18 Sept 2026
Who Controls the Narrative? From Karbala to Iran to the World Map - Maulana Syed Muhammad Rizvi
Friday Juma KhutbaFriday September 18th, 2026- Today's vast and fast access to information is a blessing from Allah, because powerful and tyrannical forces can no longer control the narrative.- On the first day of the US–Israel war on Iran, a missile struck a girls' school in Minab, killing at least 156 people, including 120 children.- A strike on a sports complex and residential area in the town of Lamerd killed at least 21 civilians, including seven children.- The UN's Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran found that the Minab school, though next to an IRGC naval complex, was clearly identifiable, with no information indicating any military use.- The experts found reasonable grounds to believe the US carried out the school strike, concluding the school was the intended point of impact and not an errant strike or collateral damage, citing survivors who said it was struck twice.- In both Minab and Lamerd, the mission found reasonable grounds to believe the US committed the war crime of launching an indiscriminate attack causing civilian deaths and damage to civilian objects.- The US tried to blame the Minab strike on an errant Iranian strike, an old tactic of oppressors who, when a blatant crime cannot be hidden, try to blame the victim.- After Karbala, Yazid first portrayed the massacre as his victory and a warning to anyone who rose against him; when public opinion shifted towards the victims, he blamed his governor Ibn Ziyad; later, writers promoting the Umayyad line blamed "the Shi'a of Kufa."- When a Wahhabi preacher in Africa claimed "the Shi'as killed Husayn," he was challenged to curse those who killed Imam Husayn, those who oppressed him, and those who heard of his murder and approved of it. He refused, knowing in his heart he would be cursing his own leaders.- When studying history, readers must know the writer and their socio-political environment, because a conscious or unconscious commitment to a political or religious tradition can bias judgement.- Historian Marshall Hodgson warned that bias hides especially in the questions a writer poses and the categories they use, because terms that seem innocently neutral are the hardest to suspect.- The world map used for four centuries carried a Western bias, making northern hemisphere nations look larger than they are and subtly reinforcing perceptions of where global strength lies.- The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution calling for wider use of equal-area maps, particularly the Equal Earth projection, by a vote of 164 in favour, 6 abstentions, and 1 against: the United States. The US is one of the countries that appears smaller on the new map.- Terms like "Middle East" and "Far East" carry a subtle bias: "middle" and "far" from where? European geographers and strategists divided the "Orient" by its distance from Europe: the Near East (the Balkans and Ottoman Empire), the Middle East (Mediterranean to India), and the Far East (lands facing the Pacific, such as China and Japan).- On a world map centred on Mecca, Afghanistan and the Indian subcontinent become the "near east," Thailand to China and Japan the "middle east," Australia the "far east," Europe the "near west," and the Americas the "far west." These terms can still be used, as long as their built-in bias is kept in mind.Donate towards our programs today: https://jaffari.org/donate/Jaffari Community Centre (JCC Live)
