The Industrial Revolution in Western Europe in the 19th century intensified the imperial competition between European powers led by France and Britain. Spain, Portugal, Holland, Belgium, and later on Italy and Germany all competed for a share of the international bounty. Yet, despite their internal bickering: they, along with Russia, all shared a unanimous hatred against the Muslim Ummah and the Ottoman Khilafah. Due to the escalating decay and decline of both the intellectual and political health of the Muslim Ummah, throughout the 19th century the gap between the rising western nations and the Muslim Ummah widened; this led most Muslims, and especially the elite intellectual and political leaders, to feel despair as how to best to resist the western onslaught which threatened the very Islamic way of life, and even the total defeat of the Khilafah, and ultimately the fate of the Muslim Ummah.
Engineer Osman Bakhach, the Director of the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir Second Speech in Jakarta International Conference of Muslim Intellectuals
14-15 December 2013
Jakarta – Indonesia
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
Assalamu Alaikum wa Rahmatullah wa Barakatahu
Introduction: International Politics
The Industrial Revolution in Western Europe in the 19th century intensified the imperial competition between European powers led by France and Britain. Spain, Portugal, Holland, Belgium, and later on Italy and Germany all competed for a share of the international bounty. Yet, despite their internal bickering: they, along with Russia, all shared a unanimous hatred against the Muslim Ummah and the Ottoman Khilafah. Due to the escalating decay and decline of both the intellectual and political health of the Muslim Ummah, throughout the 19th century the gap between the rising western nations and the Muslim Ummah widened; this led most Muslims, and especially the elite intellectual and political leaders, to feel despair as how to best to resist the western onslaught which threatened the very Islamic way of life, and even the total defeat of the Khilafah, and ultimately the fate of the Muslim Ummah.
The western nations used all available means and tools to further weaken the Muslim Ummah, both at the intellectual and political levels: the establishment of missionary schools, hospitals, universities, along with secret societies promoting nationalism among Arabs and Turks to justify Arab voices calling for independence from the “Turk” dominion, and promoting nationalism among the Turkish population to get rid of the “Arab” burden. In the last quarter of the 19th century, both Arab and Turkish elites began to admire the western secular model as the example to imitate and follow. At a time when the Ottoman political authority failed to encounter the western onslaught both intellectually and politically, and the Muslim scholars failed to rise to the western secular challenge, all this enabled Britain to actively endorse and promote some key Arab activists to demand separation from the Ottoman Khilafah, and even taking up arms in what was known as the Arab Revolution led by the British Lawrence of Arabia during World War I. On the other hand, the Turkish Union and Progress nationalist party intensified calls for imposing the Turkish nationalism which further fed the Arab anger.
On the intellectual front, Britain made Egypt as a base to spread secular philosophy and western political concepts, including fatwas made by Mohammad Abdo and other leading Muslim “scholars”. At the same time, the various missionaries, especially those centered in Beirut, worked intensively to further promote the secular agenda….
All of this culminated with the destruction of the Khilafah state at the hand of the British agent Mustafa Kamal, who was an army officer in the Ottoman army, and was propped up by the British to become a national hero thus enabling him to destroy the Khilafah as a political entity, and to impose a brutal, secular, nationalist order in Turkey.
Following the defeat of the Khilafah, both Britain and France raced to implement their long cherished dream: to set up various policies and measures geared to ensure that the Khilafah State will never arise again. These measures were based on the infamous “divide and conquer” principle; thus the Muslim Ummah was divided into dozens of statelets, mostly drawn up arbitrarily by the colonial powers for the sole purpose of ensuring subjugation of the Muslim Ummah to the western masters, and to further remove Islam from the public sphere, while at the same time accelerating the dissemination of western secular lifestyle with its intellectual baggage and materialistic outlook toward life.
Thus various governments and political regimes sprang up across the Muslim landscape: pseudo-democratic republic, emirate, kingdom, nationalist, revolutionary, socialist, Marxist, and military dictatorship etc…the common thread is the brutal policy pursued by the tyrant dictators propped up by western nations.
