Palestine, Islam, and the West
“All things perish, except His Face. His is the Judgment, and unto Him you shall be returned.” (Quran 28:88)
There is scarcely anybody more vilified in the mind of the American Establishment than Aleksandr Dugin. Often referred to in American media as “Putin’s brain”, his name conjures up images of a dark, 21st-century Rasputin whispering in the ear of Russian power.
Dugin is best known for establishing the Eurasia Party in 2002 and writing numerous books on political philosophy, including his best-known work, The Fourth Political Theory (2009). In essence, Dugin calls for a multi-polar world and an alliance of powers in the East to check and challenge the political, cultural, military, economic, and even spiritual hegemony of Liberalism emanating from the United States and Western Europe. (Think primarily the BRICS countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China, etc.)
Dugin recently took to X (formerly Twitter) to make a statement regarding the situation in Palestine, as well as the conflict’s larger context between Islam and the West. His statement is worth quoting in full. He says:
From nations such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan to regions spanning Tunisia to Bahrain, from Salafists to Sunnis and Sufis, and encompassing various political factions within Palestine, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, as well as the division between Shiites and Sunnis, there is a collective need to defend the dignity of Islamic civilization. It asserts itself as a sovereign, independent civilization that rejects any mistreatment.
Erdogan’s mention of jihad as a response to the conflict serves as a reminder of the historical Crusades, yet this analogy doesn’t fully capture the essence of the present situation. Modern Western globalization has diverged significantly from Christian civilization, having severed many connections with Christian culture in favour of materialism, atheism, and individualism.
Christianity has little to do with the material sciences or the socio-economic system primarily driven by profit, and it certainly doesn’t endorse the legalization of deviations or the embrace of pathology as the norm, nor the inclination towards a post-human existence — a concept enthusiastically promoted by Israeli post-humanist philosopher Yuval Harari.
The West, in its contemporary form, represents an anti-Christian phenomenon, lacking any connection to the values of Christianity or the embrace of the Christian cross. It’s essential to recognize that when the Islamic world clashes with the West, it is not engaging in a conflict with the civilization of Christ but rather with an anti-Christian civilization, which can be termed the civilization of the Antichrist.
Russia, as a significant global player, is actively engaged in a war with the West on the soil of Ukraine.
Unfortunately, due to the influence of Western propaganda, many Islamic countries have not fully grasped the underlying reasons, objectives, and nature of this conflict, often perceiving it as a mere regional dispute. However, as globalization directly impacts Muslims worldwide, Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine takes on a vastly different significance.
Ultimately, it signifies a clash between a multipolar world and a unipolar one, i.e., this war serves the interests not only of Russia as a global pole but indirectly, or even directly, of all such poles. China is well-equipped to comprehend this, and within the Islamic world, Iran is among those that can grasp this perspective.
Notably, geopolitical awareness has been rapidly on the rise in other Islamic societies, including in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, and Indonesia. This has led to initiatives like the reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and Iran and Turkey’s pursuit of a sovereign policy.
Israel’s mass slaughter of civilians in Gaza, witnessed by the entire global community, is compelling the Islamic world to set aside internal differences and contemplate direct confrontation with the West.
Of course it must be pointed out that Dugin his advocating political action from Muslim nations that align with his Eurasianist global and politial vision. Nevertheless, one cannot deny the truth of his statement. It has been remarkable to see Muslims from all backgrounds and nations and persuasions coming together to support their Palestinian brothers and sisters and to decry the brutal acts of Israel. We have come together as one Ummah — one body of believers — to defend our family in the faith. And yet, the official reaction from Muslim nations and leaders has quite often been a deafening silence. Simply nothing. Meanwhile, thousands of innocent Palestinians are slaughtered day after day.
Never was there a time that such atrocities would have been allowed to happen to a Muslim population while Muslim rulers sat by and watched. And not simply Muslim rulers, but the world at large. Time after time, the West is either complicit in or directly responsible for the massive shedding of innocent blood, and nobody is ever held accountable. Over a million Iraqis were killed in Iraq, and who knows how many American service men and women lost their lives or ended up maimed and scarred for life by battle — and for what?
How many regions destabilized? How many regimes toppled? How many nations and communities destroyed? How many lives lost? And to what end?
While I’m not one to subscribe to all of Dugin’s philosophy, I feel that Dugin is exactly right here. And the world is watching and waking up to the lies that we’ve been fed for so long — lies about Israel. Lies from Israel. Lies about weapons of mass destruction. Lies about Covid. Lies about elections. Lies about foreign policy and regime change. Lies about ‘Russian interference’. And on and on and on. Lies. Lies. Lies.
And who benefits from these lies? Americans? We’ve spent 200 billion to Ukraine over the past year, and for what? To what end? And the ‘greatest investment America ever made’, Israel, has received over $260 billion from the United States since 1948. And for what? To what end? To perpetually destabilize a region and to continue the brutal oppression of a people and the criminal usurpation of a land that has been ongoing for over seventy years? Apparently.
This crisis did not start on October 7th.
Meanwhile, over three hundred Americans die a day of drug overdoses, and not one politician in Washington — Republican or Democrat — says a word about it. Most Americans, if they needed to come up with one thousand dollars in an emergency can’t do it — and nothing is done about it, other than to be told endlessly in glowing colors how well our economy is doing. Violence and crime run rampant in our cities, and instead of securing law and order, people who make memes are put in federal prison for political reasons. It is total anarcho-tyranny.
I don’t wish to rant, but it simply cannot be said enough — and said out loud. The West and the US are in a serious crisis. And it is becoming increasingly apparent that our politicians are not interested in justice or society or the law — not to mention traditional religious or spiritual values. What are they interested in?
What is the end goal of the West?
The people of Palestine welcomed refugees into their land in the 1940s, and now we see the end result. They never asked for any of this. They have human dignity, and a right to be free. A right to live. There is no rationale in the world that can deny this to them.
Meanwhile, as Muslims, we should never shy away from standing firm as an Ummah, trusting in God alone. Not fearing pressure to bow down to the political powers of this world — of the dunya. We do not need the permission of the United States or of Israel or of anybody to be who we are and who we are supposed to be in the eyes of God. This is true for Muslims, certainly, but this is also true for any traditional society which doesn’t share the goals and ideals of militant secular Liberalism and political strong-arming from the West. After all, it is not just Muslims who are being slaughtered in Palestine. It is Christians as well. Christians who have lived alongside their Muslim brothers for over a thousand years until the entrance of Israel and the US into the region have nearly wiped them out of the past century. They are our brothers, too.
Dugin followed up his statement on Palestine and Islam by saying:
Will Palestine be free? That depends on the global Islam. If you, our Muslim brethren, have still the dignity and power, the faith and real deep trust in God, the Holy Land will be liberated.
Our dignity is ours by right, and cannot be taken away. Our trust is in Allah who guides along the Right Path. Let us pray that our leaders will turn away from darkness and will be rightly-guided as well. May God will it so.
Glory to God for all things.
