It is singularly the most agonising feature in the entire history of Islam that in spite of counting between one-fifth and one quarter of world population with approximately 50 Muslim majority countries and spread out into over 300 ethnic communities, the Prophet’s Ummah, best defined as “conceptual universalism of a frontierless Muslim community of shared language and culture” is pitifully vacuous of any coordinated states-wide resistance against aggressive outside powers.

This pathetic state of defencelessness is exceptionally evident in the current US-Israeli waged war in Palestine and the ongoing ethnic cleansing in Gaza. This war named by the Western media as an Israel-Hamas war is a deliberate misnomer to leave out Israel’s accomplice, US.

Without US funds, weapons and control over international institutions like UN, Israel will not have the resources to fight any prolonged war.  Now that Iran and nonstate actors like Houthis and Hezbollah are entering the fray US will come out openly in support of Israel.

But the question is where are the 50 Muslim countries and their defence forces, and more importantly, why are Palestine’s Arab neighbours, some of whom are fabulously rich with Western trained soldiery, not willing to come to the aid of their own kith and kin?

Instead, they are shamelessly rushing to normalise relations with Israel under US instructions. The Abraham Accord signed already by US, Israel and UAE in 2020 and also with Bahrain in the same year marked the beginning of that relationship.

Shockingly, Jordan’s leader declared and its forces shot down any Iranian drone directed against Israel passing through Jordan’s airspace.

With Iran’s entry into the war US will play the Shia-Sunni card to isolate Iran from the rest of the Ummah, which was what US did when Iran’s Islamised revolution threatened to engulf the Sunni zone after 1979.

Divide and rule in the name of nationalism has been the successfully tried out strategy to keep the Muslim Ummah weak and disunited since the breakup of the Ottoman Empire.   

Given this weakness and the chronic unwillingness of Muslim states to come to the aid of Palestinians, it is left to non-state actors like Houthis and Hezbollah to take up the challenge. But these actors have already been identified and labelled as so-called terrorists.

US and its European allies are ready to destroy the Muslim states that are allowing these actors to operate from those territories.

The Ummah is abjectly defenceless against these aggressive powers.

What has gone wrong? Is the Quran outdated? Or the Ummah is indifferent to its guidance.