A Statement of Conscience on October 7
I will not start by saying ‘as a Muslim’ or ‘as an imam’, but as a human being.
On October 7, over 1,200 innocent people were killed in a single day. Families were shot in their homes. Young people out dancing were hunted across open fields. Over 250 people, including children and the elderly, were dragged into Gaza as hostages. I think of a mother hiding in a safe room with her baby’s mouth covered. I think of a father listening as the line went quiet. I think of families who waited month after month for someone to come home, only to receive a coffin. I didn’t need my faith to recognize the evil of what happened. My heart told me first.
But I’m a Muslim and an imam, and I owe the world one honest sentence: what was done that day was a crime against God. God teaches that whoever kills one innocent soul, it is as if he had killed all humanity.
This day has an author: Yahya Sinwar. He planned it, ordered it, and knew what would follow. Every death of that day and war he started rests on him and Hamas leaders who sat in tunnels and foreign hotels and called slaughter a victory. It rests on every Palestinian leader who cheered, excused, handed out sweets, or said nothing. They chose this. They own it.
But Sinwar did not invent himself. He was the fruit of a tree planted almost a century ago by the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas named itself in its founding charter as the Brotherhood’s branch in Palestine. The Brotherhood’s poison is slow. It arrives through study circles, youth camps, charity boxes, and kind words to lonely young men. Drop by drop, it teaches him that his religion is a political party, his neighbour is his enemy, the Jew is the cause of his sorrow, and God is pleased by rage. By the time the gun arrives, the soul is already taken.
I have seen this poison in mosques where sermons became rallies and young men could recite slogans but not sit still for a verse on mercy. Every people that let the Brotherhood in has paid in blood and ruined generations. It has never built anything it did not first set on fire.
Behind Hamas stands another hand: the IRGC. It was the IRGC’s money, weapons, and training that turned a hateful idea into an army. One calls itself Sunni and the other Shia, and they may curse each other’s creeds, but they are united in what they worship. It is not God. It is power. The same IRGC that armed the killers of October 7 shoots Iranian girls for showing their hair, hangs young men for asking to be free, and has left graves from Tehran to Damascus to Beirut. They speak in God’s name. So did Pharaoh speak in the name of heaven.
So let me say this clearly. Hamas and the IRGC are not merely enemies of Islam. That would be too small a charge, as if their crime were only against us. They are enemies of God. God is the Giver of life, yet they deal in death. God calls Himself the Most Merciful, yet they have made cruelty a sacrament. God honoured the children of Adam, yet they look at a child and see a target or a shield. To murder what God created and sign His name to it is the oldest blasphemy.
And we Muslims have been too quiet. Some of us were afraid. Some told ourselves it was not our business. Some, God forgive them, felt something other than horror that morning and never confessed it. Silence was the soil this poison grew in. I will not add to it.
So on this anniversary, let us say plainly what our scripture already says. The Jews are not our enemies. They are our cousins in Abraham, and their dead were created by the same God who created us. Today belongs to them: the murdered, the hostages, and families who still set a place at the table. To them I say: I am sorry for what was done to you by men who used the words of my prayers. You’re not alone in your grief or remembrance.
The enemies of God are those who murder in His name. We know their names. It is time we said them from our own pulpits, in our own voices, before they speak for us again.
Imam Tawhidi
@Astro_Jessica Have a safe flight home. I have enjoyed all of your posts, they always make me introspect about what is the meaning of all this, life itself, Earth, a tiny speck with biped intelligent conscious beings...
NEW: Captain Smit Machchhar has spoken from his hospital bed about the attack aboard the Israel bound Flydubai flight.
Machchhar said he was injured and being assaulted on the cockpit floor as the aircraft descended.
With 17 years of flying experience, including 11 as a captain, he said he could tell the plane was going down even with his eyes closed.
Despite his injuries, he made what he called “one last push” to reach and open the cockpit door from inside, allowing others to rush in and intervene.
“I was being assaulted at that time; I just opened the door and all the others came; all of them too had an equal role.”
“I was telling everyone that I was doing it to save my own life, but I also knew that I could not let the others die either.”
More than 170 people including 30 children were aboard.
“It is God who has saved me” he said
@sortegarango@AndresGaviriaC@Metroplus_SA Santiago, muéstranos la imagen de como es tu propuesta en términos de espacio, para compararla con la imagen de Andrés. Gracias.
La designación de @miguel_gomez_m como Ministro de Hacienda es una formidable noticia. No solo es un gran economista sino honrado hasta los tuétanos y su formación ortodoxa le dará garantías a los mercados, a las calificadoras internacionales, a los inversionistas y al @BancoRepublica.
Se empieza a enderezar el rumbo, pero será una camino muy duro. Petro deja la economía con un gravísimo déficit fiscal, la deuda externa disparada, la inflación al alza, un crecimiento raquítico y la inversión por el piso
https://t.co/FyUCOcrqvn
Petro jugó a los congelados con el crimen para que estos se fortalecieran.
Suspendió toda operación ofensiva contra la Segunda Marquetalia, el Clan del Golfo y demás grupos terroristas. Hasta les brindaba seguridad.
Mientras tanto, los colombianos fueron los que pagaron las consecuencias de la paz total.
Petro jugó a los congelados con el crimen para que estos se fortalecieran.
Suspendió toda operación ofensiva contra la Segunda Marquetalia, el Clan del Golfo y demás grupos terroristas. Hasta les brindaba seguridad.
Mientras tanto, los colombianos fueron los que pagaron las consecuencias de la paz total.
Seis temas apremiantes:
1. Ajuste fiscal
2. Salvamento sistema de salud
3. Evitar apagón
4. Retoma territorial FFMM
5. Auditorías forenses presupuestales
6. Juicio político Paz Total
Cuanto antes, mejor.