Sheikh Sadiq al-Ghariani was born in 1942 – he studied at the Sanusi Islamic University and took postgraduate degrees at Al-Azhar. Appointed by the post-Qaddafi transitional authorities, he has served as Libya’s Grand Mufti and head of Dar al-Ifta and hosts the TV programme Islam and Life..
Sheikh Al-Ghariani argues that every major regional alliance (Turkey-Qatar, Turkey-Pakistan-Saudi, the GCC, the Yemen coalition) is aimed at Muslims or runs between Muslims and their enemies, and that none targets Israel, the one alliance he says God made obligatory. He says arms purchases from the US and Europe serve those enemies’ economies or are used against Muslims, and accuses Egypt and Jordan of besieging Gaza and the West Bank in alliance with Israel in exchange for American aid. He treats the silence of the other Muslim states as consent and complicity, likens their rulers to the Children of Israel who failed to forbid wrongdoing, and argues that Muslims, with a third of the world’s population and about half its wealth, could cripple Western economies by freezing their funds but remain subdued by fear of their enemies rather than of God.
Translation: key points from Islam and Life, Wednesday 14.10.2026
The Mufti: These days we see many alliances in the region. There is a Turkey-Qatar mutual defence pact, set up at one point to defend Qatar against Saudi Arabia.
There is an alliance between Turkey, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia (the Mecca Agreement) for joint defence against Iran and its proxies in the neighbouring Arab states.
The Gulf Cooperation Council alliance is certainly not against the Jews or the Americans. It is like the one before it.
There is the international coalition in the Yemen war, whose purpose is to feed the civil war between Yemenis.
In sum, all these alliances are either between enemies and Muslims, or between Muslims against Muslims. None is against the Jews or the enemies of the Muslims.
Even the weapons bought from the American and European enemy fall within these alliances with enemies. They buy them to support their enemies’ factories and balance their payments, or to use them among Muslims, not to liberate their lands or Palestine.
Not one of these alliances is against the Jews and Zionists who defile the sanctities of the Muslims.
This is the one missing alliance: the alliance against the enemy, which God made obligatory on the Muslims, in support of their brothers whom they watch being exterminated and starved.
Instead, what we see are their alliances with the Jews and the Americans against the Muslims and their sanctities.
Gaza is besieged by the Egyptian regime, which blocks food, sustenance and medicine from reaching it. It does this in alliance with the Jews, as the price of the cheap aid it receives from the Americans every year.
Likewise the West Bank is besieged by the Jordanian regime, in alliance with the Jews, in return for some cheap American aid.
The remaining Arab and Muslim states stay silent about this alliance in the siege of the Palestinians and their killing by starvation and extermination, and they do not denounce it.
Silence in such circumstances is consent and cooperation in sin and aggression.
They should take a lesson from what the Quran says about the Children of Israel. God’s curse fell on them for this very reason, which the rulers of the Muslims now commit: “They did not forbid one another the wrong they did. How evil was what they used to do.”
The state in which the Children of Israel earned punishment resembles ours today: “You see many of them taking the disbelievers as allies. How wretched is what their souls have sent ahead for them, that God is angry with them and in the punishment they will abide. Had they believed in God, the Prophet and what was revealed to him, they would not have taken them as allies, but many of them are transgressors.”
The Muslims whose sanctities are being defiled at al-Aqsa number nearly a third of the world’s population. They hold about half the earth’s wealth, in money, political and commercial power and energy sources. Yet they are stripped of will, denied decision-making, humiliated and subdued.
If they merely used what they own, froze their funds, investments and accounts in America and Europe, they would threaten those economies (America included) with bankruptcy. But it is abasement, dependency and humiliation. They fear their enemies and do not fear God, who threatened them: “What is the matter with you, that when you are told to march forth in the cause of God you cling heavily to the earth? Are you content with the life of this world over the Hereafter? The enjoyment of this world’s life is but little compared with the Hereafter. If you do not march forth, He will punish you with a painful punishment and replace you with another people.”