By: Kayhan Int’l Staff Writer

"Hold fast, all together, to Allah’s Cord and do not be divided…” (Holy Qur’an 3:103)
These Divine Words are regularly recited throughout the world by Muslims, or those among mankind who are supposed to have submitted to the Will of God Almighty and hence should stand dauntlessly against all worldly powers without giving in to pressures and threats, let alone seeking their protection and bowing at their threshold.
The question that arises is: How many Muslims, including heads of Muslim states, really follow these immortal injunctions of the Creator, conveyed to the human race by His Last and Greatest Messenger who bequeathed to us the formula of Islamic unity in the most practical way?
The answer is obvious. Only a very small percentage, and that is the reason the enemies of humanity today hold the Islamic world as hostage, and having pitted us against each other at every turn, are now insolently ridiculing our sanctities, as the French president recently did by blasphemously defending the attempts of devilish minds in the West to try to defame the unblemished image of Prophet Muhammad (SAWA).
If only the Ummah, especially the rulers of Muslim countries, had heeded the call of the Father of the Islamic Revolution four decades ago for working towards unity of the Islamic world by knitting ranks with each other and rejecting the plot of the US and Western Europe to splinter us into groups.
"O Muslims, followers of the school of Towhid! The ultimate reason for all the troubles that afflict the Muslim countries is their disunity and lack of harmony, and the secret of future victory will lie in unity and the creation of harmony.”
This is what Imam Khomeini (RA) had said while initiating the Islamic Unity Week in 1979 to bridge the two dates of the month of Rabi al-Awwal, which the Sunni and Shi’a Muslims respectively regard as the birth anniversary of the Seal of Divine Messengers (blessings of God upon him and his progeny).
He did receive positive response from most of the world Muslims, who by setting aside the divisions of schools of jurisprudence and narrow nationalistic tendencies, began to view Iran as harbinger of the Ummah’s solidarity – a factor that alarmed the US, the Zionists, and the turncoat heads of Muslim states, to join together in a poisonous propaganda campaign against the Islamic Republic.
It is outside the scope of this Viewpoint Column to dwell on Saddam’s treason in launching the destructive 8-year war on Iran, and the seditious bid of the Saudis to sow seeds of discord among Muslims by creating a brood of Takfiri terrorists to kill fellow Muslims by accusing them of heresy and to destabilize Muslim countries to the benefit of Israel, the US, and West Europe.
Today, the bitter fruits of these divisive moves are evident to all Muslims, who have at last become aware of the treachery of the rootless and unrepresentative British created regimes of Arab states to backstab the Ummah by making common cause with the despicable Zionists against fellow Muslims.
This has undoubtedly encouraged deranged demagogues in the West, such as Emmanuel Macron of France to openly insult Islam and Muslims.
Of course, the reaction by Muslim masses all over the world against attacks on the sanctity of the Prophet whom God Almighty calls "Sirajun Muneer” or the Bright Lamp in the holy Qur’an, has been commendable, but this should not be a flash-in-the-pan, but ought to be the beginning of coordinated measures to assert Islamic solidarity and force France, the US, Britain, and the Zionists, to withdraw their tentacles from the Muslim world.
This is not possible, unless dedicated Islamic scholars (not the pseudo ones who serve reactionary regimes to kill and splinter Muslims), rise to the occasion to educate the masses by bravely rejecting the pressures of their politicians and focusing on the formula of Islamic unity that the Prophet of peace had bequeathed at the time of his departure, by explicitly saying – as recorded in the books of hadith of both Sunni and Shi’a Muslims:
"I am leaving behind among you the Thaqalayn (two invaluable things); the Book of God (the Holy Qur’an) and my progeny the Ahl al-Bayt. Hold fast to them and you will never go astray, for the two will never separate from each other even when they return to me at the Fountain (of Kowthar on the Day of Judgement).”
What better occasion to defeat sedition and sacrilege, other than joining together to promote the concept of the Ummah’s solidarity on the occasion of the Islamic Unity Week – 12th according to the Sunni version on the narrations of the Prophet’s companions, and 17th according to Shi’a Muslims who cite the accounts of the Prophet’s Household.
As the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, recently remarked: "Islamic unity is not a political move, rather it is a belief based on heartfelt faith.”