By the end of World War II, Britain attained the lion’s share of political influence and hegemony in most of the Muslim lands and countries, followed by France who maintained strong influence in several colonies, especially in North Africa.
By establishing the state of Israel in Palestine, the British had wanted to use the Jewish entity as a spearhead and last bastion to defend western colonial interest in fighting the reemergence of the Khilafah State.
In response to the western onslaught against the Muslim Ummah, two parallel movements began to formulate almost simultaneously: one was characterized by nationalism, while the other was geared toward Islam. However since Islam had just been evicted from the political arena in a most humiliating manner, the Islamic movement was too soft and reluctant in voicing its objectives and ambitions. Whereas the nationalist movements were more vocal, violent and forceful; they were able to organize national liberation movements which led to an official liberation of the majority of countries from the rule of colonialists. To a large extent the nationalist movements were able to draw the support of the Islamic movements of the time. In the Indian subcontinent, the nationalist movement of Muhammad Ali Jinnah was supported by the Jamaat-e-Islami led by Syed AbulAala Maududi. In Egypt, the nationalist movement led by Gamal Abdul Nasser was supported by the Muslim Brotherhood.
Although the Muslim Ummah had been defeated and the Khilafah state destroyed, the flame of Imaan, the faith in Islam as an ideology, remained ablaze in the hearts and minds of many sincere Muslims. Thus various ulema and scholars undertook great efforts to try to revive the Ummah through dawah work, establishing groups, movements, and parties all seeking to reverse the decline of the Ummah and to restore its pride and dignity by returning to the Islamic way of life.
Throughout the 1950’s, ’60’s and ’70’s the major Islamic movements led a strong but nonviolent struggle and managed to confirm Islam as a main ideology seeking to re-shape the lives of people by which to manage their economic, political and social affairs. In 1979, the Iranian revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini succeeded in toppling the brutal regime of Shah of Iran using nonviolent means of revolution. This proved to the masses of the Muslims across the entire Muslim world that Islamic movements have the capacity to challenge the existing governments.
The regimes backed up by the colonial powers increased their pressure against the Islamic movements and compelled some of the movements to take to violent and aggressive means. Oppression and brutal crackdown by various governments along with their police and intelligence services created an atmosphere of violence and counter-violence in the Muslim world at large. This had led to the creation of a new phenomenon within the Islamic movement, which promoted militancy as a means of retaliation against oppression as well as a possible means to take over the state by force.
Under these conditions, the movement of al-Jihad emerged in Egypt whereby the majority of its members had been imprisoned and tortured in Egypt’s prisons. During the same time, in the 1980’s, a jihad war broke out in Afghanistan against the Soviet occupation. Even though the jihad in Afghanistan had been supported by America and its Muslim agents, spanning over a decade, resulted in a humiliating defeat for the Soviets however more importantly it stirred an awakening of the spirit of jihad throughout the Muslim Ummah. The Soviet defeat sent a powerful message to the Muslims that Islam is a dynamic vehicle to restore the dignity of the Ummah and to liberate it from foreign occupation.
The triumph of the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan, coupled with the brutal crackdown in Algeria against the electoral victory by Islamic Salvation Front (ISF), in 1991, led many Muslim youth to believe that Jihad, and not democratic elections, was the way to cause the Islamic change in state and society.
Up to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the international political conflict and struggle revolved around the east-west axis: the political rivalry, accompanied by military confrontation, reflected the ideological conflict between the capitalist order, led by the USA, and the socialist order, led by the Soviet Union. In the same year, American political thinker Francis Fukuyama announced the ultimate victory of liberal democracy, which he depicted as the ideal political ideology for humanity in his well-known book, The End of History.
Events proved that Fukuyama’s announcement of victory was premature…the death of socialism did not mean the end of history, rather it meant a new chapter in international politics and conflict; after all, radical change is a result of ongoing incremental changes which penetrate the surface until they gather enough momentum and then succeed in occupying center stage.
