“O Muslims, followers of the school of tawhid! The ultimate reason for all the troubles that afflict the Muslim countries is their disunity and lack of harmony, and the secret of future victory will lie in unity and the creation of harmony.” -- Imam Khomeini

Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic lunar year and the month of fasting, is a time that should bring all Muslims together. That fasting during Ramadan is a pillar of our faith and obligatory upon all Muslims is firmly established by all five theological schools within Islam. Man or woman, young or old, scholar or uneducated, we all fast from dawn to dusk for the entire month as commanded in the Holy Quran (2:183):

“You who believe! Fasting is prescribed for you, as it was prescribed for those before you, that you may [learn] self-restraint.”

Fasting has a powerful unifying effect for all mankind since not only has it been ordered for the Muslim ummah but also for the Jews and Christians as well as for other previous nations. Fasting helps its practitioners to learn to cope with deprivation and limitations, which is especially difficult for people living in lands where abundant food is readily available and material pleasures are emphasized over spiritual rewards, as is the case in the United States. Fasting also has a lofty spiritual aspect that allows human beings to rise above the bonds of their animal desires and ascend to the heights of angels.

Fasting enhances our tolerance of suffering and self-control so necessary when we are called upon to defend our Islamic faith against our common enemies. In a spiritual sense, it makes us militant. In fact, Imam Khomeini calls Islam “the religion of militant individuals who are committed to truth and justice.” And we cannot effectively defend Islam against its enemies if our ummah is divided.

The aggressions launched by the United States are simply a continuation of a 1300-year-old campaign of colonial oppression by various imperial powers to control natural resources in the Middle East for commercial exploitation. While U.S. officials claim their wars are being waged to promote freedom and democracy, their true goals are regional destabilization and domination to suck the wealth out of the Middle East. Capitalizing on our disunity in the face of their onslaughts, the U.S. and their colonizing henchmen have advanced their greedy imperialist ambitions in Muslim lands by inciting sectarian violence between Sunni and Shia and by outright invasions, as a brief glance at recent history shows.

Since replacing Britain as the leading colonial power after World War II, the U.S. enemy has supported right-wing Kemalist dictators in Muslim countries who have abandoned their Islamic faith and embraced Western capitalistic values and beliefs. They have corrupted young Muslims by education in Western universities, exposing them to amoral American culture, values, and ideology, with all of its gaudy glittering materialism, sensuously provocative pop music, and seductively revealing women’s fashions. 

The U.S. incited a bloody eight-year war between Iran and Iraq, resulting in the death of over a million Muslims. The U.S. first allowed Saddam Hussein, whom the U.S. brought to power, to invade Kuwait and then ‘changed’ its mind, using this as an excuse to increase its military footprint in the region.

Following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the U.S. escalated its aggression against Islam and Muslim countries under the pretext of the “war on terror”. They invaded Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks and have continued their occupation to this day, killing at least 20,000 Afghan civilians and displacing over 4 million. Then they invaded Iraq on the pretext of a connection to Al-Qaeda, killing over 1.4 million innocent Iraqis and displacing over 5 million. The U.S. supplied weapons to the Zionist regime during their attack on Lebanon in 2006, resulting in over 1,000 civilian deaths and over 1 million internally displaced.  

Over 30,000 Pakistanis have been killed as a result of the U.S. war since 9/11, with over 10,000 killed and 3 million displaced by U.S.-pressured Pakistani military operations in 2009 alone. According to one source, Pakistani casualties may actually exceed those in Afghanistan. Armed unmanned drones, controlled by the U.S. military or the CIA, have carried out targeted killings in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya, and now also operate in Somalia.  

U.S. political and military support of the Zionist regime allows the ongoing occupation of Palestinian lands. Operation Cast Lead, in which over 1,400 Gazans were slaughtered by Israeli forces, is just one of many on a long list of U.S.-backed Zionist atrocities against the Palestinian people, but it ended all hopes of peace with them. By now, it should be clear to all Muslims that the U.S. is at the forefront of the enemies of Islam.  

As Muslims united in the Holy Quran and the Prophet Muhammad (S), our numerous commonalities far exceed the minor theological differences between Sunni and Shia Islam. We all believe in the unity of Allah (SWT), we all believe in the prophethood, and likewise, we all believe in the afterlife. Ayatollah Sheikh Hafiz Basheer Hussain Najafi explains that anyone believing in these three principles is considered a Muslim. We Shia also believe in the leadership of the divinely appointed Imams, whose role is paralleled in Sunni Islam by saints, many of whom were students of the Shia Imams.

Taking a bold stance in support of Islamic unity, Sheik Dr. Ahmad al-Tayyib, the imam of Al-Azhar Mosque, declared that he was prepared to stand behind Shia elites to perform his prayer, and that he would go to visit Najaf, Iraq and the shrine of Hazrat Ali (AS), the first Shia Imam. He also said, “The Zionist regime will reap the greatest benefit if Muslim countries fail to achieve unity.” He also declared, “Hosni Mubarak, the ousted president of Egypt, asked me several times to issue a fatwa (decree) against Shia Muslims, particularly Hezbollah, but I never agreed.”

So let us all take advantage of the unity inherent in fasting for the holy month of Ramadan, put aside our theological differences, and renew our efforts to unite our Muslim ummah against the common enemy. In the words of Imam Khomeini, “Let us all act for the sake of Islam and the welfare of the Muslims and shun disunity, separation, and sectarianism, for these are the sources of our misfortunes and weaknesses.”