بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
Submission Offers No Protection, and Conflict with the West Is Inevitable
Appeasement Under the Guise of Weakness Only Leads to Further Weakening
(Translated)
Al-Rayah Newspaper - Issue 578 - 17/12/2025
By: Ustadh Mustafa Suleiman *
While the West has taken a confrontational and hostile stance towards our countries, killing and violating in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, the idea that submission is the safest and most effective way to repel the evils of the West remains entrenched in the minds of the political elites and existing regimes in Muslim countries. Submission is entrenched on the assumption that the West will have mercy on those who beg it, or allow them to emerge from their manufactured weakness to build themselves up and then confront it when they become strong!
What we see today in Syria as a model - crimes committed against the revolution and its people - is a natural and direct result of the approach of submission, adopted by the leadership of the new transitional phase when it decided to abandon the revolutionary popular base and natural support. The leadership disavowed its goals and relied on foreign support, chose to flee from confrontation, handed over its cards to international actors, and began competing for their approval instead of adhering to the Ummah’s choice, rights, and authority. This was through a radical shift in discourse and approach, from a project of liberation (tahrir) that rejects colonialist solutions, to a project of submission that accepts international solutions and normalizes relations with its tools.
They did not realize that submission does not satisfy the West. Instead, submission pushes the West towards more blackmail. They did not realize that any entity would have been able to reach power and sit on the throne if it had accepted the status of subservience to the West and the approach of submission to it.
It is naive of those who are eager for a policy of submission that they think that the West rewards those who submit to it. However, all the experiences of peoples whose leadership has taken this approach have resulted in hardship, suffering, and decline. We find that the regimes that made concessions to the West did not gain protection or stability. Instead, their fragility increased, and then they were thrown away when their mission was over. The Iranian Hezb in Lebanon, the Iranian regime itself, the Karzai regime, and others are the best example of throwing away followers when their mission is over. The West does not deal with its agents as partners, but as employees whom it uses as long as they are useful, and then throws them away when they are consumed.
Therefore, the transformations we see in the performance of Al-Jolani, the leader of the transitional phase, and his affiliated political fronts, from polishing faces through international platforms, to receiving conditional support, to visiting murderous countries like Russia, are all nothing but steps in a series of taming and diluting the revolution under the slogan of political realism.
Conflict with the West is not a choice, but a historical inevitability.
The conflict between the Muslim world and the capitalist West is not the result of personal or political animosity. Instead, it is an existential civilizational struggle. Islam, with its comprehensiveness and its political, economic, and social systems, stands in stark contrast to the values of Western liberalism and secularism. Therefore, any serious project to implement Islam is bound to clash with these powers, which perceive the resurgence of Islam as a threat to their global hegemony and indeed to their very existence.
Therefore, reducing the conflict to a domestic struggle against agent regimes or leaders without acknowledging the international power orchestrating the situation is a political and intellectual deception. The ultimate culprit is the one who created these tools, managed the game, divided the region, prevented its unification, plundered its resources, and obstructed its revival (nahdah).
Confrontation does not mean direct military adventure, but rather clarity of discourse and the courage to adopt a project of liberation (tahrir) based on the identity of the Ummah and fundamental principles, emanating from its Aqeedah (creed). It means that Islam must be the true leader, not international projects or intelligence agencies. Confrontation means rejecting any solutions that perpetuate dependency or maintain Western influence.
Therefore, the Khilafah (Caliphate) project, presented by the aware forces within the Muslim world, foremost among them Hizb ut Tahrir, is not an intellectual luxury. Instead, it is the practical political solution to all our crises. It is the only project that can rebuild independent decision-making, liberate the economy from the shackles of the international financial order, and reshape the relationship with the West on the basis of parity, not subservience.
Those who believe that surrendering to the West will grant them security should learn from the fate of those who came before them.
If the people of Syria do not adopt the Islamic project with which to confront the Western project and its hegemony, we will remain trapped in a cycle of manufactured chaos, until the West consolidates its control and imposes its policies, which bring only misery and ruin to the land and its people. Our only salvation lies in confronting Western policies by relying on the Lord of all creation, Allah (swt), and adopting the project of the Khilafah Rashidah (Rightly Guided Caliphate) on the Method of Prophethood. This alone will please our Lord and guarantee our glory and victory in this world and the Hereafter, by the permission of Allah (swt).
* Central Contact Committee of Hizb ut Tahrir in Wilayah Syria