According to the news piece of BBC News on Saturday, 23 August 2015, Italian coastguard rescued about 4,400 migrants from more than 20 overcrowded unseaworthy boats, who were trying to enter Europe. According to the UN this year so far 264,500 migrants have crossed the Mediterranean. Since the beginning of the year some 340,000 migrants have been detected at Europe’s external borders, Frontex claimed. The number of migrants reaching Greece by sea had reached 158,000 by mid-August, according to the UN, overtaking the 90,000 who arrived in Italy by sea. Germany is expecting 800,000 refugees to arrive this year. The vicious civil war in Syria has triggered a huge exodus. Afghans, Eritreans and other nationalities are also fleeing poverty and human rights abuses. Two Italian navy ship and other Italian vessels were involved in the rescue effort along with Norwegian military ship. But this rescue surge was criticized by some European politicians as they think it will encourage the exodus of the migrants and boost smuggler’s business. Humanitarian groups say the surge in numbers is because of conflicts and repression in Africa and the Middle East, and European governments should do more to create safe routes to Europe. In April EU leaders pledged to beef up maritime patrols in the Mediterranean, disrupt people trafficking networks and capture and destroy boats before migrants board them.

Comment:

The number of Mediterranean migrants travelling to Europe by boat has increased dramatically this year. Europe is now facing an enormous dilemma regarding the desperate refugees from the Middle Eastern and North African countries. According to the United Nations, this is the worst refugee crisis since the Second World War. Hundreds and thousands of desperate migrants are fleeing their country to escape devastation of war, abject poverty, systematic abuse and persecution in the hope of a better life. But due to the inhumane concept of nationalism which values national identity over humanity, European governments treat these vulnerable refugees harshly to stop further exodus. Macedonian police forces beating back the refugees, while others have refused entry to their countries by sealing the border or by strengthening maritime petrol in the Mediterranean. This is the direct result of corrupt manmade values which dehumanize people by refusing them sanctuary even though they are in desperate need of shelter and protection.

The European leaders need to understand that this crisis is the direct result of the colonial wars and the military interventions in the Muslim world by the West as well as the support of brutal dictatorships backed by the western governments in the Muslim lands such as in Syria and Egypt which came back to haunt these governments on their own shores.

We also need to understand that stopping to push back, creating safe routes for the migrants, spending millions of dollars to rescue and shelter them, breaking the networks of the smugglers or giving these people legal refugee status – are not the real solutions for these desperate migrants. This huge crisis and endless misery of hundreds and thousands of people will not end until the end of western occupation in the Muslim world and the end of the west initiated and supported unethical wars throughout the world. This problem will not be solved until the re-establishment of the Khilafah state upon the method of the Prophethood which will end western occupation in the Muslim lands by banishing western armies and uprooting manmade political, economic and ruling system from Muslim lands. Not only that the Khilafah will ensure political stability, economic prosperity and security of life so that no citizen ever has to be migrated towards uncertain and humiliating future. Moreover, the Khilafah will be the safe haven for all the oppressed and helpless people of this world regardless of their nationality, race and religion as it used to be in the past. In 1492, Ottoman Khalifa Bayezid II sent his entire naval fleet to rescue 150,000 Spanish Jews during the Spanish Inquisition and welcomed them to settle in the land of the Khilafah open arms. In 1453 Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II invited the expelled Jews from the entire European continent to come and settle as citizens in the Ottoman lands.

Today in the absence of the Khilafah, puppet rulers of the Muslim lands have turned blind eyes to the misery of the millions of helpless men, women and children of this Ummah who are being forced to be migrated to western lands as a illegal refugee and left them at mercy of those very rulers of the west who have waged war against Islam and Muslims, devastated and invaded Muslim lands and supported brutal regimes like Bashar al-Assad and Fattah el-Sisi. So, the every Muslim of this Ummah should put serious effort to uproot this corrupt capitalist system and re-establish the Khilafah upon the method of the Prophethood which will solve all kinds of crisis of this world including migrant crisis that Europe is facing today.

Fehmida binte Wadud