It’s no secret that hatred of Israel and antisemitism are rife all over the Islamic world. This is particularly true in the Islamic Republic of Iran, which stokes that hatred by frequently forcing its citizens to scream “Death to Israel!” (as well as “Death to America!”). In Shi’ite regions of neighboring Iraq, antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment are just as widespread. Nevertheless, even in such an overheated environment, a prominent Iraqi Shi’ite cleric, Qais al-Khazali, the leader of Asaib Ahl Al-Haqq, a Shi’ite militia that is backed by Iran, stands out as particularly venomous. He has even claimed that Israel’s Mossad was responsible for the killing of a Muslim leader over 1,300 years ago. Yes, really.
Israel’s i24News reported Wednesday that “in a recorded lecture, the pro-Iranian Shiite cleric repeatedly blamed ‘the Jews’ for killing Ali Ibn Abi Talib.” Ali ibn Abi Talib was one of the first followers of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam. Shi’ite Muslims insist that Muhammad appointed him to be his successor, yet after Muhammad’s death, Ali was passed over three times for the leadership of the Muslim community. He was finally chosen as the caliph, the successor of Muhammad as the political, military and spiritual leader of the Muslims, in 658, but immediately faced a revolt and was assassinated just three years later, in 661.
Abd al-Rahman ibn Muljam, a member of the Khawarij, a Muslim sect that rejected the authority of both Ali and the Muslims who opposed him, was responsible for killing Ali. Ali’s son Hassan then became the leader of the group of Muslims who supported Ali, which was known as the “party of Ali,” or in Arabic, shiat Ali, from which comes the term “Shi’ite.” Hassan was himself murdered just a few years later, and in 680, Ali’s grandson Hussein was likewise killed in a battle at Karbala in Iraq against the rival Muslim faction. The Sunni-Shi’ite split was formalized and continues to this day.
This was all a dispute between warring Muslim groups, but Al-Khazali sees it all as the nefarious work of the group that the Qur’an identifies as “the most vehement of mankind in hostility to those who believe” (5:82): the Jews. He cried: “The Jews! The Jews! The Jews! They murdered Hassan, Ali’s son, and they did it using a woman.”
This was crazy enough, but wait, it gets worse. Al-Khazali continued that “the Umayyads,” that is, the Sunni Muslims who opposed the shiat Ali, “were mere collaborators with the Jews. They then assassinated Imam Hussein. They are the same perpetrators, but they used different people.” Apparently referring to the woman who did in both Hassan and Hussein, al-Khazali added: “Qatam was a prostitute.”
At that point al-Khazali then ventured into territory that made what he had said up to this point seem sober and rational: “What was the modus operandi of the Jewish-Israeli intelligence agency? What do we know about them? How do they get their sources? Either through money or through women. In this case, it was a woman. There is no doubt that she was working for the Israeli Mossad at the time and it was through her that they recruited [Imam Ali’s assassin].” The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) adds that al-Khazali then said, “Abd Al-Satan Ibn Criminal,” which MEMRI takes to be a reference to Abd al-Rahman ibn Muljam. That does seem to be what al-Kazali meant: the placement of the “Abd” (slave of) and the “ibn” (son of) give it away.
There’s just a small catch. Abd al-Rahman ibn Muljam killed Ali ibn Abi Talib in 661. The modern state of Israel was founded in 1948 and Mossad in December 1949. Al-Khazali is up to his eyeballs in hatred for the people whom the Qur’an depicts as hiding the truth and misleading people (3:78); staging rebellion against the prophets and rejecting their guidance (2:55); being hypocritical (2:14, 2:44); giving preference to their own interests over the teachings of Muhammad (2:87); and wishing evil for people and trying to mislead them (2:109). This hatred so consumes him that he thinks Mossad, which Islamic hardliners generally blame for virtually anything and everything that goes wrong, has so much power that it can travel over thirteen centuries back in time to do Ali in.
In a world where Palestinian Arabs can accuse Israel of training cows as spies, al-Khazali doesn’t look quite as driven around the bend by hatred as he does to people who are outside of his milieu. But still, he stands as an object lesson of what blind hatred can do to a man’s rational faculties. Don’t let this happen to you.
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