Islamic revolutionary political thought begins with an uncompromising refusal to recognize power detached from justice. From its...
Islamic revolutionary political thought begins with an uncompromising refusal to recognize power detached from justice. From its earliest articulation in the life and governance of Imam ʿAli ibn Abi Talib, through the sacrificial uprising of Imam Husayn ibn ʿAli, and into the modern revolutionary vision of Imam Ruhollah Khomeini, Islam has consistently defined politics not as the management of dominance but as a moral struggle between justice and oppression. It is from within this tradition that the contemporary international order must be interrogated, and it is from this tradition that the question must be asked with clarity and defiance: who appointed America the custodian of the world?
In Islamic political theology, authority is not self-generating. Power does not sanctify itself by virtue of possession, nor does military superiority confer moral legitimacy. Imam ʿAli was explicit that governance is a trust, bound by justice, restraint, and accountability. In Nahj al-Balāghah, he warned that rule devoid of justice is nothing more than organized theft, and that a kingdom built on oppression is already collapsing, even if it appears outwardly stable. Authority that exempts itself from law, that places itself above covenant and accountability, is not authority at all; it is usurpation.
Measured against this standard, the contemporary conduct of the United States represents usurpation on a global scale. Its claim to unilateral enforcement power, its routine violation of sovereignty through sanctions, covert operations, regime change, and extraterritorial coercion, and most starkly its alleged kidnapping and forcible removal of Venezuela’s sitting president, constitute not merely political aggression but the abduction of sovereignty itself. This is power exercised without right, coercion masquerading as legality, domination disguised as order. In Islam, it is unmistakably oppression, and oppression cannot be legitimized by repetition, institutional backing, or rhetorical justification.
The Islamic moral imagination has encountered such power before. The Qur’an names it clearly as istikbār—arrogant domination that elevates itself above all restraint. Pharaoh did not rule merely through force; he ruled through the normalization of injustice, through the fragmentation of society, and through the claim that no authority stood above his will. The modern imperial system functions in precisely this mode. It decides which leaders are legitimate, which elections are acceptable, which borders are inviolable, and which lives are expendable. It demands submission not only through weapons, but through narratives, institutions, and economic strangulation.
The United Nations, which was meant to restrain such arrogance, has instead been absorbed into it. In Islamic jurisprudence, covenants and treaties are sacred only so long as they are honored. A covenant that binds the weak while exempting the powerful is no longer morally valid. The UN Charter proclaims sovereign equality and prohibits aggression, yet these principles are violated systematically by those who wield veto power and military dominance. When justice is subject to veto and legality bends before power, the covenant collapses, and what remains is not law but theater. The UN has thus become less a guardian of peace than a mechanism through which global arrogance cloaks itself in procedural legitimacy.
This moral collapse is most evident in the selective deployment of humanitarian concern. The United States invokes human rights and religious freedom where such claims serve strategic ends, while abandoning them where they would require accountability from allies. It amplifies narratives of religious persecution in parts of the Global South while actively sponsoring the destruction of Palestine, where Muslims and Christians alike are killed, displaced, and erased with American weapons and diplomatic protection. In islamic ethics, justice is indivisible. Imam ʿAli warned that injustice toward one group corrodes justice toward all, and the Qur’an commands that hatred or interest must never obstruct fairness. Selective morality is not morality; it is a weapon.
Imam Husayn’s uprising at Karbala stands as the definitive Islamic response to such systems. Yazid possessed power, institutions, and armies, yet Imam Husayn refused allegiance because legitimacy ends where tyranny begins. Karbala teaches that obedience to injustice is itself corruption, and that silence in the face of oppression is participation in it. Imam Husayn did not rise to seize power, but to expose false authority, to draw a line between truth and domination, and to demonstrate that moral clarity outweighs political survival.
In this sense, contemporary imperial practices mirror Yazid’s logic more than any legitimate order. Allegiance is demanded, dissent is criminalized, and resistance is branded as extremism. Nations that refuse submission are punished through sanctions, isolation, destabilization, or the criminalization and removal of their leaders. The Venezuelan case is not an aberration but a symptom of this logic: sovereignty is tolerated only so long as it aligns with imperial interests. Imam Husayn teaches that such authority carries no moral weight, regardless of how normalized it becomes.
Imam Khomeini translated the Karbala paradigm into the modern global system by naming it explicitly as istikbār-e jahānī, global arrogance. He argued that empire survives not only through force, but through the internalization of defeat by the oppressed, through institutions that normalize injustice, and through narratives that redefine domination as stability. His critique was not limited to occupation or intervention, but extended to the psychological and institutional structures that train humanity to accept humiliation as realism and submission as peace.
From this perspective, the kidnapping of leaders, the strangulation of economies through unilateral sanctions, and the mass killing of civilians under diplomatic cover are not policy failures; they are expressions of a system functioning exactly as designed. Imam Khomeini warned that as long as global arrogance remains unchecked, no nation will be safe, no covenant secure, and no institution credible. The events of our time confirm this warning with devastating clarity.
Islamic revolutionary thought does not call for chaos, nor does it sanctify violence for its own sake. It calls for principled refusal: refusal to legitimize illegitimate power, refusal to obey injustice, refusal to confuse dominance with order. It insists that dignity is inherent, sovereignty is sacred, and justice is not negotiable. Resistance begins with truth, with naming oppression clearly, and with rejecting the narratives imposed by empire.
To ask who appointed America the custodian of the world is, ultimately, to answer as Imam Husayn answered in Karbala: no one did, and no amount of power can substitute for legitimacy. Empires may dominate history for a time, but they do not own it. In the Islamic tradition, history belongs not to those who rule by force, but to those who stand for justice.
Karbala, therefore, is not over. It reappears wherever power demands obedience without justice, wherever sovereignty is kidnapped, and wherever institutions sanctify oppression. And as long as such conditions persist, the Islamic ethic of resistance remains not only relevant, but obligatory.
Adanladi08@gmail.com
+(234) 8039208479
No comments