Some Important Events in the Contemporary Muslim World

Compiled By: Syed Ali Shahbaz
On May 27, 1926 AD, the uprising of Moroccan Muslims against the Spanish and French colonizers failed. The leader of this uprising, Abdul-Karim Rifi, after initial victories suffered defeats and the colonial powers massacred thousands of Muslims.
On May 31, 2010 AD, the illegal Zionist entity carried out a terrorist act of piracy in international waters by hijacking the Gaza-bound Freedom Flotilla carrying humanitarian relief for the Palestinian population of this impoverished enclave. The flotilla consisted of six ships carrying food and medicine, along with 663 activists from 37 countries. Zionist soldiers on boarding the flotilla brutally attacked the unarmed activists, martyring at least nine Turkish citizens and injuring more than fifty others. This gruesome and barbaric raid drew worldwide condemnation reinforced the resolve of activists and aid convoys to break the siege of Gaza Strip. Unfortunately, the US continued to support the barbarism of Israel.
On June 5, 1967 AD, the third major war was launched by the usurper state of Israel on Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon. In the 6-day war, helped by the US and the UK, the illegal Zionist entity occupied the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt, the Golan Heights of Syria, the West of River Jordan, parts of southern Lebanon, and the whole of the Islamic city of Bayt al-Moqaddas. Although they have left the Sinai and driven out from southern Lebanon, the Zionists are refusing to leave the Golarn Heights and the West Banks despite the passing of several UN Security Council Resolutions.
On June 6, 1982 AD, forces of the illegal Zionist entity, led by notorious Ariel Sharon, invaded Lebanon and seized control of all areas from the southern suburbs of the capital, Beirut. During their occupation, the Israelis destroyed Lebanon’s economic installations and killed countless people, culminating in the massacre of over 5,000 Palestinian women, children and the elderly in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. These brutalities made the Lebanese people organize themselves into the Islamic Resistance that forced the Zionist troops to retreat, and finally led to the liberation of almost all southern Lebanon in May 2000.
On June 7, 1980 AD, Zionist warplanes bombarded the Tamouz Atomic Power Station of Iraq in the vicinity of Baghdad. Although this criminal attack led to worldwide condemnation, the UN Security Council did not take any measure against Israel. The illegal Zionist entity which possesses more than 300 nuclear warheads, manufactured with US, British, and French help, refuses supervision of its atomic installations by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
On June 8, 1967 AD, Israeli air force jets and navy torpedo boats jointly attacked an American technical research ship, the USS Liberty, killing 34 crew members, and wounding 171 others, in international waters north of the Sinai Peninsula, about 47.2 km northwest from the Egyptian city of Arish. Surprisingly, the US ruled as "case of mistaken identity" this act of Zionist state terrorism which was intended to force Washington to side more openly with Israel.
On June 8, 1992 AD, the notorious Zionist spy agency, Mossad, assassinated in France, prominent Palestinian security official, Atef Bassiso. It took seven years for the French Police to admit that Mossad had masterminded this terrorist act in France.
On June 9, 1962 AD, the University of Algiers in the Algerian capital was set ablaze by French agents, as a result of which 500,000 volumes of valuable books were destroyed. The majority of burnt books were important and unique reference works.
On June 9, 1967 AD, during the 6-day war, the usurper state of Israel seized the Golan Heights from Syria, and later illegally annexed it. Despite several UN Security Council Resolutions, the illegal Zionist entity, with the backing of the US, has refused to withdraw from occupied Syrian territory.
On June 10, 1790 AD, British troops attacked and occupied Malaya from the Netherlands. Upon the infiltration of Britain, the Dutch troops were forced to retreat from Malaya and even parts of Indonesia. In 1824, British sovereignty was firmly established in what is now Malaysia, while Indonesia remained a colony of the Netherlands called Dutch East Indies. These two European powers wantonly looted the wealth of these two Muslim lands. Malaysia gained independence from British rule in 1956 while Indonesia gained independence in 1957.