While the first half of the 20th century witnessed the tightening grip of the western colonial powers over the Muslim Ummah, and brutal campaigns to impose the western secular political order based on nationalism, the last part of the 20th century witnessed the strong rejection by Muslims for the western agenda, and the equally strong commitment and resolve to strive to resume the Islamic way of life by seeking to establish the Islamic state.
The various nationalist regimes propped up in the Muslims countries proved to be miserable failures; the defeat in the 1967 War was a turning point, not only for Jamal Abdul Nasser in Egypt, but also for the secular nationalistic order. Equally so, the Baath parties in Syria and Iraq proved to be catastrophes. Similarly, the National Liberation Front, which led the Algerian revolution against the French occupation, proved to be a ruthless tyrant in suppressing the Muslim population’s aspiration for a dignified life under the shade of Islam. In Tunisia, Bourquiba imitated the Turkish Mustafa Kamal in forcing a brutal secularist regime on the people. In Pakistan, although the state was founded upon the premise of being an Islamic nation, the corrupt political leadership rivaled the military leaders in appeasing the western masters in London and Washington, even sacrificing Kashmir for the Indian occupation; the military leaders did not hesitate in murdering those calling for the Shariah law, while simultaneously granting the American government open license to kill across Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Despite decades of conjured “independence” from the colonial occupation, the Muslim populations worldwide continued to exhibit several signs of visible decline: political oppression was widespread, occupied lands had yet to be liberated, poverty was still on the rise, human rights continued to be heavily violated by regimes and governments supported by western powers, who officially and publicly condemned the violations, but in reality endorsed the perpetrators. Political leaders linked to the western powers proved to be the most corrupt worldwide.
Intellectually, not only had socialism failed its own people and had collapsed all together, but equally so, capitalism proved to be a ruthless leviathan, which failed the majority of the people throughout the world, leaving more poor than rich, more oppressed than free. Widespread scandals of liberal democracy appeared in the realm of human rights violations as manifested in the abuses of the infamous Guantánamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Bagram prisons.
That is only in regards to vanquished human rights, and another aspect of the ruthless capitalist leviathan is when the financial meltdowns occurred whether in 1987 or more so in 2008, not to mention other, minor, financial turbulences long considered to be a healthy sign of self-correction by the forces of free market economy, the governments always rushed to the rescue of the big capitalists with generous bailouts from the taxpayers’ pocket; as for the small investors and average Joe smith retiree who lost all their saving, well tough luck, the state was helpless…
Fukuyama himself expressed it best when, following the October 2008 financial crisis, he admitted that the key premises of the American political model of liberal democracy and free market economy were shattered; on the one hand the political system has failed to an extent where Fukuyama stated, “Guantánamo Bay and the hooded prisoner at Abu Ghraib have since replaced the Statue of Liberty as symbols of America in the eyes of many non-Americans”. On the other hand the American economy based on the free market model, has led the world to a global recession. The US is indebted to the tune of just under $40 trillion – nearly 75% of what the world produces. This has shown the world that America has no right to speak of human rights or democracy and has nothing to offer the world in terms of material or intrinsic values. Recently as well, and you know this very well here in Jakarta, the American espionage against the world’s governments, politicians and citizens has added another medallion of honor to their American dream; the dream of a cowboy-mindset nation wishful of enslaving the world or eliminating the troublemakers, as per the “manifest destiny” principle, which in the past has justified the elimination of the savage Native American Indians according to their imperialistic view of an entire population.
The notion of America’s precarious exceptionalism can be summarized in the words of the American writer David S Mason in his book titled, The End of the American Century, “The United States is at the end of the period of global leadership and domination that we’ve enjoyed for the last 50 years or so. The country is bankrupt economically. We’ve lost our edge in terms of politics, economics, socially. We no longer compare well with other countries around the world, and we’re not admired as we once were by countries around the world. And we’re not viewed as a model for economic and political development, as we once were. So this really marks a global shift in world history, both for the United States and the rest of the world”.
