Keep your covenant

 Allah says in His Glorious Book: {Keep your covenant, and I will be true to My covenant with you. Me you must fear”[2:40] and {Be true to the covenant of Allah. Thus He exhorts you so that you may take heed}[6:102] and [Keep faith with Allah when you make a covenant with Him. Do not break your oaths after you have sworn them, for you have made Allah your surety. Allah has knowledge of what you do”[16:91].

In these Holy verses as well as in others, Allah stresses the course, which man has to abide by in all his life: Keeping your word whether with Allah or with fellow men. The believer is the one who respects his word and who is committed to it.

·       A covenant between man and God

In the beginning, there is a general covenant between man and God. When the Muslim declares that Allah is but one and that Muhammad (p.) is His Messenger, he is making a covenant with Allah in which he commits himself to believing in His oneness meaning that there is no god save Him and that he would worship and obey none save Him. Similarly, testifying that Muhammad is the Messenger (p.) means that he commits himself to everything in Muhammad (p.)’s Message in a way that all his life would abide by it.

Then there is also the promise Allah had made to the believing and committed Muslim; to sustain him and help him to overcome his problems, as well as to reward him in Heaven. Therefore, there is two –way covenant between Allah and His creations.

That is why Allah said to the Children of Israel: Keep your covenant and I will be true to my covenant. Because when the agreement is between two parties, it is only natural not to ask the other party for his commitments, before the first party has realized his part.

·       Kinds of covenants

 There are many kinds of covenants. First we have the vows to God. Vows surely are covenants which one has to keep, but they have to be in what please Allah (swt) and have to be declared in the right formula of (I vow to God…)

Oath too is another kind of covenants. It is a religious duty to uphold it only if you swear by God. In this case if you do not uphold it you have to pay a penalty… Oaths are of two kinds: the first is to swear by God that you will do something, while the second is swearing regarding something that has already happened. In the latter, one has to be truthful in his oath especially if it is a testimony that might lead to deny or prove the claim of others.

Nevertheless, there are certain cases where lying becomes a duty and truthfulness becomes unlawful, as in the case of having to tell the enemy the secrets of the believers.

Contracts also are one of the kinds of covenants, whether it is a matter of selling and buying something or employing someone for a certain time to do a certain job and take a certain amount of money in return. In these contracts, it makes no difference if the contract is written or verbal because it is your word that you are committed to.

Let us read how Allah (swt) describes those who keep their covenants and those who break them: {indeed, those that keep faith and guard themselves against evil know that Allah loves the righteous. Those that sell the covenant of Allah and their own oaths for a paltry price shall have no share in the world to come. Allah will neither speak to them, nor look at them, nor purify them on the Day of Resurrection. Theirs shall be a woeful punishment} [3:76-77] and He says in another Ayat :{Keep faith with Allah when you make a covenant with Him. Do not break your oaths after you have sworn them: For (by swearing in His name), you make Allah your surety. Allah has knowledge of what you do .Do not, like the woman who unravels to bits the thread which she has firmly spun, take oaths with mutual deceit because one party is more numerous than the other. In this, Allah puts you to the proof. On the Day of Resurrection, He will declare to you the truth of that over which you are now at odds} [16:91-92].

·       Marriage is a contract between free human beings.

Another covenant is the covenant of marriage, you pledge that you give your wife all her rights and she promises to do the same. The husband has to sustain his wife, and give her sexual right. He also has to respect her, and not insult, hit or throw her out of the house without a rightful cause. The wife too has to obey her husband in what is within his rights. Thus marriage is just another contract which does not make the first party a slave or a possession of the second party. Thus no party could force the other to do what is not provided in the contract, except what he chooses willingly to do.

Thus, we assert that parties, husband and wife, remain free human beings in all what surpasses the marriage contract. Allah (swt) has given the husband one of two options: He either lives with his wife in a loving and caring manner, or he gives her dowry and all her rights and divorces her in a very civilized and kind way.

Therefore, one has to be sure of what he is doing before concluding any contract, or making any commitment, for the believer is the one who respects his word, whether with respect to Allah or to other human beings. And this is what keeps the community balanced and stable and provides a solid basis for social relations.

