On 11/09/2022, the Women’s Section in the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir presented a discussion on “Attack against the Hijab in Europe”, in which the participants spoke about the restrictions that Muslim women in the West suffer from, which angered the journalist Jean Chichizola so much so that he wrote an article published on 19/10/2022, in Le Figaro Newspaper, entitled “France accused of wanting to “de-Islamize” young Muslims.” In this article, the writer criticized the ongoing dialogue and considered its content an infringement on the “Voltaire State”, knowing that the philosopher and writer Voltaire became famous for his defence of freedoms, especially freedom of belief. The article showed a complete disregard for the credibility of reporting news and information dictated by the journalist’s profession and striking its most important pillars – impartiality and objectivity – from the title to the last sentence of the article.

We in the Women’s Section of the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir respond to him as follows:

First: to the journalist, you gave your article a title that is not free of bias and accusation. This is by being biased to the state of France, making it innocent of what was attributed to it, and accusing the women participants, who represent the Women’s Section in the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir, that they and their party attacked the “Voltaire State” that guarantees freedoms, and they dared to accuse it of severing the Muslim youth from their religion to impose its secular ideas on them, so that they completely blend into the Western civilization. Is it really innocent of what has been attributed to it?

Did France not ban the headscarf in 2004 in schools, middle schools and public high schools, and prevent female employees in state institutions from wearing it?! Did it not ban the niqab in public places in 2010?! Did the illegal sphere of the application of the law of 2004 not expand to include many transgressions, such as preventing the entry of many parents of male and female students into educational institutions and preventing those who wear the headscarf from going to some public facilities to get a specific service? Did it not reach the level of repeated cases of expulsion from schools of some Muslim girls who wear a long dress, or a long skirt that covers the legs?

It became clear that the application of the “law banning the wearing of religious symbols” came primarily to restrict Muslims and was not directed at other religious sects, as they claim. This is not to mention the draft laws that are put forward from time to time to ban the wearing of the headscarf in universities and to prevent mothers who wear the headscarf from accompanying their children on school trips, and attempts to impose a ban in the private sector, and most recently the draft law to ban the headscarf in sports competitions! Even the dress that is not Islamic by Sharia standards, such as the sports dress and the burkini, they fought it as being a challenge to French values. On the other hand, in light of the gas crisis in France, swimming pools imposed full body wetsuits similar to the burkini to reduce health emergencies due to turning off the heating!

This is the tip of the iceberg of the practices of the “Voltaire State” towards Muslim women, which contributed greatly to the growth of Islamophobia and the rise in the number of attacks against Muslims there, which prompted some tweeters to describe the country of liberties as “the country of extinguished lights in the world.” In a statement on 29/1/2021, the head of the National Observatory against Islamophobia in France, Abdallah Zekri, announced that the country witnessed 235 cases of attacks against Muslims in 2020, compared to 154 cases in 2019, which represents an increase of about 53%.

Didn’t the country of liberties close Muslim mosques and associations?! Did it not make it difficult for Muslims to live?! Wasn’t the law to combat the so-called “Islamic separatism” drafted so that Muslim youth would relinquish their Islam or live with a guilt complex because their religion is Islam? Despite all of the above, this journalist comes to say that France is accused, despite that Macron said it explicitly: that this law came as a “reinforcement to the republican values” and to address the building of a system he considers parallel. In his article, the writer wonders why the discourse of Islamic groups is not limited to the dialectic of laïcité and Islam. The author is surprised that four women wearing headscarves broadcast live and strongly condemn the recommendation issued by a committee specialized in banning the headscarf in Danish primary schools, to conclude that France is also targeted by Hizb ut Tahrir. He then enumerates the party’s hostile stances towards France despite the prohibition of its activities there, and he denounces the description made by the member of the Women’s Section (of Hizb ut Tahrir) that France’s policy is a dictatorship and her criticism of the fascist nature of the secular regime. This journalist boasts that his country has prevented Hizb ut Tahrir from working because of its extremism, and at the same time exposes the oppression and exclusion pursued by the “Voltaire State”, as he calls it, against those who oppose it and see them as a threat to its civilization.

Second: It is the duty of an honest journalist to investigate facts and convey true and accurate news and information, and not give hasty or prejudicial judgments or hide a biased position that deviates its holder from credibility and the honour of his profession. This journalist described Hizb ut Tahrir – this venerable party – with what is not ascribed to it and slandered it. Hizb ut Tahrir was never a splinter from the Muslim Brotherhood, but rather an ideological party that was established since the 1950’s, and it has a fixed goal, which is the establishment of the second rightly-guided Khilafah (Caliphate) state on the method of Prophethood and the gathering of Muslims under the banner of the Messenger of Allah (saw), and because it did not alter or change, and because it is proceeding with a fixed line it annoyed many of those who are desperate in defense of the Western civilization and considered its ideology extremist. Some even considered it a terrorist organization despite their certainty that it is a party that did not and will not adopt material work, but rather a political party that struggles against corrupt ideas and combats malicious and destructive policies.

