DAVAO CITY (MindaNews / 27 June) The crescent of Muharram has just appeared. The sacred month that signals not only the start of the Islamic year but also the annual reenactment of a tragic yet timeless question: Who stands with the oppressed? Who – wittingly or unwittingly – sides with the oppressor? And who watches from the gallery, hiding behind theological sophistry?
This year, Muharram comes not in a vacuum. It descends just days after the sudden ceasefire between the US and Zionist regimes against the Islamic Republic of Iran—a 12-day war that commenced with the Zionist entity’s unprovoked attack against Iran on June 13, 2025. But the guns falling silent in one front have stirred an equally fierce battle in another—on our pulpits, on our screens, and on our social feeds.
Enter the usual suspects. The local puritans. The self-appointed guardians of “pure tawḥīd”. The never sleeping takfīr factory.
Their script is familiar, almost boring in its predictability:
“Don’t sympathize with Iran,” they warn. “They are mushriks, deviants, Rawāfiḍ.”
One particularly loud mouthpiece recently declared—without flinching—that there is not a single Sunni masjid in the whole of Iran. (Reality check: Google Maps and common sense both disagree.)
Another Wahhabi votary—famous for her earlier conspiracy theory that the missile and drone attacks by Iran against the Zionist entity on April 23, 2024 were nothing but a joint drama—has now graduated to justifying Saudi Arabia’s embrace of the very forces fueling the starvation and genocide in Gaza.
Her argument? Brace yourself: “It’s to protect the Two Sacred Mosques.”
Ah, the sacred card. When all else fails, invoke Makkah and Madinah.
And to really seal the argument, she parroted the long-debunked lie that the Houthis bombed Makkah—a fabrication spread during the Yemen war. (Fact check: The real target was the King Abdulaziz Air Base in Taif on October 27, 2016. Look it up. It’s public record.)
But in saying this, did she pause to reflect?
Because with that claim, she inadvertently accuses the Saudi government itself—yes, her own beloved custodians—of an annual grave sin: allowing these “mushriks” from Iran, Iraq, Yemen, and Lebanon to perform Hajj every single year.
While these puritans tirelessly patrol the borders of tawḥīd, issuing warnings and fatwas against “ignorant” Muslims who show even a grain of sympathy toward the oppressed in Iran, Yemen, Lebanon—or Palestine—they remain conspicuously silent about the companies funding genocide.
Companies whose logos glow just a stone’s throw from Masjid al-Ḥarām.
Companies whose profits are stained with the blood of starving children in Gaza.
Tell me, oh righteous gatekeepers of tawḥīd, what do your living ‘ulamā say about that?
Where are their lengthy PDFs and viral videos exposing these collaborators?
Where are the fiery khutbahs against the normalization deals sealed with the very entity bombing hospitals and tents in Rafah?
Here’s the painful irony: In your desperate attempt to expose the deviance of others, you have accidentally exposed the relevance, or irrelevance, of your own manhaj—a manhaj so obsessed with the unseen intentions of fellow Muslims yet so blind to the very real, visible genocide unfolding in Gaza.
While you passionately preach about the correct way to pronounce the Kalimah, you ignore the bombs dropping on feeding areas.
While you warn of shirk in Karbala, you are conveniently deaf to the screams from Rafah.
Thus, let me drop this here again—the same message I shared in my column “An Unerring Guarantee” (https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1CAYNGDmc3) (April 17, 2024):
Keep on zealously guiding these ‘jāhil’ Muslims, and you can be sure of one thing:
These souls whom you arrogantly dismiss as ‘ignoramuses’ will, by the grace of the Almighty, eventually be guided—not just to the correct ‘aqīdah, but to the correct reading of Islamic history, to the rightful alignment of hearts with the oppressed, not the oppressors.
Because that is an unerring Qur’anic guarantee, amigos:
“They want to extinguish the light of Allah with their mouths, but Allah refuses except to perfect His light, although the deniers dislike it.” (Surah al-Saff, 61:8)
So, just like the ever-barking erDOGan, keep barking at the moon. The light shines on.
[MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. Mansoor L. Limba, PhD in International Relations and Shari‘ah Counselor-at-Law (SCL), is a publisher-writer, university professor, vlogger, chess trainer, and translator (from Persian into English and Filipino) with tens of written and translation works to his credit on such subjects as international politics, history, political philosophy, intra-faith and interfaith relations, cultural heritage, Islamic finance, jurisprudence (fiqh), theology (‘ilm al-kalam), Qur’anic sciences and exegesis (tafsir), hadith, ethics, and mysticism. He can be reached at mlimba@diplomats.com and www.youtube.com/@WayfaringWithMansoor, and his books can be purchased at www.elzistyle.com and www.amazon.com/author/mansoorlimba.]