According to American Shi’ite Islamic scholar Usama Abdul Ghani, the killing of 46-year-old George Floyd was “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” and the time has come from the oppressed to throw off their tyrants, not only in the United States but throughout the world.
Abdul Ghani made the remark during a two-hour-long tribute to the leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini, streamed live on June 6 on the AIM Islam YouTube channel, which belongs to the U.K.-based AhlulBayt Islamic Mission (AIM).
Abdul Ghani said that after the U.S. killing of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force Commander Gen. Qassem Soleimani and PMU Deputy Commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, to whom he referred as martyrs, the world started to change rapidly, and that after the death of Floyd, things have been “really picking up.”
Floyd’s death, he said, has brought the people of the world out to protest and riot against systemic racism. Abdul Ghani said that the response to these protests in America has been more police brutality and savagery, and that the time has come for the oppressed to demand their rights from the tyrants.
Imam Khomeini’s mission, he said, had been to liberate the oppressed in the entire world, and not only in Iran, and he added that Soleimani and al-Muhandis had been murdered for carrying out this mission. Quoting Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khameni, he said that the goal of the IRGC’s Quds Force is to “protect the dignity of the oppressed.” Abdul Ghani further said that this is why it is important for Iran to send oil tankers to Venezuela and to aid the Syrian people.
Referring to his viewers and himself as Khomeini’s “students,” he asked how Khomeini would want his students to address systemic racism around the world.
AIM is a Shi’ite Islamic organization based in the United Kingdom, and it is endorsed by Khamenei’s representatives in the United Kingdom and by the Red Crescent. Abdul Ghani was born in Washington, D.C., and studied in Qom, Iran, for many years. He currently resides in Dearborn, Michigan. In May 2019, Abdul Ghani spoke at a Quds Day rally in Dearborn, at which he said that Israel is the “head of the snake” behind all the oppression in the world.
“How would Imam Khomeini want you and I—as his students—to look at this opportunity to take on global systemic racism, here in America—towards the African-American community, but [also] all over the world?” he asked. “The rest of the world ... The cries of ‘I can’t breathe'—the people in America are saying this. The rest of the world, that’s their words. The knee is still on their neck.”