Allow me to backtrack – this led some of the prominent conservative politicians or better worded the ‘jilted’ to yearn for the ideals advocated by the socialists. As a precautionary measure, the collapse of the Soviet Union led some prominent conservative politicians or neocons to advocate the reversal of many of the measures implemented by the capitalist states, known as a welfare state policies, to stem off the rising threat of Communism in the aftermath of the Great Depression, however now that the Communist threat is all but vanished; they thus advocated return to the “true” capitalist state based on “laissez passer laissez fair”, i.e. where the state’s intervention is kept to a minimum, leaving the Darwinist principle of “survival of the fittest” to regulate the fate of the miserable crushed by the ruthless capitalist policies.
Now allow me to fast forward to today’s present time, now that the threat of communism is no longer existent, the western powers needed a bogyman and an external enemy to rally the western people against in a new crusade; that enemy was pinpointed to Islam. Being in a state of weakness to be easily framed and charged with all kind of labels of terrorism, the Muslim nation became targeted as the international villain, to be used as scarecrow whenever convenient or a fallout occurred. The attack of 9/11 was conceived, planned and implemented by the CIA to justify unleashing naked American power in the drive for global hegemony and piracy under the motto: no voice above the war on terrorism. This motto was used to attack and occupy hapless Afghanistan, and to attack and occupy Iraq. When the open lie of WMD in Iraq was exposed, the American administration claimed that the aim of the war in Iraq was to promote democracy.
This naked cowboy military adventurism by America was a rude awakening for the Muslims worldwide: that the sheep-clothed wolf was exposed to his reality: a brutal naked enemy against Islam and Muslims. The American administrations devised and enacted several policies and measures meant to win the battle for “Hearts and Minds” of the Muslims, yet actual deeds betrayed and belied the nice lies coming from America.
The cost has been, and continues to be, tremendous and detrimental for the Muslim Ummah throughout the world; and although the process of exposing the real colonial agenda of America and its western counterparts in Europe along with their Russian ally and their dictator agent-rulers took some time, the Ummah has finally awakened to the true nature of the ongoing crusade led by this international alliance against it and against Islam.
Let’s remember here that during the 19th century, the steady decline of internal weakness in the Muslim Ummah was followed by falling prey to the advancing western Industrial Revolution and its political philosophy of secularism-based nationalism. This process, back then, spanned over a century before some of the Muslims worked hand in hand with the colonial British to destroy the Khilafah, while most Muslims stood idle.
The recent events placed under the umbrella of the Arab Spring have further exposed the reality of the western colonial policy, and especially the American policy. The UN Security Council condemned the use of chemical weapons by the American agent Bashar Assad in Syria in the attack on 21 August 2013, which resulted in the horrifying death of 1429 victims, including 426 children. Yet the same Council turned a deaf ear and blind eye concerning the 125,000 plus victims of the ruthless scorched earth policy practiced by Assad’s forces throughout Syria; where the ludicrous logic of not killing people by chemical weapons is prohibited; while it is allowed to kill them using “conventional” weapons such as barrels of explosives, artillery bombs, missiles, tanks, military aircraft in addition to the savage killing as a result of torture in the dungeons of Syrian security forces.
In Egypt, the world has seen and felt the aftermath of the anarchy that democracy is a plain lie when America endorsed and supported the coup d’état led by its agent-general Sissi.
Today, the Muslim masses have repudiated from the western secular model and are vigilantly seeking dignity and pride in returning to the Islamic way of life. Overwhelming percentages of Muslims in many countries want the Shari’ah to be the official law of the land, as annual surveys have shown year in year out, such as those conducted by the Pew Forum. The surveys found that up to 99% favoured the Shari’ah in Afghanistan and in other countries such as Bangladesh, Morocco, Pakistan, Malaysia, Palestine and Iraq – all had above a 80% median in wanting the Shari’ah law.
Coming full circle, I started by describing the process of intellectual and political decline of the Muslim Ummah in the face of the rising western struggle during the 19th century culminating in the destruction of the Khilafah state. Throughout the 20th century the various measures implemented by colonial western powers have failed to crush the aspirations of the Muslim Ummah to return to the Islamic way of life.
