Who Remembers the History of Izz al-Din Salim
They all remember their own history – all of them – except you.
They all recount their stories and heroic deeds – all of them – except you.
They appear on satellite channels and write memoirs: some distort the words, steal the stances, and jump over history; others cover the sun of truth with a sieve of falseness, illusion, and lies.
And you are lost between a crisis of conscience, a crisis of memory, the reality of action, impact, and position.
I differ with you – about you.
Your humility, your disregard for your own name, your thought, your positions, your achievements – these have been scattered by the spiteful and neglected by those who loved you.
And you remain amid what is left of the Da‘wa movement – a movement divided against itself, lost, dissolving, vanishing into new exile movements, parties, new exiles, and an intellectual and organisational estrangement – after you were its pioneer, its tributary, the unifier of its word, the shining torch that lit its path when opinions and stances became entangled.
Sixty years of your life – fifty of them in work, forty in pure Islamic Da‘wa work, with no reward except martyrdom in the path of God.
Our Furat does not remember you – not for your being one of the founders of the Supreme Council, not as a member of its central Shura, not as director of its media unit for twenty years, nor as a comrade‑in‑arms of the martyr Al‑Hakim.
And Our Horizons and Our Paths – in their view, you are still the author of the first split, even though they themselves are addicted to splits and seven years have passed since your departure.
As for those who remain of your lovers, your students, your kin, your family – they are in a single boat, far from the shore of the new power. They live on your memory, each rowing in a different direction. Some have turned you into a brand, to feed from the leftovers of the tables of the Green Zone’s bourgeois rulers.
Whenever I remember you, I see in you the long jihad of Ammar ibn Yasir and his painful martyrdom – a martyrdom that was disputed despite the Prophet’s noble hadiths.
Whenever I remember you, I wish I had never known you – so that I would not stand helpless, unable to vindicate you.
To God we belong, and to Him we return.
Ahmed Al-Buaion
عزالدين سلِم