In recent days news and reports were published in the media discussing the plight of women in Iraq as a result of the ongoing war. According to a report released by the United Nations, since the beginning of the violence in January 2014, an estimated 1.26 million Iraqi women have been displaced and are now living in harsh conditions. Women and girls account for 51 per cent in the recent waves of displacements where almost 2.5 million Iraqis have been forced to flee their homes to escape violence, human rights abuses and death threats. The events which prevailed in Iraq recently have contributed to increasing the percentage of widows, according to a report by a women’s rights organization in Iraq, where it indicates that between 90 and 100 Iraqi women become widows per day as a result of the violence and sectarian fighting.

These figures and statistics reveal the extent of the extreme suffering and bitter reality faced by women in Iraq as a result of successive wars and conflicts that Iraq experienced since the US occupation in 2003, through the government of Al-Maliki, right down to the present day where the war waged by America and its allies on Iraq is conducted under the pretext of fighting terrorism and extremism and the elimination of ISIS, which forced millions of the people of Iraq, especially women, to flee their homes to escape death and destruction. This is apart from the news that talks about the ill-treatment of women in areas controlled by ISIS. Isn’t all this the real terrorism that America claims to be fighting?!

These wars and conflicts have turned the lives of women in Iraq into a hell, and overburdened them with what they cannot bear. They suffer from poverty, displacement, insecurity, detention, beating, kicking, slapping, electrocution and the violation of honour. In addition, there exists a large number of widows who have no breadwinner for themselves and their children, and therefore they take on the roles of both mother and father. And so women in Iraq tire and toil to provide food for themselves and their children in the absence of the breadwinner, and many of them are forced to beg in the streets. Reports published by human rights organizations on International Women’s Day state that there are more than 1.5 million widows and more than 3 million orphans across the country due to the unstable security conditions that has plagued Iraq since 2003 up to today.

O Muslim sisters in the land of Ar-Rafidain:

The cycle of suffering and misery which you experience will not end except by the rightly guided Khilafah, that will bring security, justice, protection, and care for you and your children, and will eradicate all the criminal transgressors. This is a call we direct to you and all Muslim sisters in the world to work with us in Hizb ut Tahrir to establish the second rightly guided Khilafah on the method of the Prophethood to enjoy a decent and dignified life in this world, and a Jannah that is as wide as the heavens and the earth in the Hereafter, Allah willing.

وَيَوْمَئِذٍ يَفْرَحُ الْمُؤْمِنُونَ بِنَصْرِ اللَّهِ يَنصُرُ مَن يَشَاء وَهُوَ الْعَزِيزُ الرَّحِيمُ

“…And that day the believers will rejoice. In the victory of Allah. He gives victory to whom He wills, and He is the Exalted in Might, the Merciful”

(Ar-Rum: 4-5)

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

Tuesday, 23rd Rajab 1436 AH

12/05/2015 CE

Issue No: 1436 AH /042