On June 10, 2000 AD, Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, passed away at the age of 70. He became air force commander in 1964 and was appointed as defence minister in 1967 in the aftermath of the 6-day war imposed by Israel. Following a coup in 1970, he was elected as leader of the Ba'th Party and was subsequently elected as president in a referendum. During his 30 years as president, he developed Syria and brought stability to a country where governments used to last not more than a year because of coups and counter-coups. He carried out reforms and played a major role, along with Egypt in the 1973 war against the illegal Zionist entity, but because of massive US and western support for Israel, Syria was defeated and the Golan Heights continued to be occupied. The main feature of his foreign policy was refusal to compromise with Israel. He was a member of the Alawite Muslim sect and a firm supporter of the Islamic Revolution of Iran, a factor that made the West and Arab reactionary regimes despise him. After him, his son Bashar al-Assad was elected as president and is steadfastly serving the Syrian people despite the massive invasion of Syria by thousands of heavily armed terrorists from around the world, supported by Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, France and Britain.
On June 13, 1921 AD, with the influx of the first batch of European Jews, the Palestinians launched their national movement against the Zionists. The British, along with Zionist terrorist bands, brutally suppressed the Palestinian people and continued to bring in hundreds of thousands of illegal Jewish migrants from various parts of Europe that resulted in the illegitimate birth of Israel in 1948.
On June 13, 2007 AD, at around 9 a.m. local time, a sacrilegious bomb attack was carried out by agents of Global Arrogance at the holy shrine of al-Askariyayn at Samarra, resulting in the destruction of the two ten-story high gold-plated minarets, flanking the earlier destroyed golden dome. This was the second bombing of the holy shrine of Imam Ali al-Hadi (AS) and Imam Hassan al-Askari (AS) – respectively the 10th and 11th Infallible Successors of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). The first sacrilegious bomb attack had occurred on 22nd February 2006, destroying the shrine’s magnificent golden dome. The holy shrine is now under construction on a grand scale.
On June 14, 1830 AD, the French forces landed in Algeria, marking the start of military operations for seizure of this large Muslim land. In 1910, the French formally declared Algeria as an extension of France. The struggles of the Algerians against French colonial rule reached their peak after World War II. In 1962, French president, General Charles de Gaulle, was forced to grant full independence, but not until the French had killed more than a million Algerian Muslim people.
On June 18, 1953 AD, Egypt became a republic, ending the 150-year rule of the Khedive Dynasty founded by Mohammad Ali Pasha, the Albanian general of the Ottoman Sultan. Egypt’s failure in its confrontation with the illegal Zionist entity in 1948 war led to resentment among Egyptians toward King Farouq, leading to formation of a secret organization in the army, known as the Free Officers Movement, opposed to British domination. In 1952 a coup led by Major General Mohammad Najib and Colonel Jamal Abdun-Nasser, forced the king to abdicate in favour of his young son Ahmad Fouad, who was subsequently deposed this day on announcement of the republic and declaration of Najib as president. A year later Najib was ousted by Nasser, who espoused the Pan Arab policy for revolutions in different Arab states.
On June 20, 1960 AD, the Mali Federation gained independence from France (it later split into Mali and Senegal). Mali, which for centuries was part of various Muslim empires, fell under the control of France during the late 19th century. By 1905, most of the area was under colonial rule as a part of French Sudan. In early 1959, French Sudan (which changed its name to the Sudanese Republic) and Senegal united to become the Mali Federation. Senegal withdrew from the federation in August 1960, which allowed the Sudanese Republic to become the independent Republic of Mali on 22 September 1960. Both Mali and Senegal are predominantly Muslim countries. Timbuktu, the capital of Mali, is noted for its Islamic culture, Arabic manuscripts, and Sufi shrines, some of which were destroyed by al-Qa’eda terrorists during last year’s insurrection.
On June 21, 1970 AD, the Leader of Indonesia’s independence from Dutch colonial rule, Ahmed Sukarno, died at the age of 69. He was elected as president of Indonesia in 1949, and was in power for 15 years when General Suharto staged a coup and seized power. In 1967, he was forced to resign.
On June 23, 1939 AD, the French colonialists illegally handed over to Turkey the Syrian port city of Iskenderun, along with the historical city of Antakya (Antioch) and what is now called the Hatay Province, as reward to Kamal Ataturk for his anti-Islamic policies. This led to flare up of anti-French sentiments in Syria, which has not given up its claim to this region, which has now become the base of terrorists operating against the government of Syria with the support of Turkey, France, Britain, the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
On June 27, 1977 AD, Djibouti was liberated from the yoke of French colonial rule after 81 years of occupation and this day is marked as National Day in this country situated in the Horn of Africa. It was one of the last countries to join the Arab League. Djibouti is situated in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, which links the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean and therefore maintains a highly strategic position.
