Fighting with Honor, or Inaction with Humiliation?!
(Translated)

News:

On 30 October 2024, Naim Qassem said in his first video speech after his inauguration as Secretary-General of the Iranian backed group, “The difference between us and ‘Israel,’ is that we fight with honor, targeting barracks, army, tanks and soldiers, while they kill civilians and unarmed people, and destroy people and buildings of infrastructure.” (Al-Ahed News)

Comment:

What you called honor, O Sheikh, is not honor in anything. It is inaction, weakness and humiliation. The enemy commits massacres, killing tens of thousands of innocent unarmed and vulnerable to disability, women and children in their homes, villages and cities in Palestine and Lebanon, destroying their homes, hospitals, masajid and tents over their heads, and turning entire cities and villages into rubble and dust with tens of thousands of heavy and giant missiles. As for you, you respond to all of this with missiles limited in number and impact. You limit your targets to the military and their installations. You then count its losses within a year and a half to only a dozens of fighters and minor damage to some of its military facilities. This is not honor and morality either from grace or from Shariah or from Fiqh. It is inaction, betrayal, humiliation and betrayal itself.

Your words, O Sheikh, involve dangerous concepts that are far from the Shariah of Allah (swt). As it has been stated by you that the enemies that may be targeted in this war are only combatants, during their military service, in their military installations, in their tanks and only on active frontlines. However, are the others who are in their homes, shops, jobs and markets innocent bystanders and protected people?!

It seems that you have forgotten, Secretary-General, the Islamic ruling agreed upon by all fuqaha jurists, including your own jurists, that all of Palestine is an Islamic land occupied by a military kafir force. All of it is a battlefield. All those who hold the citizenship of this Jewish entity, other than the original resident inhabitants of the land, are considered occupiers, aggressors and warriors, whether they are men, women, young people and the elderly. This is whether they are actively serving in the military, or retired from it, or a civilian, as they like to describe themselves. They are all Shariah legitimate targets for us in the fight to liberate the Islamic land that they occupied. It seems that you forgot the Saying of Allah (swt),

[وَقَاتِلُوا فِي سَبِيلِ اللهِ الَّذِينَ يُقَاتِلُونَكُمْ وَلَا تَعْتَدُوا إِنَّ اللهَ لَا يُحِبُّ الْمُعْتَدِينَ * وَاقْتُلُوهُمْ حَيْثُ ثَقِفْتُمُوهُمْ وَأَخْرِجُوهُم مِّنْ حَيْثُ أَخْرَجُوكُمْ]

“Fight in the cause of Allah only against those who wage war against you, but do not exceed the limits. Allah does not like transgressors * Kill them wherever you come upon them and expel them from the places from which they have expelled you.” [TMQ Surah Al-Baqarah 2:190-191]. Allah (swt) said,

[مَنِ اعْتَدَى عَلَيْكُمْ فَاعْتَدُوا عَلَيْهِ بِمِثْلِ مَا اعْتَدَى عَلَيْكُمْ]

“So if anyone attacks you, retaliate in the same manner.” [TMQ Surah Al-Baqarah 2:194] Allah (swt) said,

[فَإِمَّا تَثْقَفَنَّهُمْ فِي الْحَرْبِ فَشَرِّدْ بِهِم مَّنْ خَلْفَهُمْ لَعَلَّهُمْ يَذَّكَّرُونَ]

“If you ever encounter them in battle, make a fearsome example of them, so perhaps those who would follow them may be deterred.” [TMQ Surah Al-Anfaal 8:57].

It is a basic principle of war and fighting that the response to enemy aggression must not be less than its aggression. Instead, the one who fights in defense of himself, his land, his honor and for the liberation of his lands from the occupier, has the right to use the maximum force, and overwhelming at his disposal. However, despite the massacre committed by the enemy against your leaders, fighters and people, and despite the massive destruction of your cities and villages, you still exercise restraint with the Jewish entity to this day. Your rules of engagement are limited within a limitation that you do not exceed!

Where are your promises and threats, that you have repeated for many years, with your readiness to destroy the Jewish entity in minutes?! Where are the rockets that you promised the Jews that you would destroy the Karish gas field, and the Dimona nuclear reactor, with?! Where is your promise to penetrate into the occupied land of Galilee (al-Jaleel), in the next real battle?! Where are your promises to liberate Al-Masjid Al-Aqsa and perform Salah within it?! Are you still waiting for the implementation of all these promises to be carried out in times of a greater opportunity than this war, which is unimaginable in its criminality?!

Then, where was this military honor of yours, O Sheikh, when you fought your criminal war devoid of Deen and morals, against the sons of the Islamic Ummah, who revolted against their criminal tyrant in Syria?! There, where you fought a war by the order of your guardian al-Faqih, and upon the direction of America, in defense of one of the filthiest regimes in history. This was in agreement with all the kafir states on earth to ward off the danger of establishing a real state for the Islamic Ummah. In that dirty war of yours, from which you have not withdrawn to this day, you have forgotten all morals and Shariah rulings of war obliged by Allah (swt). In addition to fighting the mujahideen who went out for Jihad for the sake of Allah (swt), you killed innocent souls, without distinguishing between man or woman, between a fighter and a civilian, and between the elderly and children. There, you did not spare any human being or any building of infrastructure. You were allies with those who failed and humiliated you in your painful battle today. You were allies with them in throwing barrels of death that demolished buildings over the heads of their people, and in launching the most lethal types of rockets to destroy neighborhoods, villages and cities. There you did just as a Jewish entity does now to the people of Gaza and to your people in Lebanon.

Your greatest problem today, O Sheikh, is that you are fighting neither your own battle, nor the battle for Palestine, nor the battle for Lebanon, whose authority you barely rejoiced over, years ago. Instead, you are fighting a proxy war on behalf of your Iranian guardian, who has made you, Lebanon and its people a front line of defense, to defend its own land and state. Your problem is that you built your structure on sand, and pillars of grass. It collapsed in the twinkling of an eye.

Allah (swt) said,

[أَفَمَنْ أَسَّسَ بُنْيَانَهُ عَلَى تَقْوَى مِنَ اللهِ وَرِضْوَانٍ خَيْرٌ أَمْ مَنْ أَسَّسَ بُنْيَانَهُ عَلَى شَفَا جُرُفٍ هَارٍ فَانْهَارَ بِهِ فِي نَارِ جَهَنَّمَ وَاللهُ لَا يَهْدِي الْقَوْمَ الظَّالِمِينَ]

“Which is better: those who laid the foundation of their building on the fear and pleasure of Allah, or those who did so on the edge of a crumbling cliff that tumbled down with them into the Fire of Hell? And Allah does not guide the wrongdoing people.” [TMQ Surah At-Tawba 9: 109].

Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Ahmad Al-Qasas
Member of the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir