Intl. Quds Day unifies people, mobilizes masses in Muslim world: IHRC chairman

International Quds Day brings people together and mobilizes masses in the Muslim world to stand up in solidarity with the Palestinians, the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) chairman has said.

Massoud Shadjarah told Press TV’s weekly Palestine Declassified that Quds Day is a Muslim platform shared with everyone else to demonstrate solidarity with the Palestinians, and brought a huge change within the Muslim world in showing support for them.

“[Quds Day] has mobilized the masses in the Muslim world when we have seen, unfortunately, some Muslim leaders are involved in normalizing [relations with Israel],” said Shadjarah, also a long-standing human rights campaigner.

Quds Day is celebrated all over the world on the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan after being inaugurated by the late founder of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979.

It is a day of international solidarity with the Palestinian people marked throughout Muslim and Arab countries in over 80 Islamic and non-Islamic countries in total. In the West, these include the United States of America, Canada, Australia, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, France, and Greece.

Celebrating Al-Quds Day

Quds day is celebrated all over the world after being inaugurated by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979.

According to Shadjarah, “Quds Day is a testimony to the sort of diversity of the group of people that come together from the Jewish, Christian, atheistic [backgrounds].”

And that is why, he said, it has been targeted day in, day out.

The Muslim unity displayed on Quds Day is a threat to the Zionist entity and its supporters and assets in the West and elsewhere. Accordingly, they mobilize to smear and denounce Quds Day, and claim that its celebration exhibits extremism and anti-Semitism.

For one, on 2017 Quds Day, Zionist activists made complaints about one of the speakers Nazim Ali, a pharmacist, and attempted to have him sacked from his job by using false allegations of anti-Semitism to complain to his regulator the General Pharmaceutical Council.

The council concluded his words were not anti-Semitic, but the Zionists – in the shape of the UK Lawyers for Israel and the Campaign against anti-Semitism, both of which are closely linked to the Zionist entity – continued to harass Ali.

The case is still – years later – to be finally decided. It leaves the way open for Zionist groups to harass and intimidate anyone that speaks out on Palestine even to the extent of tying them up in legal procedures for years and potentially losing their reputation, jobs, and livelihood.

“The tactic is to sort of damage individuals to the extent that nobody else will support the Palestinian goals and to silence anyone who has supported the genuine need of the Palestinian,” Shadjarah said of Ali’s case.

He added that “the only principle upheld is that no one should defend Palestinians or attack Israelis to do so, because it is anti-Semite and it needs to be fought on every level. That is the only principle in their eyes. There is no good pro-Palestinian.”

Fasting Afghans show support for Palestinians ahead of International Quds Day

The people of Afghanistan show their support for the Palestinian nation during the holy month of Ramadan.

However, he said, people should join together because “we support a just cause, and that just cause needs to have champions, and we need to rise up to that challenge.”

He stressed that Zionists' attempts to ban the International Quds Day rallies mean the move is effective.

“We should realize that it is effective. The reason that the Zionists are putting so much effort in trying to stop it is that it’s effective, and it will bring confidence to all of us to stand together.”

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