By: Seyyed Ali Shahbaz
      "When my Sunnah (practice) is tampered with and changed, its supporters will rise from the land called Khorasan. Anyone they confront will be defeated and (all) will yield all to them, until they finally approach Bayt al-Moqaddas."
      The above hadith, attributed to the Messenger of Mercy, is found in both Sunni and Shi’a texts. It is a clear reference to the resurgence of the Muslims of Iran, regarding whom Prophet Muhammad (SAWA) had also reportedly given tidings, by pointing at his famous Iranian companion Salman al-Farisi, that his people will acquire knowledge, "even if it is to be found in Pleiades.”
       Thanks to the Islamic Revolution that triumphed in 1979 under the wise leadership of the Prophet’s descendant, Imam Khomeini (RA), Iran today is the cynosure of all eyes. The dynamism of the country’s Islamic Republic system, if it annoys the enemies of humanity, it is inspiration for the world’s oppressed nations, yearning to break free from the shackles of oppression, exploitation, occupation and usurpation.
       That is the reason the downtrodden people of Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Bahrain, Nigeria, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere, consider the Islamic Republic of Iran as a role model, especially in view of the above mentioned hadith which means to say that the supporters of the Prophet’s Sunnah from Khorasan will surmount every obstacle on their way towards liberating the Zionist occupied Islamic city of Bayt al-Moqaddas.  
       Now we understand why Imam Khomeini, whose vision foresaw the future, designated Jum’at-al-Weda or Farewell Friday of the Month of Ramadhan as World Qods Day.
       The goal of that Sage of the Age, who used to say, without mincing words "Israel is a cancerous tumour that ought to be weeded out from the region,” was to mobilize the Ummah for the cherished goal of liberation of Islam’s former Qibla, Bayt al-Moqaddas, at a time when the Great Satan (the US), along with Arab reactionaries, had almost succeeded in obliterating from Muslim minds the uprooting of Israel.
       Today, when World Qods Day is no longer confined to the geographical borders of Iran, which the Zionists, the West, and Arab reactionary regimes had tried to do, and has generated a tidal wave all over the globe, it will not be out of context to study the Iranian connection to Bayt al-Moqaddas.
        Irrespective of the fact that Palestine (including Jerusalem) was for over two centuries part of the ancient Persian Achaemenian Empire, and just before the advent of Islam, had again fallen under the suzerainty of the Sassanid Empire of Iran, the focus of this column is on the events leading to liberation of Bayt al-Moqaddas by the Muslims in 1187 after 88 years of occupation by the Crusaders of Europe, although the Iranians were prominent in this Islamic city during the century-and-a-half of rule by the Fatemid Dynasty of Egypt.
      This year marks the 829th anniversary of the liberation of Qods from the yoke of the Crusaders (2nd October 1187), regarding which the Iranian historian, Emad od-Din Isfahani, who was official chronicler to Salah od-Din the Kurdish king who led onslaught, writes: "This joyful news spread far and wide, bringing perfume to Rayy (today a suburb of modern Tehran) and to the evening conversation at Samarqand. It was welcomed with enthusiasm and its sweetness surpassed candied fruits and sugar. The world of Islam was ready and adorned for a festival to celebrate the liberation of Bayt al-Moqaddas."
      Time and space do not permit me to go into details of the 88-year occupation of Qods and Palestine by Crusaders of Europe and the similarities it bears to the current 68-year Zionist usurpation, including the then Europeanization of the Islamic city (like its present Judaization) and the treason of the local Muslim rulers, who like certain Arab regimes of our own days, carried on commerce, pleasure and intrigue with the Crusader occupiers, to the extent that Qods was given up as a lost cause by the Muslims, while the usurpers – like the Zionists of today – thought that their rule was as good as permanent.
       So pathetic had the affairs become that Abul-Muzaffar Abiverdi, an Iranian poet living in Abbasid Baghdad of the 12th century composed a stirring elegy in Arabic in order to awaken Islamic conscience. Part of his poem reads:
      "To shed tears is a man's worst weapon when swords stir up embers of war;
      "Sons of Islam behind you are battles in which heads roll at your feet
      "Dare you slumber in the blessed shade of safety, where life is soft like orchid?
      "While your Syrian brothers can only sleep on the back of the chargers or in the vultures' bellies!
      "Must the foreigner feed on our ignominy, while you trail behind you the train of a pleasant life?
      "When sword points are red with blood and at the hammering of swords on lances the hairs of children turn white
     "This is war and the infidel's sword is naked in his hand, ready to be sheathed again in man's necks and skulls.
         Such literary eloquence which bears a striking resemblance to the current situation in Gaza and the rest of Palestine finally stirred Muslims into action, until the Arabs, the Kurds, the Turks, and the Persians, rallied under the banner of Salah od-Din to liberate Qods and cleanse it of all vestiges of the 88-year rule of the Crusaders. The Egyptian fleet cut off all escape routes by sea for the Crusaders, as Khorasani sappers showed their great skills in mining the impregnable ramparts of the holy city.
        Could the Islamic World emulate this epic? Definitely, if they knit their ranks; and this is what the Father of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini, meant when he called on Iranians and world Muslims to get together remove the cancerous tumour called Israel. Hopefully, the World Qods Day and the millions-strong rallies to be staged in Tehran and other Iranian cities, as well as in other countries of the region, will convey the message to the free world to marshal its resources for the liberation of Bayt al-Moqaddas and the whole of Palestine, from the River Jordan in the east to the Mediterranean Sea in the west, and from Lebanon in the north to Egypt in south.
       The Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has time and again called for a peaceful solution for the end of Israel by urging the UN to arrange a referendum involving all original inhabitants of Palestine, including Muslims, Christians, and the Jewish minority, but not the illegal Zionist occupiers, to determine a single state and a single government. This will indeed happen, no matter what obstacles the West, the Zionists, the Arab reactionaries throw in the way through such treacherous, treasonous and terrorist elements, as the dastardly cannibalistic Takfiris.