Shabbir Hassanally: Zionism after erasing Muslim community in Nigeria

Press TV has conducted an interview with Shabbir Hassanally, an activist and Islamic scholar from London, on the destruction of the grave of the mother of Nigeria’s prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Ibrahim al-Zakzaky.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Do you see a very coordinated effort to erase all signs, if I may say, of the al-Zakzaky family?

Hassanally: I think this is a very strange and very disturbing move by the Nigerian government. It seems to be following in the line of Daesh and Boko Haram, which the Nigerian government professes to be opposed to. But as we know, Daesh, Boko Haram, the Zionists in occupied Palestine have a concerted policy of destroying any items of historical value, anything which is sort of respective by people regardless of whether it’s a worship place or not, which of course this place was not.

It’s very very strange and very disturbing. And I think you’re right. They’re trying to erase the entire Muslim community in Nigeria; the Muslim community that is opposed to Zionism and is opposed to global hegemony of the American empire.

It’s a very strange thing. I’m now convinced that this is not being led out of Abuja but out of somewhere else. And the two places that come to mind are Tel Aviv and Riyadh. But of course behind them is always Washington, London and such places sadly.

Press TV: It seems like that this is almost a provocation to try to get Sheikh al-Zakzaky’s followers to become violent of course something that they have not been so far even after his three sons were killed last year in fact by security forces. Do you think this is likely to succeed or fail?

Hassanally: I believe like all of these plots that these type of entities do, it is guaranteed to fail. The followers of Sheikh Ibrahim Zakzaky and the good people of Nigeria are better than that.

And at the end of the day but demolishing a building it doesn’t change the fact that there is someone who is the mother of Sheikh Zakzaky or a center called the Baqeeyatullah center, which they also destroyed, it doesn’t change those facts.

All it does is damage the immediate memory of them. These things can be rebuilt. What is going to make people angry is the fact that people are being killed indiscriminately.

We’ve got reports from Human Rights Watch and other places where children were shot as they were coming out of school just because they happened to be from that grouping. This is what’s going to make people angry and I really hope that the Nigerian government stops this insanity, because it’s very similar.

If we cast our mind back to when the Zionists occupied south Lebanon, for a while the Israelis were OK, but then they outstayed their welcome, they started oppressing the people; and to quote an interesting book it said, “You’ve woken up a sleeping giant.”

And of course everyone knows what happened to the Zionists in south Lebanon. So, if these people, these Nigerian government people, the military, if they have even an ounce of intelligence in them, they will stop, they will not let the giant that is the innocent oppressed Muslim people of Nigeria wake up, because when that giant wakes up, all bets are off as they say.

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