By: Kayhan Int’l Staff Writer

There is a world of difference between diplomacy and hypocrisy, if the two words are to be defined in their true sense.
Diplomacy means statecraft and the art of skillfully managing state affairs with sincerity of intention for the benefit of the community, the country, and of course, the creed that one sincerely follows.
It strives to promote peace and goodwill by upholding truth, righteousness, virtue, and ethical values, with courage, frankness and forbearance, and is a useful means of avoiding tensions, wars, death, and destruction.
In contrast, hypocrisy which means saying one thing and doing other, or hiding one’s real intentions by pretending to be what one is never deep down in his heart, is based on dishonesty, deceit, double-dealing, falsity, cowardice, disbelief in God, the Prophet, religious values, and finally self-destruction that ends in the fires of hell.
The Holy Qur’an, which all Muslims believe to be the Final Heavenly Scripture revealed by the Almighty Creator for the benefit of all humanity, contains a Surah titled “Munafeqoun” or Hypocrites.
It not only castigates the Arabs of the Prophet of Islam’s days who pretended to be Muslim while they were infidels at heart, of the consequences of their evil which is worse than open disbelief, but also serves as criterion for unmasking hypocrites in all subsequent generations.
It is also worth noting that the Holy Qur’an while exhorting Muslims to unite by overcoming their trivial differences and holding fast to the Rope of Allah warns of the dangers of forging friendship with the enemies of Islam, such as the Israelites – the progenitors of modern day Zionists.
Iran, thanks to the triumph of the Islamic Revolution under the guidance of that Sage of the Age, Imam Khomeini (RA), demonstrated the art of diplomacy through dynamic measures to foster Islamic unity, such as bridging the 5-day gap between the two dates of Rabi al-Awwal (12 for Sunni Muslims and 17 for Shi’a Muslim) as Islamic Unity Week, and also designating the Last Friday of the Blessed Month of Fasting Ramadhan as Word Qods Day for mobilizing the Ummah for the cherished goal of liberation of Bayt al-Moqaddas and all Palestine from Zionist usurpation.
Millions of Muslims worldwide hailed Iran’s diplomatic efforts for Islamic solidarity to the horror of the avowed enemies of Islam, that is, the US and the illegal Zionist entity, which now played the roles of the Devil to inculcate sedition and hypocrisy in the hearts of certain oil-rich but rootless and unrepresentative rulers of the region by offering protection to them and stoking undue fears of the Islamic Republic – the only country that considers manufacture of weapons of mass destruction as “haraam” (religiously forbidden).
The intention of this column is not to accuse any supposedly Muslim ruler as a hypocrite, but the backstabbing of the Palestinian cause by some Arab regimes, and their sacrilege in establishing ties with Usurper Israel on the pretext of ‘diplomacy’ actually exposes their barely hidden hypocrisy.
In what should be called the “Height of Hypocrisy”, on Sunday the prime (read crime) minister of the illegal Zionist entity, Naftali Bennett, was welcomed with open arms by the Heir Apparent of Abu Dhabi, Mohamed bin Zayed (MBZ), who last week had sent one of his brothers (Tahnoun) to Tehran to claim cooperation, and last month had dispatched another brother (Abdullah) to Damascus to talk friendship with President Bashar al-Assad after ten years of supporting terrorists of every hue and colour to try to destroy Syria.