O Honourable Ummah!
You are indeed the best Ummah amongst all of the others, that is brought forth for mankind, because you uphold what Allah (swt) has commanded and you forbid what Allah (swt) has forbidden and you believe in Allah (swt). Your honor, your dignity, your mastery in this world and the command that you once exercised and the lofty standing that you held, was due to Islam and only Islam. If you were to lag behind and lose this position, then it is due to the absence of Islam as a comprehensive system of life in your affairs. Islam existed in all aspects of practical life when there existed a Khalifah who gathered the Muslims as a single body under the Khilafah State and implemented the ruling by what Allah (swt) had revealed upon them. Thus, it supervised the affairs of the Muslims and the non-Muslims in the entire world and was the flower of the globe for almost fourteen centuries and the brightest light that humanity has ever known and will ever know[1].
Allah (swt) describes the Ummah as the best and most unique community ever created. Islam has the solutions to all human problems. But although the Islamic Ummah has the solutions to each of these problems, it is evident that without a state that implements these solutions and that conveys these solutions to all of humanity, it has no real impact on the lives of Muslims or the others. The unforgettable incident of the Srebrenica massacre in 1995, along with the numerous other recent examples from the suffering of the Ummah since the collapse of the Khilafah (Caliphate), is an evidence that the Ummah will never experience the real security, justice and protection in the absence of the Khilafah state.
The events in and around Srebrenica between July 10th and 19th, 1995 are known. In these few days, an estimated 8,000 Muslim Bosniaks have been murdered by Bosnian Serb forces[2] after the UN forces abandoned the unarmed Muslims. John Dalhuisen, former Amnesty International’s Director for Europe and Central Asia said in a Press Release from 2015: “Two decades after the world averted its gaze from the worst crime to be committed on European soil since 1945, the families of the victims of the Srebrenica genocide are still awaiting justice. Srebrenica not only stands as stark reminder of humanity’s capacity for depravity but also of the failure of the international community to prevent genocide from happening in plain view. Twenty years on, leaders in Bosnia and Herzegovina are refusing to admit where the bodies are buried, literally and metaphorically. The longer the guilty enjoy impunity and the dead remain in mass graves, the longer this painful wound will fester fuelling dangerous and persistent ethnic divisions.”[3]
To this day, the Ummah mourns their loved ones and no one is there to take away their grief or even punish the murderers from the massacre. This injustice against the Ummah, although the history of Islam shows us the opposite how the Muslim honor was once treated. For example, as Rasulullah ﷺ mobilized the Muslims of Medina to defend the honor of a woman who was disparaged by a man from Bani Qaynuqa. As the caliph Mutasim Billah, who sent the powerful Islamic army against the strong fortress Amuria of the Roman Empire because a Roman soldier tore off a Muslim woman’s headscarf. As the determined and courageous effort of Salahuddin Al Ayubi, who defeated the Crusaders and drove them out of Jerusalem. The reason why such a protection was given then and not today is because the Prophet ﷺ and the Sahabas had the Khilafah, which was designed to maintain the Justice for the Muslim and protect the honor of the Ummah. But nowadays women and children were persecuted, raped and driven out, defenseless boys and men systematically sorted out, murdered and buried – just because they were Bosnian Muslims and the world closes its eyes.
Islam is incomparable with the man-made ideologies because they can never be such perfect like the ideology which is revealed by Allah (swt). When the Americans, British or Europeans invaded the pure and needy countries or called themselves as their helpers, to achieve in reality their own foreign policy goals, there has only been torture, murder, extermination and exploitation to date. However, the goal of warfare for the Khilafah was not to destroy the peoples and make them their own subjects, but to enable them to taste the true fruits of justice and protection and to put an end to corrupt rule.
The non-Muslims found justice, calm and happiness under Islamic rule. Even the Jews of Spain, when they were hunted and massacred by the Christians during the Spanish Inquisition, fled to the heart of the Khilafah state and were received there. The Jews then and still consider the Jews under the Islamic rule in Spain to be the Golden Age. Even the people of India, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, along with hundreds of historians, describe the period of Islamic rule in India as the Golden Era or the Golden Age. Whenever the Muslims conquered a country, they began to rule according to the rules of Allah (swt) and treat the non-Muslim citizens according to the laws that Allah had revealed and started to spend upon them, protect them and guarantee their rights.
The Prophet ﷺ said: «أَلاَ مَنْ ظَلَمَ مُعَاهِدًا أَوِ انْتَقَصَهُ أَوْ كَلَّفَهُ فَوْقَ طَاقَتِهِ أَوْ أَخَذَ مِنْهُ شَيْئًا بِغَيْرِ طِيبِ نَفْسٍ فَأَنَا حَجِيجُهُ يَوْمَ الْقِيَامَةِ» “He who unfairly treats a non-Muslim who keeps a peace treaty with Muslims, or undermines his rights, or burdens him beyond his capacity, or takes something from him without his consent; then I am his opponent on the Day of Judgment.” (Abu Dawud and Al-Bayhaqi). This Muslim approach to the poor, and consequently the way Islam treated non-Muslim citizens under its state, was one reason why many accepted the creed. Complete justice and protection instilled trust in Islamic rule in the hearts of non-Muslims.
The famous Maliki scholar Imam al-Qurafi quotes the statement of Ibn Hazm from his book Maratib al-Ijmaa’: “If enemies at war come to our lands (the Khilafah State) aiming at certain dhimmi (non-Muslim citizens), it is obligatory for us that we come out to fight them with all our might and weapons since they are under the protection of Allah and His Messenger. If we did anything less than this, it means we have failed in our agreement for protection.”
So, no ideology, no system, no religion or any other way of life could guarantee such just relationships with the rest of the world. That means the Srebrenica massacre is no wonder, but a natural result of today’s cruel capitalist-influenced world. It cannot be relied today on by any government or organization that would be able to protect the blood of the Ummah or even to ensure justice for humanity. Islam alone is an ideology that says that “All citizens of the State shall be treated equally regardless of religion, race, color or any other matter. The State is forbidden to discriminate among its citizens in all matters, be it ruling or judicial, or caring of affairs”.[4]
However, the establishment of the Khilafah is a duty upon the Ummah and they are responsible to work for this goal. This state is the only one capable of addressing all of humanity in a powerful and effective way so that all of humanity can be saved from disaster in this world and in the hereafter and justice and security can be archived.
Amanah Abed
[1] Jihad and the Foreign Policy of the Khilafah State, Zahid-Ivan Salam, Khilafah Publications 2001.
[2] https://theconversation.com/remembering-srebrenica-more-than-20-years-on-99122.
[3] https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/srebrenica-families-victims-still-waiting-justice.
[4] Draft Constitution of the Khilafah State, Hizb ut Tahrir, Article 6.