Page 274

Riḍā’s answer:

In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful. My Lord, grant me judgment and understanding, and teach me knowledge from Your presence.

To proceed: Islam’s ruling concerning the actions of the English and the Zionist Jews in Palestine is the ruling concerning a belligerent people who have attacked a homeland belonging to the Abode of Islam, seized it by force, monopolized sovereignty there, and begun, through organized measures, to wrest title to its land from its people. They seek to deprive them of property—milk, with a kasra—just as they have deprived them of sovereignty—mulk, with a damma. The ruling concerning anyone who assists them in this undertaking—the possession of the land—through any kind of assistance or any form of it, whether formal, such as selling, or informal, such as encouraging others, is the ruling concerning a traitor to his nation and religious community, an enemy of God, His Messenger, and the believers, and an ally of their enemies and adversaries against their sovereignty and property. There is no distinction between him and someone who fights Muslims alongside them with his property and his person.

The person who sells his land to Zionist Jews in Palestine, and the person—broker or otherwise—who endeavors to buy someone else’s land for them, is like a person who helps any foreign people against his own people as they try to conquer their country by sword and fire and take possession of their homelands. Indeed, I say, fearing neither the blame of any critic in God’s cause nor the harm of any oppressor, that this kind of foreign conquest of the Abode of Islam is worse than every similar military, political, or religious conquest that preceded it, whatever names such conquests bear in this age. It deprives the people of the homeland of their right to possess and govern their country and of their right to own its land, for the purpose of expelling them from it. It is self-evident that, if ownership of the land remains ours, it will be possible for us to restore sovereignty; otherwise, we will lose both together.

Moreover, the loss of Palestine threatens the neighboring countries of our nation. It has become necessarily known to the people of Palestine and their neighbors, and to everyone acquainted with what is happening there, that the Jews are determined to establish the Israelite national home and restore Solomon’s kingdom through the power of money, whose economic empire they lead, and through the military power of the British state. This danger will spread to Transjordan, Syria, the Hijaz, and Iraq; indeed, it is a danger that will pass from Sinai into Egypt.

In sum, British Zionism threatens the Arab nation in all its