When Mustafa Kamal established the republic of Turkey and abolished the khilafah system he made it a crime of treason to talk about the khilafah. His legacy is still in place in the Muslim world and the last two Rajab anniversaries gave me a chance to experience at first hand the attempts of the Palestinian security forces to silence the call for the return of the khilafah.
While walking with a friend to a mosque in Jenin to perform the Maghrib salah we witnessed a fleet of about twenty brand spanking new police land rovers passing by. Each one had a number on the window and the seats inside were still wrapped in plastic, which we thought was nice as the next day was the planned Rajab 30th conference 1429 and we remarked that there was a good chance that we would be sitting in these new seats tomorrow. As it turned out the police did their best to stop as many people as possible from occupying these cars by establishing, next day, a tight security ring around the city: they arrested many of the shabab on their way into Jenin that day and others they turned back.
As the time for Dhuhr salah approached, which was to be followed by the conference, the conference square near the city centre was turned into a military stronghold and police and soldiers roamed the streets in a show of force. While sitting with my friend in his shop late that morning we eyed the mukhabarat that were eying us from across the street and it wasn’t long before a group of soldiers entered the shop and took him away. I walked out calmly a few minutes later and pretended to do some window shopping before taking up residence in a fruit juice parlour near the main mosque, which was the expected site from which we would launch a demonstration or march instead of the planned conference. I sipped on my juice waiting for the adhan, not wanting to go early to the mosque in case the security forces were going to pick up people who seemed too keen to arrive early. As the adhan sounded I stood up and walking past Kalashnikov toting soldiers guarding the entrances and got into the mosque without event.
After the salah, the shabab in the mosque got word of a secret new location for assembling the march and I walked away from the mosque, asking the street vendors the price of tomatoes on my way so as not to look suspicious. I reached the appointed place with no security forces in sight; they were massed in force at a mosque entrance 300 meters away where they expected us to be making our move and my spirits were raised by a good crowd, assembling hastily and pulling black banners from under their shirts. The word went up and we began marching, with high adrenalin pumping through our veins, wondering whether we would face bullets or the electric sticks, wooden batons and riot shields that the British police forces had issued and trained the Palestinian security services with. On we marched and on again with each step seeming like an eternity, wondering if it would be our last, and then another and yet another step, another long moment, chanting for the khilafah as we went, and the crowds watching us with expectation and amazement – some joining our ranks and some fixed in suspended animation, quizzically watching as we passed.
Thoughts of Rajab 1428 passed through my mind. Last Rajab saw the martyrdom of Hisham Baradi’ in the march in Hebron; he was shot to death and the hospitals that day were filled with marchers who walked by the thousands straight through a hail of bullets, rocks and beatings to pull of a spectacular coup of defiance in order to commemorate the destruction of the khilafah. I had missed that march, but made it to the funeral procession for the martyr, which took place the day after his killing. The funeral procession was broken up with unprecedented violence by soldiers who fired intense volleys of live bullets into the air before our faces. Before my own feet only one metre away bullets smashed into the ground throwing debris from the smashed tarmac up into the air that fell like rain over me as I refused the orders barked out at me to retreat. Why retreat? Why be afraid? The culturing of Hizb ut Tahrir taught us all very well that death comes at a time appointed by Allah subhanahu wata’lla and whether we face bullets or stand in gardens of flowers nothing can advance or delay the time that Allah has appointed for us all. That was not my day. None of us were killed that day, but many did spill their blood from the military violence directed against unarmed peaceful individuals.
Forward to Rajab 1429 and on we marched. The Palestinian security forces had their orders – from America; we had ours – from the Party, established in obedience to Allah’s command to re-establish the khilafah.
The lengthy moments of remembrance of last years events soon gave way to wondering in my mind when the security forces would finally arrive. Panicking mukhabarat that had filled the city were now screaming into their radios and mobile phones the whereabouts of our unexpected march location and then the anticipated moment arrived.
“Get back! Get back”, shouted a handful of hastily prepared policemen, waiving their hands wildly in the air in front of us. Get back? Such temerity on their part, of course we are not the sort for going back, and well they new it for as they screamed out their demands, loudly and yet with a kind of automated disinterest, they were chattering furiously into their hand-held radios. Then, as suddenly as they appeared they vanished from sight and twenty metres ahead of us a block of policemen three lines thick formed a barrier across the width of the road we were proceeding along.
Silently they stood in full riot gear, their long rectangular shields meshed into a solid wall reminiscent of Roman soldiers. We marched on unabashed, banners raised high shouting “al khilafah, al khilafah yaa jayoosh al muslimeen” and again “al khilafah, al khilafah yaa jayoosh al muslimeen”. We chanted on our small stage, raising a global call on the world stage before our lord and creator who is above us all.
The cold silence ahead of us was soon broken by an order that moved the first line of police as one man to beat down heavily with their wooden sticks against their resonating shields – a tactic that their masters had trained them with to instil fear into the hearts of resistors. And still we marched on, with banners stretched higher into the sky and hands beating upwards in resonance with the clashing war drum like din from the block of riot police that now began menacing its way towards us at a steady pace.
The two opposing forces marched on and on closing the gap till we could see the whites of their eyes and they could see what was in our eyes. In a way we saw, yet did not see. There was nothing to see in most of the eyes facing us, just unease and doubt. We saw a force in front of us, but beyond we saw only hope, looking past the material obstacle to political victory for the muslim ummah in this world and the true goal of a muslim that lies beyond this world. Then we heaved into each other. Solid riot shields were pushing at us and we were trying to stand our ground by pushing back.
Then the arrests and hitting began. As I leaned into the shields, trying to use my body to resist a greater combined weight of force, an arm reached from behind the front line of police and over their heads to seize me firmly by my neck pulling me through the first line and dragging me out behind the massed force. Surrounded by police running at me with riot shields from different directions I felt my body bouncing in reaction, as a billiard ball responding to the forces that Newton described some centuries before, I felt myself constantly about to fall before bouncing in disorientation in a different direction till I found myself pushed unexpectedly up and onto the body of a car. This brought a brief pause allowing me to recover my sense of place and direction for a moment of comedy as I heard a number of concerned policemen calling their comrades to take it easy and be careful of the car.
Finally, I was frogmarched into one of the shiny new vehicles that I had seen the evening before! Soon the vehicle was filled and then another. I was quite unharmed, but not so others. After the initial confrontation the police had become more violent, wielding their sticks most aggressively at those who remonstrated with them to fear Allah or otherwise questioned their authority.
We were released at different times, myself very soon after the march, others the same evening and others only after several days. This is how the Palestinian authority deals with the call for khilafah and as I write the arrests continue, but the work for Islam grows ever stronger day by day; the shabab more enlivened and the ummah more aware and supportive of the political agenda of Hizb ut Tahrir.
May Allah bring a speedy victory to his ummah that now calls with one voice, from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east, for the men of nusrah to respond. Allah is above them and the ummah will be behind them: Al khilafah, al khilafah yaa jayoosh al muslimoon!
AR – Palestine. Awaiting liberation.