God says in his Glorious Book: O you who believe! Be not unfaithful to Allah and the Messenger, nor be unfaithful to your trusts while you know.

According to Islam, the Muslim has to build his personality on the basis of keeping one’s promises and commitments whether towards God (to believe in Him and His oneness and to obey and worship Him, His Messenger (p.) following the Messenger in what he was commissioned by Allah to clarify to the people towards other people and towards the major causes of the nation. This is what self-respect actually means.

If you promise something and you do not uphold it, you would be despising yourself.

To respect yourself is to be in harmony in everything you believe in and in everything you commit yourself to. Your commitments are what gives you your meaning as a human being. They are you - because they represent your decisions towards your positions and relations. If you do not keep up your promises and fulfill your commitments, then you do not respect yourself.

Starting by one's commitment to God and the Messenger (p.); such a commitment implies that you stay the course of Islam. When you say in conformation of your Islam that there is no God but Allah and that Muhammad is his Messenger, you are saying that you are committed to worshipping Allah and obeying Him, as well as following the guidance of His Messenger. Pronouncing the two testimonies is actually an announcement that you are committed to stay the course of Islam: that you will never deviate and you will never betray the two testimonies. It is an expression of the unity between thought and practice in Islam, and a promise of being faithful to the line of Islam and that you will never betray it. Thus, we have to understand that whoever adopts another ideology other than Islam is a traitor to God and His Messenger. There are those who say they are Muslims but who adopted other ideology whose basis are at odds with Islam. This will not do {And whoever desires a religion other than Islam, it shall not be accepted from him, and in the hereafter he shall be one of the losers).

If you want to become a Marxist for example, do not say you are a Muslim.

Therefore, whoever adopts an ideology other than Islam betrays God and His Messenger, for he has betrayed his beliefs. Similarly when you do not pray, fast or pay financial obligations, you would be betraying your Islamic obligations, since you are either not doing what Allah ordered you to do, or doing something he has explicitly forbidden like committing adultery or supporting tyrants. Those would be betraying what they committed themselves to do when they stated that they are Muslims.

To be a Muslim you have to be committed not only in your tongue and heart but also in your actions.

In addition to the betrayal of God and His Messenger, there is also the betrayal of one's nation. Allah has ordered the Muslim not to betray his homeland by helping its enemy. Anybody who spies against his nation to enable the occupier to further strengthen his grip, or to enable him to control his nation’s economy and security betrays God and His Messenger (p.). Allah and His Messenger do not want man to betray his homeland that represents his source of pride and the place where his Islam thrives. Imam Ali says: "Fear Allah in his worshippers and his countries, for you are responsible even for the lands and animals”. Thus, all those who deal with the occupation forces especially those who spy for the arrogant agencies, like the CIA and the MOSAD, are traitors to God and His Messenger.

The Quran has made it clear that we are not allowed to defend anyone who betrays no matter how close to us he maybe. God says in the course of speaking to His Messenger and to us through him: And do not plead on behalf of those who act unfaithfully to their souls; surely Allah does not love the treacherous, sinful;

Your relation to God, His Messenger (p.), your principles and your nation is closer than to any traitor.

The Messenger has emphasized this point in several sayings. He has told us, for example, that those who betray their trusts are not considered to belong to us.

He also said that whoever betrays a fellow Muslim in his family or property is not a Muslim.

He further said that deceit and treason lead to hell and added "If you betray who betrays you, you become like him. Imam Ali explains that treason is against Islam and considers it as the mother of hypocrisy.

There is also another kind of treason and that is represented by not keeping the secret that you were entrusted with. Muhammad (p.) tells us that this action is a treason we ought not to do.

Even defending those who betray or helping them is itself a kind of treason.

Moreover, scholars especially religious scholars ought to be faithful and make sure that when they convey their knowledge to the people, they are telling them what they believe is right. It has been narrated that: "To betray someone in the knowledge you give him is worse than betraying him in his money”. Money comes and goes but if you give someone a wrong advice, you might destroy all his life, for he will act accordance to it.

Imam Ali (a.s.) says: “The worst kind if treason is that of the nation". He also says: “The most evil men are deceitful merchants"

Thus, there are many kind of betrayal that have to do with trusts, property, politics, security…etc, and to be a believer is to uphold all your commitments in all these fields: O you who believe! Be not unfaithful to Allah and the Messenger, nor be unfaithful to your trusts while you know.

The American Administration, with all its officials and media sources, is still pressurizing the world to confront what it calls anti-Semitism. But it considers this anti-Semitism to include any criticism of Zionism and any rejection to recognize the state of Israel.

It also encompasses all the massacres that the Zionists commit, as well as the devastation of the Palestinian life… This Administration seeks to make its Israeli ally above any criticism, benefiting from the freedom the latter enjoys in neglecting all international resolutions and human rights as well as creating problems in many places.

Thus, we have seen how the US has included the Palestinian Resistance through their Intifada in the sphere of what it calls the war against terrorism, the fact that its activities, as everyone knows, are a reaction to the Zionist occupation and not an unprovoked aggression against the Zionists notwithstanding. The American Administration has even hindered any political negotiations with the Palestinians, unless it is based on yielding to the Zionist conditions of dismantling the Intifada, whether by the Palestinians themselves or by the barbaric Zionist acts of assassinating its leaders and the innocent civilians alike.

The Americans have besieged the political negotiations by building a wall of Israeli rejection to the extent that the latter has protected against Abu Mazen for describing the Israelis as the Zionist enemy. Ironically, it is as if he was expected to describe the brutal acts of killing Palestinian children as actions committed by our "butcher friends".

It is as if they were not satisfied with the Palestinian leader’s statements about stopping the militarization of the Intifada at a time Israel rejects all political negotiations unless they are based on its conditions of refusing the right of return, the issue of Jerusalem and the dismantling of the settlements and dealing with the Palestinians brutal murder and assassinations. All this means that the Palestinian state will be a fragmented entity under the hegemony of the Israelis. In short, it will not even by an autonomous region.

But the American-Israeli pressure in this stage does not target the Palestinians alone, it includes the Arab region which has yielded to these pressures and the Islamic world which was shaken by the earthquake that was generated by the political economic and security pressures.

We believe that there is an ample chance to study the Syrian-Lebanon relations in order to establish a state of balance in these relations, thus finding a solution for all the points of weakness in these relations, and preventing the counter forces from exploiting them in creating problems. But we also believe that it is necessary to begin this process in an atmosphere that is void of the influences of such pressures as to be able to confront the international changes that need a charge in the political and security methods.