·        American Pressure on the Intifada is mounting

There are two events in the Arab modern history that have an ongoing impact on the Arab and Lebanese political reality. The June 1967 war and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982… We are still prisoners of the first war that witnessed the beginning of Arab concessions to the enemy… For we have failed to uphold the three Khartoum (capital of Sudan, where a famous Arab summit took place in late sixties)  “Nos”: “no peace, no negotiations and no recognition”… We abolished them when we adopted an Arab initiative whose maximum does not extend beyond the 1967 borders, with some Arab countries already engaged in peace treaties with Israel.

The 1982 invasion was meant to lead Lebanon to sign the 17th of May accord. But the people thwarted this plot by their courageous resistance that culminated until it defeated the enemy and forced it to withdraw unconditionally. This defeat was the first in its kind in the modern Arab history, for the enemy withdrew without accomplishing any of its goals or gaining anything what so ever.

Then came the Palestinian Intifada which boosted the morale of the nation and rid it from the spirit of defeat, giving it, along with the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon, a new hope in victory instead of falling under the influence of despair.

But the problem of the Arab world lies in the fact that several Arab regimes feel unable to do anything whether politically or militarily, due to the American pressure on Israel’s behalf. They started to create their own initiatives to pressurize the Palestinians - both the Authority and the Intifada - to accept an American project that helps Israel to win its war against the Palestinians, all in the name of fighting terrorism. It even denounces any martyr operation and describes it as brutal and barbarian but it does condemn, not even verbally, the daily Israeli invasions of Palestinian towns and camps that kill and arrest hundreds of Palestinians.

American envoys continue to come to the region to prepare the grounds to force the Arabs and the Palestinians to accept the new demands. They pressurize the Intifada in Palestine and the Resistance in Lebanon using all political and economic means, and threatening to use military force, having dragged Europe, the United Nations and Russia to follow the same course.

·       the International Conference is a second stage of war on the palestinians

We warn that the International Conference they are preparing for is meant to be a political means to continue the war against the Palestinians… Israel on its part, is planning for a new scheme that will enable it to buy more time to Judaize all of Palestine, with some kind of a nominal Palestinian state that does not have any real sovereignty

The Zionist officials are saying to the Jews of the world - as they give speeches in the US - that this is their second war of independence that they have to win.

Meanwhile, the American Administration is conducting the political agenda in a way that makes the Palestinian cause enter in the maze of the negotiations giving Israel all the time it needs to carryout its plots.

The question that is raised now is: Are we about to witness a new defeat similar to that of June 1967 that would by signed over the ruins of the Palestinian people? Is there going to be a new Zionist –America invasion to destroy the spirit of challenge and resistance? The answer to this question is in the hands of the Arab nation.

They should voice their opposition to the defeatists and slaves of international arrogance. They should continue to support the Intifada and the Resistance to enlarge the enemy’s impasse with their insistence to keep steadfast and ready to be martyred in their struggle against occupation… The Resistance and the Intifada have proved that we can make victory despite all the bleeding wounds… Let us make for the future the history of victory for no right is lost if there is behind it those who demand it.

·       The anniversary of the death of Imam Khumeini

We also receive in these days the anniversary of the death of Imam Khumeini (r.) who returned Islam to the forefront as a state, a law and a guide in everything in life.

He then presented it to the world as a civilized method of government and as a new force in the face of western arrogance and Eastern complicity that could face injustice and build the state according to the slogan of no eastern or western affiliation.

The Imam was able to diagnose the problem of man in this world as a problem of arrogance and weakness. He was able to determine the Arab and Muslim main problem being that of Israel as a cancerous gland in the region, as well as their production of the policy of fear instead of that of power in a world that respects the strong and powerful only.

This anniversary reminds us that we ought to serve Islam on the level of the whole world, and that we should no be influenced by distortion campaigns.

·        Lebanon: internal feuds and external threats

In Lebanon, it is quite incredible that at a time the enemy’s council of ministers meets to discuss a new aggression against Lebanon claiming that it is afraid of a major operation that the Resistance plans to carry out, we find that the internal front is preoccupied with a political row that has almost drawn the country into a state of political emergency.

We were expecting to form contingency committees to face the Israeli threats and to define the means that will help us to overcome the external threats and the economic hardships. Nevertheless, we ought to appreciate the responsible stands of the President in his firm will to confront the external challenges and to support the Resistance.

The real challenge the country faces nowadays lies in how the Lebanese could unite to face internal and external threats. The political and electoral differences should not spread to swallow what is left of their political and economic credibility…

We have to learn from the lessons and experiences of the past, if we wish to overcome the difficulties of the future, but are we going to?