Talking about the Libyan jihad and the symbolic martyr, Sheikh Omar Al-Mukhtar – who was executed by the Italians in 1931 – in 2001 in London, a talk – as they say – is emotional.
The valuable lectures and speeches delivered at the festival of the 70th anniversary of the martyrdom of Omar Al-Mukhtar, which was organized a few days ago in London, aroused many feelings and repercussions in the hearts of the attendees.
The conflict in that period was between a brutal usurping force that owned a war machine that was considered to have a very developed scale at the time, and a people with limited equipment scattered over a wide area of land. Overpowered by nomadism, he has only a few primitive weapons dating back several decades. The speakers unanimously agreed that the Libyans who confronted the Italians at the beginning of the twentieth century and held out for more than three decades were alone. They were motivated only by their belief in the justness of their cause. Their only provision was love of the homeland, sacrifice, and the use of whatever capabilities and equipment available to them to repel that aggression and fight the usurpers.
Their first incentive was that they were certain – and they were hopeful – that victory would come, even if they died. The one who fights unjustly will not be harmed by the spread of falsehood, because he is fighting for the sake of future generations to live in justice and safety. And jihad and struggle do not end with the end of the lives of men.
One cannot help comparing the Libya of yesterday with the Libya of today…
Yesterday there was an aggression… It was a violation of lives, money and honor… and it was an insult to the Libyan man. And today as well.
Yesterday, it was cruel treatment… It was starvation and deprivation. And today as well.
Yesterday it was migration..people who did not know migration and did not cross their minds fled to the east, west and south. And today as well.
Yesterday, gallows were erected in the streets, fields and squares (as the wonderful pictures of the exhibition clearly show). Those gallows were not erected again in Libya to kill innocents since the grim Italian era until the seventies when they returned with their poles, ropes and dangling bodies.
The main difference between yesterday’s ordeal and today’s ordeal in dear Libya is the executioner’s personality and identity. Yesterday he was a foreigner, an outsider wearing a fascist hat, but today he is one of our people, born and brought up in our midst, even if he wears strange clothes and many hats.
The history of the Libyan jihad against the Italians is a work and heritage that all Libyan generations are proud of. And here is Omar Al-Mukhtar who has become a symbol not only of the Libyan jihad, but of the struggle, resistance and struggle of the peoples of the Arab world and the Islamic world as a whole. And here they are the children of stones in Palestine and the youth of the Jerusalem uprising, learning its lessons and drawing from its sources.
Yesterday’s executioner left because he was coming from across the border… Where does he go today? How do Libyans today make glory that will be a beacon to others as their ancestors did, and a source of pride and pride for future generations?