THIS IS MY STORY—88
MY JOURNEY THROUGH THE ERA OF AYUB KHAN TO THE TIMES OF IMRAN KHAN.
GHULAM AKBAR……………
A year of catastrophic consequences
I believe 1967 was the year in which a rude shock transformed me completely into a fierce, uncompromising and inflexible Isharist. The rude shock came on the 5th of June 1967. On the 6th of June 1967 the newspapers were flooded with headlines that narrated with cruel candidness the humiliation that the Arab World —the heart of Islam—the land from where the glory of the Crescent had risen—had suffered at the hands of Israel. Within minutes, Israel, in a surprise raid had demolished the Egyptian Air Force, that Gamal Abdul Nasser had built in years with the Soviet MIGS. Golan Heights of Syria had fallen to the Zionist invaders in no time. And the worst of all, AlQuds, known as Eastern Jerusalem had been taken by the Jews I couldn’t believe my eyes. I couldn’t believe my ears. And I couldn’t believe my senses. How could such a vicious, humiliating and soul-numbing blow be delivered within a night, to the successors of Salahuddin Ayubi whose heroisin in the 12th century had been instrumental in securing back Alquds from the Crusaders. One work years before Salahuddin Ayubi had marched into the city where Masjid Aqsa was housed, the marauding armies of the Cross had captured the Holy city from Islam, and the streets of Jerusalem had been transformed into rivers of Muslim blood. When Salahuddin the Great re-took Jerusalem not a drop of blood stained his heroic triumph. The Christian armies had simply laid down the arms, and Salahuddin Ayubi had promptly declared total amnesty.
Around eight centuries later, AlQuds had again fallen to the forces hostile to Islam. The way Israel’s triumph had been celebrated in almost all the Capitals of the West, it was abundantly clear that under the veneer of liberalism, the West was still Christian in essence and spirit. The scars that the Crusades had left on the minds of the World of the Cross hadn’t been obliterated by the passage of time.
That, as I write these lines half a century later, AlQuds is still not only in the occupation of Israel but also has been recognized by America as Israel’s capital, speaks volumes about the intensity of the vendetta that burns in the hearts of the soldiers of the Cross against Islam which had defeated the Roman Empire in the East in the 7th century.
