Russia Ukraine War: How Muslims Should React

– Ghazi Abdullah (B.A. Pol. Sc. AMU)

It has almost been three weeks since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine. Western governments responded with harsh sanctions against Russia. World media is comparing Putin with Hitler and vilifying him.  There are protests against the war around the world. Ukrainian refugees are welcomed with open arms in Europe.

How should Muslims react? Should they support Russia or Ukraine? In this article we’ll look at both the belligerent’s role in Muslim countries, and then we can better judge the situation and come to a conclusion.

The invading power, the Russian Federation is led by its long-time President, Vladimir Putin. Just after he come to power in the late 1990s, he brutally massacred hundreds of thousands of Chechen Muslims after falsely blaming them for Moscow apartment bombings in 1999. Civilian Muslims were massacred indiscriminately. Russia even used vacuum bombs. Thousands of Muslim women were raped by the Russian army. The capital city of Grozny was reduced to rubble.

The newly independent, Chechen Islamic republic of Ichkeria was annexed and installed a puppet regime.

Some scholars have even called the Russian crimes in Chechnya a genocide because around 20% population of Chechnya was wiped out.

In 2015, Russia intervened in Syria to save the Assad regime and started massacring militants and civilians alike. Due to its heavy bombings, the cities of Aleppo, Ghouta, and Idlib were completely destroyed and hundreds of thousands of Muslims were killed. Russia used Syria to test many of its weapons.

In both the wars the world turned a blind eye to Russian atrocities and let alone sanctions, even condemnation was restricted to a few countries.

The second party is Ukraine backed by western powers led by the US. The Crimes of NATO countries especially the US are well known in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other Muslim countries. It has killed millions of Muslims in the name of spreading democracy and freedom and fighting terrorism. In Iraq alone, 1 million Muslims died after the US invasion in 2003 and it is still ravaged by civil war due to the interference of the US. Ukraine also participated in the Iraq war by sending a contingent of its army. The resources of Muslim countries were systematically plundered. Islamic values were ridiculed. They even resorted to blasphemy of the noblest man to set foot on earth, the Prophet ﷺ.

Even though Ukraine wasn’t directly involved in most of these wars, it supported the west in almost all the wars in Muslim countries. In 2021 Israel – Palestine war, President Zelensky strongly supported Israel and turned a blind eye to its atrocities on Muslims. He didn’t know that in a few months, Russian jets would be bombarding Kyiv and Kharkiv, the way Israel was bombing Gaza.

Even though we’re sympathetic to the poor Ukrainian civilians who are facing the wrath of the Russian army,maybe the West will learn a lesson the hard way that what they do in Muslim countries, someone else could do that with ‘white Europeans with blue eyes and blonde hairs’. May be through this, they would understand the pain of millions of Iraqis and Afghanis whose lives were turned upside down by the US invasion and who lost their loved ones in these unjust wars.

So basically, this is a war between two ‘disbelieving’ countries who both have oppressed innocent people. We should learn from the Sunnah of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ and the history of Islam that it is not necessary to get involved in all the wars going around. Therefore, for the ongoing war, Muslims should become a silent spectator and pray for Hidayah for those who need ‘The Guidance’.