AN OPEN LETTER

Dear Muslim Rulers in the GCC and Persian Gulf,

Assalamu Alaikum Wa Rahmatullah!

If you truly wish to confront Iran for the sake of your own power, position, and survival, then wait until this ongoing, unprovoked, illegal, and imposed war of Iran against the US–Israel axis of evil is over. We will remain neutral and allow you to win or lose by your own strength.

But if you choose to join this war now against Iran—under any pretext whatsoever—then there will remain no doubt that you have been architects of this war against Islam and against all Muslims, Shia and Sunni alike (including myself, a practicing Sunni). It will be evident that you have stood as partners of kufr against Allah (swt) and His Prophet (saws), and alongside the genocidal Zionist regime that occupied Arab land—Palestine and al-Quds— and killed thousands of children, women, and innocent people in Gaza, Afghanistan, Yemen, Lebanon, and Iran.

Make no mistake: we remember what Mustafa Kemal Ataturk did, and what certain Pashas from Hijaz did following World War II as puppets of British occupation forces, and how the great Ottoman Empire was brought down—bringing humiliation upon Islam and Muslims across the world. History is not erased from our memory.

I am Sunni, yet today my hero is Ali Khamenei—not because he was a Shia scholar or because he has been the Supreme Leader of Iran, but because he stood against the present-day Yazidis. He stood for Gaza—for Sunnis and for al-Quds, the first Qibla of Islam. He fought and earned martyrdom on the battlefield. I stand, and will always stand, with every Hussain bin Ali (ra), every Umar al-Farooq (ra), and every Salahuddin Ayyubi (ra). I cannot stand with the forces of Yazid, even if it were my own father—a namesake Muslim among them.

The letter issued by M. Burhanuddin Qasmi Editor of Eastern Crescent and Director of MMERC, Mumbai.