On the intellectual level the Ummah has expressed its strong commitment to preserve Islam as a way of life, and to offer great sacrifices in seeking the resumption of the Islamic way of life. In Central Asia we have seen the adamant heroes of the Muslim nation defy tyrants, in Russia we have seen the same heroic stance by the brave brothers and sisters, in Pakistan, in Egypt, in Tunisia, in Turkey, in Lebanon and so on…the world has heard the loud and clear call for Khilafah rising from the heart of Jakarta to major cities throughout Bangladesh and Pakistan. In Turkey, calls for the righteous Khilafah cry out near the grave of Mustafa Kamal Ataturk while the same calls are evident in Tunisia next to the grave of the secularist Bourguiba, from the depths of the jails of tyrants in Central Asia, and to Beirut the stronghold of secularism in the Arab world. The Arab Spring has inspired international hope of breaking the chokehold grip of the capitalist order, the famous Occupy Wall Street Movement which succeeded in mobilizing mass protest across 1000 international cities was an echo of the slogan “the people want to topple the regime” الشعب يريد اسقاط النظام””.
The western colonial powers rushed to undermine the uprising in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya, by riding the wave of popular anger against the corrupt regimes. But they have failed to crush the heroic revolution in Syria. And I am not claiming that the revolution in Syria has triumphed; no not yet. But I am saying that America has led an unprecedented terror campaign against the brave stance by the Muslims in Syria unseen since the days of Stalin and Hitler. America has allowed the tyrant Assad to use every means of destruction and killing available to him including chemical weapons, barrels of explosives which are haphazard as it contains no guided system to target specific military or strategic targets but instead shower blind terror over the civilians, rockets, artillery, military aircraft, surface to surface missiles and so on…yet America has failed to break the resolve of the Muslims in Syria. Instead day by day the people in Syria have intensified their demand and call for the establishment of the Islamic State. America has used the help of Russia, Iran, and Iraq to provide every lethal means and fighting capability to Assad, to no avail. We have seen the major revolutionary forces in Syria uniting, under al-Jabha al-Islamiyya, behind a platform calling for the establishment of the Islamic State, and forcefully declaring a complete rejection for a secular democratic state in a post-Assad Syria.
The international landscape is now more than ever ready for the new dawn of the coming Khilafah State, long foretold by the Prophet Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم in the following hadith:
قال نبي الله صلى الله عليه وآله وسلم: تكون النبوة فيكم ما شاء الله أن تكون، ثم يرفعها إذا شاء أن يرفعها، ثم تكون خلافة على منهاج النبوة، فتكون ما شاء الله أن تكون، ثم يرفعهـا إذا شاء الله أن يرفعها، ثم تكون ملكاً عاضاً، فيكون ما شاء الله أن يكون، ثم يرفعها إذا شاء أن يرفعها، ثم تكون ملكاً جبرية، فتكون ما شاء الله أن تكون، ثم يرفعها إذا شاء أن يرفعها، ثم تكون خلافة على منهاج النبوة، ثم سكت مسند الإمام أحمد
“Prophethood will last among you for as long as Allah wills, then Allah will take it away. Then it will be (followed by) a Khilafah Rashida (rightly guided) on the pattern of the Prophethood. It will remain for as long as Allah wills, then Allah will take it away. Afterwards there will be a hereditary leadership which will remain for as long as Allah wills, then He will lift it if He wishes. Afterwards, there will be biting oppression, and it will last for as long as Allah wishes, then He will lift it if He wishes. Then there will be a Khilafah Rashida according to the ways of the Prophethood.’ Then he kept silent.” [Musnad Imam Ahmad]
I pray long and hard that we – today’s Ummah – will soon realize the brilliant Nur of the Khilafah State which will emancipate us from the shackles of the manmade regimes – allowing us once again to breathe with complete tranquility.
Wasallamu Alaikum wa Rahmatullah wa Barakatahu