by CATHERINE SHAKDAM
A view of the destruction after the bombing of a funeral hall in Sana by the Saudi-led coalition carrying out airstrikes over Yemen PHOTO/Mohammed Huwais/AFP/Getty Images/The Baltimore Sun
Yemen was earmarked for a brutal military takeover the minute its people began to assert their sovereign rights against the diktat of Saudi Arabia.
Here we are again discussing the human tragedy that has become Yemen – this bleeding scar of a nation that was unilaterally declared war to by Saudi Arabia back in late March 2015. For two long years, two incredibly trying years Yemen’s sovereignty, Yemen’s right to self-defend its borders and its people, Yemen’s right to religious freedom, and more importantly Yemen’s right to political self-determination have been trampled over by an elite that calls itself democratic while arguing despotism.
Yemen has suffered so many injustices it would be now impossible to list them all, nevermind calling for reparation … There are however crimes so grave and so flamboyantly despicable in their nature that we must speak them – never to waver in our calls for vindication.
Beyond the bloodshed, the inhumane humanitarian blockade and the disappearing of a people‘s cultural heritage lies a betrayal far more biting and vile … Yemen you see was denied the truth of its Resistance Movement so that it could be reduced to an illegitimate rebellion against the so-called legitimacy of the former presidency.
Western capitals, those wannabe beacons of democracy and human rights, have systematically defiled, vilified and otherwise criminalized Yemen’s Resistance Movement so that the world would not wake up to the reality of its main regional partner: Saudi Arabia.
A violent theocracy raised on the ideology of Takfir, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been instrumental over the past decade in the spread of radicalism – as expressed by groups such as al-Qaida, the Taliban, Boko Haram and of course Daesh (aka ISIS). A profoundly reactionary regime that rejects the notion of religious freedom, al-Saud’s monarchy has nevertheless been hailed a model of stability and steadfastness against Terror by western powers.
Takfiri is frequently used in reference to Daesh (also known as ISIL or ISIS) but the term has a hidden universal applicability that surpasses our era while exposing the dark ideology languishing in the core of the phenomenon.
Since they started calling themselves the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in June 2014, the gun-wielding occupiers of Iraq and Syria have been referred to as Takfiris by many Islamic scholars.
Derived from the word kafir, meaning infidel, the Arabic word could refer to any ideology that is based on declaring the dissent apostate, and therefore eligible to be killed by the members of the group. Takfirism is mostly rooted in Wahhabism, the official religion of the absolute autocratic regime of Saudi Arabia.
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