of asalamualaikum, peace be upon you and welcome to i on islam, the show where we look at current affairs through an islamic lens. each week we evaluate a trending new story and we break it down from an islamic perspective. the world, and in particular the muslim world in the global south, is marking the fourth anniversary of the assassination of iranian general qasim sulaymani at baghdad airport in january 2020, a murder that took place on the orders of former us. president donald trump

and at the behest of the zionist regime. on today's episode of ion islam we take a look a man who for many represented the personification of bravery, masculinity and faith in god, and in particular how he interacted with the followers of other religions during the course of his life. first we begin with biography of the man who was known as the shadow commander. qasim sulaimani was born on march the 11th, 1957 in the province of kirman. situated in the south of the islamic republic of iran. at the age of 13, the young qasim left school and began working a construction site in a different town to help support his family financially. over the course of the next decade, he also took part in revolutionary activities against the regime of the shah. in 1979, when imam ruhullah khumeini led the islamic revolution to victory, haj kasim joined the islamic revolutionary guard core. despite minimal training. he showed great talent and natural in

aptitude and rose up the ranks quickly. the following year in 1980, when saddam's iraqi of army invaded iran, a 23-year-old qasim joined the battle and as a company leader he trained and led a group of volunteers from his home district of kiriman into battle. in a quote of attributed to haj kasim, he says, "i entered the iran-iraq war a 15-day mission and ended up staying..." until the end. he fought in multiple battles over the course of the war, receiving serious injuries in the battle of thariq quds, close to the border with iraq. after the end of the war, he was deployed in kerman province, his area of birth, where he garnad a reputation as a formidable combatant against rampant drug smuggling in the region. in the late 90s, he was appointed as the head of the quds force of the islamic revolutionary guard core, a union. dedicated

to liberating al-quds and spent the following years building up the organization's capabilities and relationships across the region. it was in this role as leader of the quds force that he assisted lebanon and firstly expelling the israeli occupation in the year 2000 and then in defeating them again during the july war of 2006. but perhaps his greatest victory was in being the person most responsible for the defeat of the daesh terrorist group. 'who had taken over huge swats of territory in syria and iraq in 2014. his leadership on the battlefield and his subsequent support for groups trying to expel occupying american forces from west asia cemented him as a legend amongst the people of the region while also putting him square in the cross-heirs of the mass murdering us empire and its local luckies. joining us on the show this week to dis'.

this huge figure are two very special guests. we are honored to be joined by masud shajar, the chair of the islamic human rights commission, and lifelong activist and humanitarian campaigner who's dedicated himself to fighting the racist and genocidal ideology, that is zionism. also joining us from tehran is brother ali salam, who's a convert to islam and editor in chief of basira press with focus on west asian affairs, reporting on global capitalism and the great reset. welcome to you. uh both, i'd of like to start here in the studio with yourself, haj masud, and uh, let's begin by asking the person, the man, haj qasim sulaymani, what did he represent for you? he represented sort of an ideology of a man who was dedicated as a muslim to bring justice and peace and tranquility to all his surrounding and... from the early age when he

sort of joined the the sort of the military at the time of the eight years impols war, he actually was trained and his ideology was developed to bring peace and tranquility, while the colonial powers around the world are actually committed to exact opposite, because they wanted to destroy the tranquility of not just what's happening in iran and iraq, but the whole region, so their interest is actually exact opposite, and his interest was to bring peace and tranquility to all. and uh brother ali in tehran, if i could just turn to you as well and ask you the same question in terms of at the personality of qasim sulaymani, what did he mean to you? i grew up in the us and i grew up in a nonmuslim background, so there are

really no heroes, no real role models that they offer for people emulate, it's almost like a bankrupty, your role models are mostly actually fictional characters that... cartoons or now cgi characters and even beyond that the people that the real life people that they tell you to venerate, like celebrities, actors, they have morality, they're adulters, they're drug abusers, they're womanizers, they objectify women, they may even be lgbt and other kinds of sexual perverted behaviors, there's nothing good to benefit from them, they're all selfish and materialistic, here is a real hero, a real life hero that even the best fiction right? script writers, any kind of artist or novelistts, they couldn't even come up with it in their imagination. this is a real hero, a complete man who is filled with morality, divine morality, who does everything sincerely for the sake of god without any expecting any materialistic

