Ahlul Bayt (AS) International News Agency - ABNA: A decade-old video has resurfaced, carrying a chilling resonance in light of today's unfolding tragedies. In the footage, Kashmiri protesters are seen marching against Israeli aggression, their chants: "What is our relation with Iran?" the crowd calls out. The response thunders back: "La ilaha illallah." Then: "What is our relation with Palestine?" Again: "La ilaha illallah" — there is no god but Allah.
Among the voices in that crowd was Mr. Nissar Hussain Rather. In an interview captured within the same clip, he explained the protesters' resolve: "We are against Israeli crimes, especially the killing of civilians and children. Our protests will continue until they stop." Mr. Rather is no more today — but his resistance never died. And ten years later, his words have resurfaced, more urgent than ever.
As the demonstration concluded, Israeli and American flags were set ablaze, and the air filled with chants of "Down with Israel."
What makes this archival footage so powerful today is not merely its content, but its tragic continuity. Back then, a decade ago, the accusation was clear: Israel kills civilians and children. Today, the world watches even worse devastation — in Gaza, in Lebanon, and beyond. Hospitals bombed. Entire families wiped from civil registries. Journalists and aid workers killed while trying to document or relieve suffering. The names and faces of the oppressed have changed, but the oppressor's playbook remains disturbingly the same.
Many of those Kashmiris who raised their voices ten years ago may no longer be alive. Some fell to conflict, some to occupation, some simply to time. But their path of resistance did not end with them. In fact, solidarity with the resistance front — from Kashmir to Palestine, from Iran to Yemen — has only deepened across the world.
They burned flags then. Today, observers note, the world is burning the illusion of human rights itself — as international laws are violated in plain sight, with little accountability. The resistance continues, in different forms but the same spirit: a refusal to accept normalized oppression, and a chant that begins where all resistance begins — with the affirmation that no power is greater than the truth.
That truth, for Mr. Nissar Hussain Rather and those who marched beside him a decade ago, was summed up in three words: La ilaha illallah. And those words, unlike flags or flesh, do not burn.
Your Comment