On June 27, 1997 AD, Tajik President, Emomali Rahman, and the leading Tajik Islamist, Seyyed Abdullah Nouri, signed a peace treaty in Moscow, thereby terminating the five-year civil war in the Central Asian Persian speaking republic. A year after Tajikistan’s independence, civil war broke out between Islamists and the former communist rulers. The UN and regional countries including Iran tried to restore peace, and an agreement was signed in Tehran in May 1997 which was finalized in Moscow with Iran’s mediation. Based on the accord, 30% of governmental posts were given to the opponents and the opposition forces were merged in the Tajik army. Several articles of the constitution were amended to meet the demands of Islamists in Tajikistan. Tajikistan covers an area of almost 143,000 sq km. Its capital is Dushanbe and it shares borders with China, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan.
On June 28, 1967 AD, the illegal Zionist entity, announced annexation of the Islamic city of Bayt al-Moqaddas, which it had occupied days earlier in the 6-day war. Today, the usurper state of Israel has settled hundreds of thousands of illegal Jewish migrants in this Islamic city and is systematically Judaizing it, in addition to desecrating Islam’s former qibla, the al-Aqsa Mosque, under which it has drilled a tunnel with the aim of collapsing the sacred structure.
On June 28, 2006 AD, the Zionist army savagely attacked the Gaza Strip on the pretext of the death of two Zionist invading soldiers and the capture of a third by Palestinian defenders. In the initial days of the Zionist raid, a number of ministers, and MPs of the Hamas-led elected Palestinian government, were kidnapped, in addition to the death and wounding of hundreds of defenseless people, Today almost 10,000 Palestinians are languishing in Zionist dungeons.
On June 30, 1920 AD, the people of Iraq staged their uprising against the British occupiers, under the leadership of Ayatollah Mirza Mohammad Taqi Shirazi. The British after initial defeats resorted to treachery by martyring Ayatollah Shirazi through poisoning and exiling Shaikh Kashef al-Gheta to Iran. They then deprived the Shi'ite Muslim majority of Iraq of representative rule, by installing in Baghdad an imported king – Faisal, the son of the British agent, Sharif Hussain of Hejaz.
On June 30, 1989 AD, General Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir toppled the government of Sadeq al-Mahdi in Sudan, through a bloodless coup, and with the help of Islamist Hassan at-Turabi, formed the Sudan National Congress Party. Al-Bashir's independent policy angered Washington and led to US hostile measures against Sudan. One of the US hostile policies was its continued support for the rebels in southern Sudan, until the separation of this region from Sudan in the year 2011.
On July 1, 1960 AD, with the unity of British controlled Somaliland and Italian-held Somalia, the Muslim country of Somalia was formed and became independent after almost 8 decades of European colonial rule. From 1901 to 1920, the Somali people had staged a memorable uprising led by Mohammad ibn Abdullah Hessan for independence of their homeland. From 1969 to 1991, Mohammad Ziyad Barre took control of Somalia and brought relative stability, despite an eight-month inconclusive war with Ethiopia over the Somali-populated Ogaden region. Somalia is situated in East Africa with coastlines on the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden. It covers an area of more than 637,000 sq km and shares borders with Kenya, Djibouti, and Ethiopia.
On July 5, 1962 AD, Algeria gained independence following years of struggle against the French occupiers and the martyrdom of over a million Algerian Muslims. On the weakening of the Ottoman Empire, the French set foot in Algeria in 1830, which led to intense struggle with Amir Seyyed Abdul-Qader al-Hassani, who resisted for 17 years, before his surrender. In early 20th Century, all of Algeria was dominated by France and the city of Algiers was capital of the French interim government during World War II, after which the Algerian people started their struggle for complete independence, under Ahmad bin Bella, who became the first president. Algeria covers an area of 2.38 million sq km and shares borders with Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Niger, Mali, Mauritania, and Western Sahara.