This paranoid conspiracy theory (of which there are so many in the Islamic world) is a projection of the genuinely expansionistic aims enunciated by so many imams whom we have seen at Jihad Watch over the years crowing about the imminent Islamic conquest of the West. Iran’s former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad himself once said: “Have no doubt… Allah willing, Islam will conquer what? It will conquer all the mountain tops of the world.” Sheik Ali Al-Faqir, former Jordanian minister of religious endowment, said this on Al-Aqsa TV on May 2, 2008: “We proclaim that we will conquer Rome, like Constantinople was conquered once…” Hamas MP and Islamic cleric Yunis Al-Astal said this, also on Al-Aqsa TV, on April 11, 2008: “Very soon, Allah willing, Rome will be conquered, just like Constantinople was, as was prophesized by our Prophet Muhammad.”
Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the most prominent and renowned imam in the world, in writing about “signs of the victory of Islam,” referred to a hadith: “The Prophet Muhammad was asked: ‘What city will be conquered first, Constantinople or Romiyya?’ He answered: ‘The city of Hirqil [i.e. the Byzantine emperor Heraclius] will be conquered first’ – that is, Constantinople”¦ Romiyya is the city called today ‘Rome,’ the capital of Italy. The city of Hirqil [that is, Constantinople] was conquered by the young 23-year-old Ottoman Muhammad bin Morad, known in history as Muhammad the Conqueror, in 1453. The other city, Romiyya, remains, and we hope and believe [that it too will be conquered]. This means that Islam will return to Europe as a conqueror and victor, after being expelled from it twice – once from the South, from Andalusia, and a second time from the East, when it knocked several times on the door of Athens.”
“‘How Israel plans to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates,'” from the Elder of Ziyon, January 10 (thanks to Blazing Cat Fur):
We all know the Arab theory that the two blue lines on the Israeli flag stand for the Nile and Euphrates rivers, symbolizing Israel’s dream to expand to a huge state as promised in the Bible.
Today, Arabs and antisemites are convinced that the “Greater Israel” plan is alive and well.
How does that jive [sic] with the fact that Israel has been doing nothing but giving land up since 1977?
Glad you asked. You see, it is all explained in this article in a Hezbollah-leaning website, but apparently it got the ideas from this recent Global Research article expanding on old bizarre theories by the late antisemite Israel Shahak.
You see, Shahak was obsessed with an obscure article written in an Israeli journal in 1982 by someone named Oded Yinon. Out of all the hundreds and thousands of articles written by Israelis, Shahak was convinced that this article, available for all to see, represented Israel’s real strategy.
The Global Research article says:
When viewed in the current context, the war on Iraq, the 2006 war on Lebanon, the 2011 war on Libya, the ongoing war on Syria, not to mention the process of regime change in Egypt, must be understood in relation to the Zionist Plan for the Middle East. The latter consists in weakening and eventually fracturing neighboring Arab states as part of an Israeli expansionist project.
“Greater Israel” consists in an area extending from the Nile Valley to the Euphrates.
The Zionist project supports the Jewish settlement movement. More broadly it involves a policy of excluding Palestinians from Palestine leading to the eventual annexation of both the West Bank and Gaza to the State of Israel.
Greater Israel would create a number of proxy States. It would include parts of Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, the Sinai, as well as parts of Iraq and Saudi Arabia. (See map).