News:

The Guardian Newspaper published a story on the 6th of June entitled, “Anti-homeless studs at London residential block prompt uproar”. The article reported that metal spikes embedded into the concrete outside a block of flats, so that people without a home to sleep in would no longer be able to sleep where the spikes had been placed, were causing controversy. This was followed by more reporting, including that of Hugh Muir on 10th of June, also for the Guardian, about the London mayor’s seeking political gain out of a story that touches people’s emotions. “We live amid such wealth and plenty; the sight of the homeless bursts the bubble. The stark contrast is unbearable” wrote Hugh Muir about what it feels like to see one of London’s thousands of homeless people.

Comment:

Hugh Muir wrote the truth, and the truth of what he wrote is why such large numbers of people from London and other Western cities are embracing Islam. They are embracing a system of life that offers practical solutions to the problems that people face, and believe that they don’t have to accept Capitalism’s stark contrasts.

This is despite the campaign of hatred against Islam that Western politicians, such as Britain’s Education Secretary, Michael Gove, have thrust into the media. These politicians do, as Hugh Muir wrote about the Mayor of London, “embrace the core philosophy of self-determination… see limits to the extent to which each of us is a brother’s keeper… discern within the public a belief that the state cannot and should not try to do everything”, and they hate that Islam does not conform to this apathetic disengagement of Man from his fellow man.

They call Islam totalitarian, yet Muslims are proud that Islam does not permit self-determination to be an excuse for homelessness and misery, and Muslims are proud because Islam defined a political system to dictate the extent to which family and neighbours should be ‘their brother’s keeper’, and because Islam defined when the state should step in to help those who cannot help themselves, Muslims are even more proud.

Ultimately, it is not the 1.8 million Muslims in Britain who proudly hold “rejectionist Islamist views” that Britain’s Education Secretary, Michael Gove, should worry about, but the remaining 61.9 million people who find it hard to believe that capitalism can be so great when even the richest cities cannot see to it that every person has somewhere to sleep; every night.

Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by

Dr. Abdullah Robin