Hizb ut Tahrir has also worried many mouthpieces working for this dominant Western civilization, which change colour according to the interests of the secular capitalist system. Hizb ut Tahrir has made such a journalist and those in charge of his capricious regime lose sleep, and apply standards and their opposite according to their dictates of interests and goals. He slandered the party as being among the Islamic groups funded and supported by the European Commission; this is a lie and a slander. Hizb ut Tahrir does not fall under this suspicious circle. This is because it is a pure party that has pledged to Allah (swt) to obey and do sincere honest work. It accepts only the good and does not receive financial support except from those who carry its call.

Third: The French historian and philosopher Marcel Gauchet, author of one of the most important studies on the religious situation in France, says in his book La Religion En La Democracia [Religion in Democracy]: “Secularism in the West in general has ceased to have an acceptable political meaning,” and in his explanation of the reasons for the astonishment of Muslims residing in France, and the reasons for the repeated official and public French attack on the headscarf, Gauchet believes that all of this comes in order to give a dimension of struggle to secularism and provide it with the vitality that French secularism lacked after it lost all its self-spiritual sources, and it became a worried identity obsessed with its opposite, invoking it and wrestling with it all the time. So, it is nothing but a conflict of civilisations. What this journalist does and is desperately doing in defending the values ​​of Western civilization and his war on political Islam is only one aspect of this natural and eternal conflict between civilizations, so why do they condemn us for what they are doing?

Why do they struggle for the survival of their civilization and condemn us for our struggle to revive our civilization?! They direct their poisonous arrows with their malicious thoughts, and they want us to receive them with open, contented breasts without reckoning? Why do they condemn us for our defence of our Deen and insist that we follow them to their burrows so that they can defeat us?! Why should we surrender to the campaigns of assimilation of Muslim children with secular ideas and their assimilation into capitalist civilization?! Isn’t it the war between civilizations for survival? Dr. Mustafa Mahmoud, may Allah have mercy on him, in his book, Political Islam and the Coming Battle, summarized the reality of this conflict of civilizations and described it accurately, saying: “When politicians in the West declare that they are not hostile to Islam, and that they are not against Islam as a religion, they are honest in one way, because they do not have an objection whatsoever for us to pray, fast, perform the pilgrimage, spend our nights and days in worship, glorification and supplication, and spend our lives in reliance (Tawakul), and retreat whatever we want in mosques (I’tikaf), and give oneness (Tawheed) to our Lord, glorify Him and make Tahlil, for they do not oppose ritual Islam.

The Islam of rituals and worship, and they have no objection that we have the whole afterlife, for this is a matter that they do not care about and do not think about. Rather, they may have encouraged worship and isolation, and they allied themselves with the sheikhs of the Sufi paths and defended them (I said: and this happened), but their hostility and enmity is to the other Islam. The Islam, the one that disputes with them the authority to direct the world and build it on other ideals and values, the Islam that disputes with them in the world and seeks for itself a foothold in the movement of life, the Islam that wants to advance knowledge, but for goals other than domination, conquest, aggression and control, Islam that goes beyond individual reform to social reform, civilized reform and cosmic change, here there is no bargaining or a margin of tolerance, but a fierce war, here everyone will shoot you, and bullets may come to you from forces within your country itself!”

Fourth: We in the Women’s Section of the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir are proceeding, Allah willing, according to what Allah loves and is pleased with; to work to ensure that Islam prevails. We will exalt its message and raise its flag, we do not fear the blame of the blamer for the sake of Allah, and we do not take into account the criticisms of an incomplete and unstable one whose only measure is interest and benefit, which changes according to interests and whims. We are working to investigate the news of Muslims at all times, and report what they suffer under this secular global system, and we will wage our battle with it with an intellectual struggle that puts its sterile ideas to the ground and shows the corruption of its solutions to human problems, and with a political struggle that exposes its evil, conspiracies and machinations. There is no doubt that it is a fierce war, but we have pledged to Allah to uproot the capitalist system so that we can bring back Islam to the reality of life so that the real radical change can be achieved and the correct civilization reform is achieved. We are proceeding on this path in a steady pace and we are working to make Islam the dominant and leading civilization. We are certain that the promise of Allah will be enforced by His permission, Glory be to Him,

[وَاللَّهُ متِمُّ نُورِهِ وَلَوْ كَرِهَ الْكَافِرُونَ]

“… but Allah will perfect His light, although the disbelievers dislike it” [As-Saff: 8].

We ask Allah for steadfastness and success.

Women’s Section in The Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir

Press Release
7 Rabi’ II 1444 – Sunday 13th November 2022
No: AH/ 017 1444
(Translated)