In the third part of the interview, Imam Abdul Alim Musa focused in the case of Saudi Arabian policies in the region especially its all-out support for ISIL to destabilize the region and spread hatred against Iran and its circle nations, believing that all policies had been in vein, since the changes embracing the region had been to the consternation of Saudi rulers who had seen changes against their belligerent policies.
At the end of the interview, the imam imparts a wave of hope and optimism, arguing that revolutionaries had always been optimism, since any time, a thing from Providence had arranged course of events to make revolutionaries and the optimists happy with the outcome. Nothing would be achieved, he believed, without being optimistic, since it provided the hopeful with a positive attitude to the general course of the events during the most tumultuous days of history:
You mentioned earlier that Saudi Arabia has taken up a stance which leads to its self-destruction. Can you elaborate on that?
Everything in Saudi Arabia’s policy is suicidal. Saudis created the ISIL and spent millions of dollars to train and arm them. Those same people at first worked for them but the work that they did was to shoot Jordanians, Syrians and to kill everybody. They made everybody hate them. When you hate ISIL you would naturally hate the ones who created it as well which is Saudi Arabia. When you spend the most money on weapons and everything else, it drops oil prices to the lowest level in twenty years. So when it needs money the most, it drops the oil prices that destroys the economy of Venezuela and hurts the Iranian economy and everything else. If they wanted they could extract petrol and process it into petrol chemical fertilizer spreading it all over the desert. They could also desalinate the water and take the salt out of it. Iran, however, is becoming more independent. All the food is mainly produced in Iran. Everything in Saudi Arabia comes from somewhere else. The other thing is its relationship with the region. It sent troops to Bahrain. 80 per cent of the people in Bahrain are Shias. Bahraini people were asking for democracy. But Saudi Arabia sent troops there to fight against democracy on behalf of the US. Everything that Saudis have done, you will see that it has built its own road to decline.
What is the public opinion of Saudi Arabia and its behaviors in the West? And what would they think of alliance between western powers and Saudi Arabia?
Before, anything Saudis did was right; but now not only the public opinion in America, in Europe, but public opinion in other Arab countries has change. Now Yemen keeps telling these countries ‘why are you so quiet?’ ‘Why can Saudi Arabia can do this to us?’ Saudi Arabia’s policy of bombing and killing of the innocent people and children has brought about its increasing decline. Everything the public thinks about Saudi Arabia, they think about bombings in Yemen, people dying in Hajj, they think about ISIL, they are associating terrorism and ISIL not with Hezbollah, not with Hamas, but with Saudi Arabia. Years ago, we couldn’t get anybody to talk against Saudi Arabia, all Muslims got money from Saudi Arabia. All the government was in the hands of those who cooperated [with Saudis]; now Saudi Arabia is going crazy for another reason; it knows how dirty the Americans are; what does their intelligence service feel about Iranian-American cooperation? Saudi Arabia and Turkey, need a war because they have failed in every point and they believe that the US might dump them like all dictators; the US dumped the Shah; the US dumped the dictators in South America. Saudi Arabia feels that America is on the verge of dumping them and bringing in some democratic Saudis and supporters of democracy; this is why they are so panicked; because they are panicked, they don’t know what to do. They have gone crazy because, as a verse in Quran have said, the corrupters shall gone crazy and strayed.
In a program about two sides of Islam, they said that nobody knew ISIL; so, how does it come to claim the western Muslims to come to fight in ISIL’s cause? Who is responsible for the coming of these fanatically-minded fans of ISIL to the region?
They say that young people living in Europe come to do what the America does. If 10 Americans join ISIL, 9 of them are intelligence operatives trying to sabotage inside the group. If in Europe and Britain, young people join, again, nine of them is MI6 operatives. They infiltrate all groups for sabotage. All jihadi [terrorist] groups are made by the government in America. They are not real groups. They do not go to ISIL from all over the US, unless America itself sends them. That is a psychological warfare waged by the US; why all people hate ISIL? Because they destroy artifacts in Syria and historical sites which are few thousand years old; Christians have a long history in the Middle East. All the People of Book had been living in the region for thousands of years. ISIL kills Christians and turns young girls into prostitutes. This makes Americans angry. We would not be happy that ISIL is far from us; but they have changed the environment; the European media as well say that the trend has changed; but the change had already been in our favor; we should be patient and need time to find. In Africa, Boko Haram kills people. In Nigeria, it is known as a government killing Sheikh Zakzaki’s circle members; in demonstrations however, Christians and others came out, because Zakzaki’s case had unified everybody. When I first met the Sheikh, maybe 33 years ago, there were few Shias in Nigeria, now they are thousands; so, the things are going our way; we have to prepare ourselves to living in hardships; all Muslim countries will manage to do this.
Wouldn’t you think that you are optimistic about everything?
You know, Quran says ‘patience is half the faith;’ we should be patient and optimistic. You look at the history of black fight for their civil rights. I remember the history of Iran since 1950; the Revolution of 1979 was not an overnight revolution, and years of efforts and social movements were behind the event which culminated in a revolution. You remember the Constitutional Revolution; you remember the boycott on Tobacco Riots led by Mirza Shirazi; you remember Sheikh Fazollah Nouri in also in the Constitutional Revolution. Dr. Mohamad Mossadegh in the nationalization of oil in 1951. Not all historical important events are the product of a single event, but a long process had been behind all these events. In America of 1960s, we have long history of black rights. Some of my friends had been killed during the era where people were being killed in America for being black. These events require patient since they are long and time should pass to show themselves clearly in the course of history. I am optimistic and patient, because without being patient, I would not achieve anything special. In retrospect, no one would imagine doing a revolution which toppled Shah of Iran at that time when I had been watching politics of Iran and at the same time been engaged in black rights civil movements in America. In America we have been having a long process and change over all centuries, we have blacks’ killing and burnings. We have civil rights movements. I am happy and optimistic because I was one of those who survived the conditions. We need to be optimistic. Fidel Castro of Cuba once said, ‘revolutionaries are optimists;’ it is true since as revolutionaries, we could not do anything without being such. This is true and as well unjustified optimism. Since there is no reason behind the optimism, but after all, it is optimism and provides people with hope of the future. I could not help not being optimistic, since it gives us strength to face the future events with more vigor and spirit of battle.
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