rewards or anything of the sort, so it's a real breath of fresh air to have hero such as cosim suli to have as role model, and when he dies a honorable death, that it's... self is also a source of role model of being role model in heroism because if you look at some the heroes of the west like elvis pressly he died excuse my language but he died a toilet on drugs, obese and overweight from junk food, this is a dishonorable death, qasim sulaimani, even his death is honorable, even his death is an example, so it's a huge role model not just for muslim people, but i think for all people of the world for thirsty for a real life and a true life. absolutely, thank you, brother ali, and if i turn back to you, haj masud, now you, there's much been said about the contributions of hij kasim in the battlefield, and in particular, he was rather skilled it would appear at building coalitions with other groups and also with

minorities, what kind of work did he do for example with the christian community in places like iraq and lebanon and syria and so on, as i said, i mean really it's his motive. wasn't us and them, that concept which is very sort of prominent in in the west, first is us and red indians and so forth and so on, and justice comes as oppressing others and so forth, he really wanted to create an environment of healthy environment where humanity could actually survive and flourish, and he did that, he did that by addressing the injustices that he came across even in the middle of battlefield. i mean, i want to remind all of us when he was talking to his soldiers and saying that there are these these sort of women and children who are there oppressed. our job is to go and

freedom, they're waiting for us. he was motivating, not just himself, but the whole of his army and and his supporters. towards that direction of addressing injustices, saving innocent, giving right to the oppressed, and and and that was really fantastic sort of model based on islamic sort of principles, you know, it was almost like going back at the time of the companions of the prophet sallam, how the prophet was teaching them to be effective in addressing injustice through everything, even in middle the battlefield and i think from that point of view he was a model, not just, as the brother said, not just for us as muslims, but indeed for the whole world. absolutely, and again back to you brother ali, how exactly did haj qasim work with these minority

groups? let's say for example, we had examples of christian uh fighting groups in the hj in iraq who are of course joined in the battle against the tac das and other groups, what was role in reaching out to these people and reaching into the teachings of islam to do so in? i believe it's 82, it says that christians are closest in affection to the muslims because they have monks among them and they are not arrogant, so i believe, allah knows best, but i believe that these verses struck well with the heart of in addition to the fact that they were being oppressed and as our guest said he is for helping people to have lifes of dignity free of oppression no matter who they are, but naturally this is a special group that's close to muslims. and if they were able to participate in their own liberation, to not

just sit on the sideline, to teach them how to defend themselves so that they can be self-sufficient on their own, whenever god forbid a tragedy such as this happens, such as isis or other such groups, that they that they are part of their struggle, they learn this principle of self-determination and resistance against depression and not just sitting down, and letting it happen and it's it's perfectly clear now after all the documents have been revealed that the mosad and cia and mi6 were the ones who created isis so he so as much as the western governments and the zionist governments pretend like they care about christians oh we need to these barbaric muslims are beheading christians who's the one that funded them who's the one that created them who's the one that gave them weapons and logistics and who's the one that called them moderate freedom fighters and believes all the crocodile? tears that they were crying about being oppressed when it was haj kasim who saved the christians of musal um through the

hash shabi which she worked with with also with shahid abu mahdi al muhandis rahmat and also in lebanon with helping hisballah and the syrian arab army to liberate some of the christian villages of syria who still speak arame including monasteries saving them from isis besegement in fact it was hisbullah and the syrian arab army that were responsible for liberating the ancient village of malula, which you never hear on the zionist media, you never hear that these are the people that save that saved christians, especially these anti islam characters in the west like gerth wilders or tommy robinson, get zionist funding, as we have seen from the research of a british politician named nick griffin, he exposed tommy robinson, why doesn't he thank kosim suleimani for saving the christians that he pretends that people like

for to general saleimani, he quickly opened the palestinian and the lebanese resistance files and led essentially the coordination between the quds force and all the palestinian factions across the board, so both the islamic, so that hamas and jihad, as well as the left wing, so the popular front for the liberation of palestine, the general committee etc. in a way in which they were coordinated and they were separated. osama hamdan stated that any palestiny faction under the title of requiring weapons. for resistance, hajj qasim did not show fault in shipping those weapons and also the prisoners

