercenaries advise them – how to think of the self. Across the Arab oil producing states, there is no political mechanism to limit the tyranny and oppression of few authoritarian leaders and avert the destruction of the Arab world.

Gaza and other parts of Palestine have been obliterated by the Israeli-American war since October 2023. The so called Arab-Muslim leaders – the cult embodiment of false piety much feared and hated by the masses. The Egyptians, the Saudis and other neo-colonial Arab figures appear deaf and dead when it comes to action to safeguard Islamic interests. The US President Trump wrapped up the three days trip, enlisting trillions of dollars worth of business deals including protection of the rulers and weapon sales which set the scheme of things to ensure imperial domination of the region. But peace in Palestine nowhere appeared on the agenda items. Strangely enough, the 7 or so participants of the GCC (Gulf Region Council), leaders including Saudi royals cheered and clapped hands when Trump said his “loyalty rests with Israel.” History never witnessed such a decadent culture of Arab moral, intellectual and political behavior. When would they learn from the living history to distinguish between foes and friends? Recall Prophet Abrahim prays to God (the Quran: 60:5): Our Lord! In Thee do we trust and to Thee do we return in repentance: to Thee is our final Goal. Make us not a test and trial for the Unbelievers. But forgive us, our Lord! For Thou art the Exalted in Might, the Wise.

An impartial observer in a crisis of this magnitude would place the sole responsibility on the Arab -Muslim leaders to help the entrapped 2.5 million masses across Gaza. It is a life and death situation for 2.5 million people across Gaza being starved to death while the leaders are occupied in music, dance and sports competitions. They have no sense of time and history, how they would end up to face the consequences of their treacherous failure. For over 19 months, Israeli forces have been engaged in killing innocent people under the false pretext of terrorism. Israeli extremists in the Netanyahu Government plan to dismantle the Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem and forcibly remove the Palestinians from West Bank occupied territories to make Greater Israel. If the leading Arab leaders had capacity and moral-intellectual foresight, they should have challenged the insanity of war and protected the innocent masses of Gaza. But they look for escape from reality under the US military shield. The Divine message (Quran: 44: 38) clarifies: “We have not created the Heavens and the earth and whatever is between them in sport: We have not created them but for a serious end. But the greater part of them understand it not.”The Arab leaders appear morally, intellectually and politically bankrupt as a scum floating on a torrent of naive puppets and discredited leaders. The American-Israeli collaborative war on Gaza and its immediate consequences made the Western world and all of its institutions shamefully redundant and void in the 21st century global norms of civility, human rights, freedom, justice and safety of civilians – whereas crimes against humanity are captured in obscure impulses and indecision and deliberate inaction by the UN Security Council. Please see:“Global Humanity Warns the Pharaohs of the Consequences of War” (UncommonThought Journal: 4/18/25):https://www. The Chris Hedges Report (5/24/25), elaborates “Gabor Maté, Chris Hedges & Aaron Maté on ‘Palestine: The Moral Issue of Our Time.”

International Failure to Protect the Civilians in Palestine

Palestinians are normal human beings like the Europeans, Americans and Israelis. Why the UN Secretary General or the Security Council (under the Charter), could not organize  a force of humanitarian intervention to protect the civilian population in Gaza from the scourge of war and deliver aid to the needy? Is the UNO complicit in making of genocide across Palestine? Are the people of Gaza and Palestine for trades-in to the Arab-Muslim leaders? All of the UNO’s Charter, Geneva Conventions and the Universal Declarations of Human Rights appear in books just in dry ink and meaningless words. Do the Israeli leaders have faith in their own religion (The Ten Commandments)? ‘Thou shalt not kill’ (Exodus. 20:13; also Deut. 5:17). Jewish law views the shedding of innocent blood very seriously, and lists murder as one of three sins (along with idolatry and sexual immorality), that fall under the category of yehareg ve’al ya’avor – meaning “One should let himself be killed rather than violate it.

We know from history, insane egoism brought the catastrophic downfall of Hitler and many empires, what would be the cure to cruelty and insanity of Israeli-American leaders? The former European imperialists sucked out the oil resources from the Arab world and now intend on dismantling the Arab-Muslim world- narrates. The Chris Hedges Report (04/2025) explains Israeli ethnic cleansing in Palestine: Israel is poised to carry out the largest campaign of ethnic cleansing since the end of World War II.  ……Since Israel’s unilateral ending of the ceasefire on March 18, which was never honored by Israel, Israel has been carrying out relentless bombing and shelling against civilians …….. Israel is, at the same time, incitingtensions with Egypt to lay what I suspect will be the groundwork for a mass expulsion of Palestinians into the Egyptian Sinai…… The Chris Hedges Report, May 26, 2025 noted how Trump Government is silencing protests against the Israeli genocide in Gaza. https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzQbfTvhHRJqNrVDpChnwNmNwzFC

The conflation of outrage over the genocide with antisemitism is a sleazy tactic to silence protest and placate Zionist donors, the billionaire class and advertisers. These liberal institutions, weaponizing antisemitism, aggressively silenced and expelled critics, banned student groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine, allowed police to make hundreds of arrests of peaceful protests on campuses, purged professors and groveled before Congress. Use the words ‘apartheid’ and ‘genocide’ and you are fired or excoriated. Zionist Jews, in this fictional narrative, are the oppressed. Jews who protest the genocide are slandered as Hamas stooges and punished. Good Jews. Bad Jews. One group deserves protection. The other deserves to be thrown to the wolves. This odious bifurcation exposes the charade.

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Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in international affairs-global security, peace and conflict resolution and has spent several academic years across the Russian-Ukrainian and Central Asian regions knowing the people, diverse cultures of thinking and political governance and a keen interest in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including the latest: One Humanity and the Remaking of Global Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution,  Dec 2019.

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 2 Jun 2025.

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