Headlines:
- Erdogan Continues to Talk Big After Humiliation by America
- UK Parliament to Vote on Brexit Deal Today
- Western Countries Continue to Keep Pakistan on ‘Terrorism Financing’ List
Erdogan Continues to Talk Big after Humiliation by America
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan begged US President Donald Trump for months to be allowed into the Kurdish area in northeast Syria. He finally entered, last week, after he thought Trump gave him the signal to do so, but immediately America came down hard and fast, forcing him to retreat. Still Erdogan talks the big talk, presuming himself to be the key decision-maker not only in Turkey but in the region. According to Aljazeera:
The ceasefire in northeast Syria got off to a rocky start on Friday, as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned he would resume a full-scale operation against Kurdish forces if they do not withdraw from a border “safe zone”.
Speaking to reporters in Istanbul, Erdogan said the Kurdish forces must withdraw “without exception” from a swathe of land 30km (18.6 miles) deep inside Syria, running 440km (273.4 miles) along Turkey’s eastern border with Syria.
“If the promises are kept until Tuesday evening, the safe zone issue will be resolved,” Erdogan said.
“If it fails, the operation … will start the minute 120 hours are over.”
If Muslim rulers like Erdogan were truly making their own decisions, then why do they beg and plead before America prior to taking any action? With Allah’s permission, Muslims shall soon have sincere, indigenous, ideological leadership that will take decisions themselves, consulting only the Muslims before doing so. Allah, Subhanahu Wa Ta’ala says: وَالَّذِينَ اسْتَجَابُوا لِرَبِّهِمْ وَأَقَامُوا الصَّلَاةَ وَأَمْرُهُمْ شُورَى بَيْنَهُمْ وَمِمَّا رَزَقْنَاهُمْ يُنفِقُونَ “And those who have responded to their lord and established prayer and whose affair is [determined by] consultation among themselves, and from what We have provided them, they spend.” [42:38]
UK Parliament to Vote on Brexit Deal Today
After more than three years since the Brexit referendum, the UK is voting today on the latest exit deal negotiated between Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the European Union. According to Reuters:
Prime Minister Boris Johnson puts his last-minute Brexit deal to a vote in an extraordinary sitting of the British parliament on Saturday, a day of reckoning that could decide the course of the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union.
More than three years since the United Kingdom voted 52-48 to be the first sovereign country to leave the European project, Johnson will try to win parliament’s approval for the divorce treaty he struck in Brussels on Thursday.
In a day of Brexit high drama, lawmakers convene for the first Saturday sitting since the 1982 Argentine invasion of the Falklands, while hundreds of thousands of people are due to march to parliament demanding another referendum.
Johnson depicted the vote in parliament as the last chance to secure an orderly Brexit. Though he is obliged by law to seek a Brexit delay if his deal falls, Johnson said the United Kingdom would still leave on Oct. 31. He didn’t explain how.
“There have been any number of false dawns. Deadlines for our departure have come and gone,” Johnson, the face of the 2016 campaign to leave the EU, wrote in Britain’s best-selling newspaper, The Sun. “Today can be the day we get Brexit done.”
As the continued political conflict within Britain makes evident, Western countries are not real democracies, simply acting in accordance with the popular will. The real power in Britain is that of the establishment, who are engaged in a struggle with elements of the British political medium since Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was forced from office over her turning against the European Union. Democracy is an idyllic fantasy that has never been truly implemented anywhere, even in ancient Greece at the level of city states. Man is incapable of devising a just, comprehensive body of law to govern over himself. The only true system is that which implements divine revelation.
Western Countries Continue to Keep Pakistan on ‘Terrorism Financing’ List
After the West’s colonialism of the entire world, followed by not the retreat of colonialism but its conversion into what can be termed neo-colonialism, the West continues to use international law and international institutions to keep non-Western countries under pressure. According to Reuters:
A global finance watchdog kept Pakistan off its terrorism financing blacklist on Friday but warned Islamabad it only had until February to improve or face international action.
The Paris-based Financial Action Task Force, which tackles money laundering, said it was concerned that Pakistan had failed to complete the action plan first by a January deadline, then a May deadline and now October.
“The FATF strongly urges Pakistan to swiftly complete its full action plan by February 2020,” it said in a statement.
“Otherwise, should significant and sustainable progress not be made across the full range of its action plan by the next Plenary, the FATF will take action.”
Pakistan, struggling with a balance of payments crisis that has forced it to turn to the International Monetary Fund for help, has promised a series of measures to crack down on terrorism financing.
Institutions such as the FATF or the IMF are quite adept at concealing Western imperialistic objectives behind bland neutral language. Pakistan’s weak and unconvincing support for small jihadi groups is seen as terrorism, while completely ignoring the West’s direction of real terrorism, in the form of the deployment of hundreds of thousands of troops creating untold killing and destruction in Muslim lands. It is incumbent upon Muslims to reject Western-created international institutions and Western-developed international law. With Allah’s permission, the world shall soon witness the re-emergence of the Islamic Khilafah (Caliphate) State on the method of the Prophet ﷺ that will confront and vanquish colonialism, charting out a just and peaceful path not only for Muslims but for all mankind, as the Khilafah had done previously before the rise of the evil secular Capitalist imperialism of the West.