um was file that was considered of utmost priority, so you had an occupation soldier gilalit, was captured as part of a prisoner exchange, a thousand palestinian prisoners were released, um, one of whom was actually yahya senward who's the current hamas leader in gaza, um, and then if we look further to 2008 when operation cast led occurred, this... or essentially presented an opportunity to experiment those resistance capabilities that began in 2000, that was strengthened with the liberation of 2005, which ultimately transformed ghaza from this very weak strip to one of the israeli occupation entities most overarching objectives to defeat hamas, that was back 15 years ago, imagine the israeli occupation entity is still on the same objective and still cannot today, so in the words of secretary of the... the front of the liberation of palestine, he stated that sulaymani did not differentiate between sex and ideologies, only between factions who

wanted to fight the occupation and those who uh wanted to surrender, and if you look at the activities and the involvements of sulaimani, it went beyond just palestine, you know, he saw and he reached out even to the taliban, to curb the more extreme factions within them, which turns falban from an isis like entity to one that was much more moderate and much more controlled, you he even visited, president putin to secure russia's involvement in the fight against the isis terrorists in syria, thanks to which the black flags of isis are not raining over damas over damas today. and likewise with the situation of um the kurds in kurko for example leading uh to the kurdish withdrawal from there um so that there's no infighting between the iraqi troops and the kurdish troops you know that is the general trajectory of someone like general sulaimani, it is one in which you represents the ideals the islamic revolution which is to have an open hand policy to support on the basis of causes, it is the causes that unite, and

ultimately this way, this free thinking, this open hand is contagious. and it attracts all the free thinkers of the world. now if i can come back to you uh brother mr. now there is are critics of haj qasim and especially the role he played in fighting takfiri terrorist groups in places like syria and iraq who accused him of being a sectarian. do you think that that's a fair accusation? is that true? did that reflect his world view, his religious view and how he viewed muslims from other schools of thought? no, it isn't. mean, when you look at "if you want to really look at his legacy, we need to look at who mowed him, you look at in syria, in in iraq and across the world, muslims, christians and people of all different faiths and background and the secularis, they all moan because they actually saw that they lost someone who was addressing their issue, the issue of their

security, and especially people in iraq and people in syria and else." swear who were the real victims of this sort of chaos which was created by the west and their agents in the region, so really i don't think we should sort of wait and hear from united states or europe, kungo sitting down trying to judge someone like sardar suleimani, but sardar sulaimani should be judged by those oppressed people, the voice of those oppressed people a... in syria and elsewhere, who saw in him a savior of creating a juster and fairer society for all of them, and that's how he managed to mobilize everyone for creating a better society for all of them, that is not a work of sectorianism, that is not a work of separation and division, and as we saw just

previously, and the role he played in palestine as well, which is primarily a sunni population. if you will who uh have reached out and thanked both haj kasim and the islamic republic of iran for their support in uh assisting them in their struggle as well, absolutely basically what we see on one side oppressed people around the world are his supporter and then the oppressors are his enemies and i think that actually says very well what sort of man he was absolutely um brother ali i want to come to you with this question because i know uh your background you have uh verted or reverted to the religion of islam and you came from a jewish background and someone like hajj qasim is accused of being anti- jewish. do you think this is fair reflection of his position? no, i believe it's a totally unfair position and i believe it's a slander of his noble character, because he's an he's an adherent

to the religion of islam in its purest form, and the religion of islam does not believe in biological determinism. doesn't believe in viewing the world from racialist lens, so it doesn't have the problem with the ethnic uh background of people, it's mainly concerned with people's actions and to an extent the beliefs that may fuel those actions. so in the islamic republic of iran jews are allowed to live in peace. now we as muslims believe that islam is the only religion that's undistorted, the other religions have been distorted over time to one degree or another, some more than others. "and we know that the torah is not the same as it was as the angel gabriel revealed it to prophet moses, peace be upon him, and islam accepts all of the israelites and hebrew prophets and accepts that the the torah in its unadultered form would be the truth, so if the adherents of a corrupted version of the torah maybe believe racism or maybe that they should because of

this racism they for example should do usury on the inferior races, well usary is illegal and..." republic of iran and it doesn't matter who is the one charging the usary, they're all going to get the same punishment, the the law is equal to all the people, so it's not like people are specifically targeted just because they were born a certain way, that's irrational. islam is against injustice and irrationality, being racist is totally irrational because people cannot change how they are born, but they can change, they can change how they act, and so in that sense shaheid sulaymani did not persecute any group uh unfairly. and the jewish group, whether in iran or elsewhere is is not the case, in the case of the zionist regime, they're being targeted because they're military occupiers, if they were italian, if they were escamols from alaska, it would be... same reaction and brother ali, i just want to stay with you and ask a question about the comrade and brother in arms of attained shahada on that same

faithful evening, what more can we learn about his life and his approach to uh protecting those kinds of minority groups in the region? well since it's really spoiled the plan. the americans and the zinanis to create sectarianism in the region, especially iraq. during the early days of the iraq invasion, various zionist neocons and american neocons in washington dc were drafting up plans on how to split iraq into several mini stateless. and this is a realization plan of the zionist regime going back to the 1980s that in order to weaken resistance regime. they must divide and conquer according to ethnic and and sectarian lines, so they would have a ethnic kurdish state and sectarian sunni state and sectarian

shia state, so in his life shaheed totally refused this plan by avoiding sectarianism, and you see how he organized the hash shabi where there were christians in serving, they had a regiment of christians or even they had mixed regiments, i believe there was one that was called like imam ali, virgin mary or jesus, messiah, jesus brigade, so may have been a mixed brigade, and then in his death, like there was at the time, even some months before, there was riots in iraq, they were trying to do various plots to pit irakis against iranians even though they are all shia, his death totally eliminated that, and we really haven't seen such plots spring up since, subhanahanlah, so it's in his life and in his death he into unity among the people. which is very beautiful, absolutely, thank you, brother ali, and now just finally, very quickly, uh, hajj masud, we wanted to also discuss the circumstances around the

assassination and the legality of it, i mean, this was something which was totally out of the bounds of any type of moral or international law. well, this is actually very important, because what we are saying is that the arrogance of us arrogance is... go around be judge, jury and executioner, using use of drone to assassinate people against international law, against the national laws, and the reality is that you know they're murdering huge number of people, their own report says that 70% of people who are killed and assassinated by drones are innocent, but the reality is that they're all innocent because they were never taken to court. they were never been put the accusation against them is just the assassination by big power united state and and israelis who actually

just want to go and take people out, this is unlawful and we it has to stop, if it doesn't then becomes the law of jungle, then everybody will go and kill everybody as they wish, and we will have no international law, no justice and and a chaos, so really to address to... that issue is very important, this action and indeed other actions have been totally unlawful and someone needs to be brought to justice. brother masod, thank you so much and also uh brother ali in tehran, thank you so much as well, unfortunately that's all the time that we have for today, thank you for watching at home as well and you can join us again next week for another edition of eye on islam alaikum.

the us israel genocidal war in gaza enters its third month and the death tool continues to rise. israel's economy is also paying heavy price. the labor shortage in high-tech is especially worrying since that sector accounts for nearly 20% of israel's gross domestic product (gdp). 20% of the israeli workers are part of the reserve army and they are not functioning. in this edition of economic divide we have special guests alice rothchild author of... broken promises and broken dreams and member of the jewish voice for peace who says the bigger problem needs to be solved, so the root causes of this crisis are the ongoing occupation of the

occupied terror. مردم را نمی تونیم تصرف کنیم همینطوری حاج قاسم اینجا یک شب تو این خانه موندن و عرضم بهتون که بعد از اینکه خواستن از اینجا برن اینجا در واقع روستای در واقع یکی از روستاهای جنوب غرب بوکماله یه یادداشتی برای صاحبخونه گذاشتن که ما کامل از روش عکس گرفتیم دو صفحه است حاجی به زبان عربی عرضم بتون که برای این خانواده نوشتن

که ما اینجا بودیم اینجا نماز خوندیم من شیعه هستم شما سنی هستید انا شیعه اینجا خونه شماست بدون اجازه اومدیم از این حرفا که راضی باشن زیر چیزم در واقع برگم شماره تلفن منزلشو نوشتن که اگر دوست داشتن به تهران زنگ بزنن و عرضم حضور شما که باهاشون. صحبت کنم با امضای خود حاج قسم صلی.

uraz leader hails the role of martter suleimani as vital in reviving the strength the resistance front in the region. day 86 of the us israeli genocidal war against palestinian, the death toll. tops 21,800 mainly women and children. in palestine's islamic chihad chief stresses there will be no prisoners swap with telavive before the end of the regime's aggression and full military withdraw from gaza.