بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
“Nation States – An Excuse for Inaction”
Speech by Dr. Nazreen Nawaz, Director of the Women’s Section in the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir from the Conference Organised by Hizb ut Tahrir Britain, July 2022: “From Al-Hind to Al-Quds”
(1) INTRODUCTION:
• Dear brothers and sisters, what is the value of the honour of the Muslim woman in Islam?
- Its protection has been placed by Allah (swt) at the level of protecting life itself.
- It has been raised to a status in which a single word of slander against a chaste woman is described as a grievous crime in the Qur’an and deserving of a severe punishment.
- It is a value for which our beloved Prophet (saw) banished a whole Jewish tribe, Banu Qaynuqa from his state in Madinah due to their abuse of a single Muslim woman and the violation of her Islamic dress.
• The value of the honour of a Muslim woman is that for which Islamic leaders under the Khilafah of the past fought wars and opened lands to protect and defend.
- India and Sind were not opened up to Islam except in response to the cries of some Muslim women who had been imprisoned by the 8th century oppressive Indian Hindu King, Raja Dahir. The Khalifah at the time, al-Walid bin Abdul Malik mobilised a formidable army, led by the great Muslim general Muhammad bin Qasim to rescue these women – even though the capital of the Khilafah was in Damascus at the time – thousands of miles from India.
- The 9th century Khalifah, al-Mu’tassim bi’llah, sent a huge army to rescue a single Muslim woman in Amuriyah, Turkey who was captured and abused by the Romans – even though the capital of the Khilafah was in Baghdad at the time.
- And the armies of the great 10th century Islamic military leader, Al-Mansur ibn Abi Aamir from Andalusia, Spain, reached the far south of France (the Kingdom of Navarre) in response to two Muslim women who were imprisoned in a church.
• Brothers and sisters, this is the LEGACY of ISLAM and its system; a legacy which demonstrated to the world the value and protection it afforded to the wellbeing and honour of the Muslim woman, defending her at all costs.
- It was a legacy of unity and Muslim brotherhood
- A legacy which dismantled and uprooted racial, tribal, ethnic, national barriers between people and moulded entire nations into 1 state under the banner of La-ilaha-illAllah.
- A legacy under which leaders had no regard for national borders or nationality when it came to defending the dignity of Muslim women, for they understood the Words of Allah in Surah Al-Anbiyaa:
(إِنَّ هَٰذِهِۦٓ أُمَّتُكُمْ أُمَّةً وَٰحِدَةً وَأَنَا۠ رَبُّكُمْ فَٱعْبُدُونِ)
“Indeed! This Ummah is one Ummah, and I am your Lord so worship Me (alone).” [Al-Anbiyaa: 92].
(2) THE REALITY OF MUSLIM WOMEN’S LIVES TODAY:
• But what is the reality of the lives and honour of Muslim women today – in India, Kashmir, Palestine and across the world?
• In INDIA, Muslim women and girls are humiliated, insulted and abused on a daily basis.
- In April this year, a Hindu head priest in Utter Pradesh delivered a fiery speech to a large rally outside a mosque in the town of Khairabad, threatening to kidnap and rape Muslim women.
- In March this year, an Indian court upheld a ban on hijab in classrooms in the southern Indian state of Karnataka – denying Muslim girls the right to pursue an education while holding on to their Islamic beliefs. An official from the education department told some Muslim girls in a classroom – “Give up on your hijab. If you hold on to this, you will lose out on your education.” Other Muslim girls wearing hijab have been harassed and heckled by mobs of Hindu students.
- Hindu nationalists in India have also unleashed a vicious online attack against Muslim women that is full of sexual slurs, rape threats and explicit imagery. This includes creating an app where more than 100 Muslim women were put on sale in a fake online auction, filled with lewd content, while last year, a You-tube channel called Liberal Doge Live, live-streamed obscene photos of Muslim women on the day of Eid with the statement: “Today, we will stalk women with our eyes filled with lust.”
• All this is a drop in the ocean of the daily barrage of abuse and threats Muslim women face in India today.....and yet no Muslim leader, no state, no government stands in their defence!
• In Kashmir, Muslim women and girls are terrorised daily by Indian forces, including in night raids. And over 3 decades, over 2,300 Muslim women have been killed and more than 11,000 sexually assaulted by the Hindu occupation. Which one of us can forget the sweet innocent face of Asifa Bano, the 8 year old Muslim girl who was kidnapped, drugged and gang-raped at a Hindu temple in Kashmir in 2018 before being stoned to death.....and yet not a single leadership in the Muslim lands has moved to protect our sisters and daughters in Kashmir!
• And in the Blessed land of Palestine, our Muslim sisters are terrorised, imprisoned, beaten and gunned down in broad daylight by Zionist forces. Brothers and sisters, when you look at the face of your mother, then remember the face of your other Muslim mother – Ghada Ibrahim Sabatien, a widow and mother of 6 who was shot by Zionist forces this April while she was on her way to visit relatives in Bethlehem. They left her to bleed to death. And brothers and sisters, when you look at the face of your sisters or daughters, then remember the face of your other Muslim sister – Anhar al-Deek – imprisoned, tortured, placed in solitary confinement and handcuffed while pregnant by the criminal Zionist entity – and there have been other Muslim sisters like her whose arms and legs were chained to their bed during labour and child-birth.
• All this, and yet there is not one single ruler, government or state that responds to the cries of our sisters!
(3) THE LEGACY OF THE NATIONALISTIC LEADERSHIPS OF TODAY:
• Why is this? Why have our sisters, mothers and daughters been abandoned? Why have they been left in the hands of their evil oppressors and butchers?
• It is because the rulers and regimes of the Muslim lands today also have a LEGACY – a legacy stained and soiled with the rotten disease of nationalism and nation-state politics.
- A disease that makes them see the Muslims of India, Kashmir, Palestine and other lands away from their own national borders as foreign citizens in foreign lands rather than their own brothers and sisters – disregarding the words of Allah –
(إِنَّمَا ٱلۡمُؤۡمِنُونَ إِخۡوَةٌ۬) “The believers are nothing but brothers...” [Al-Hujurat 49: 10] and
(فِي الدِّينِ فَعَلَيْكُمُ النَّصْرُ)“And if they seek help of you for the religion, then you must help.” [Al-Anfal 8:72].
- Nationalism is a disease that makes them view the plight and suffering of Muslims in other lands as a foreign problem that has nothing to do with them, even though the Prophet (saw) said –
«الْمُسْلِمُونَ كَرَجُلٍ وَاحِدٍ إِنْ اشْتَكَى عَيْنُهُ اشْتَكَى كُلُّهُ وَإِنْ اشْتَكَى رَأْسُهُ اشْتَكَى كُلُّهُ»
“The Muslims are like a single man. If the eye is afflicted, then the whole body is afflicted. If the head is afflicted, then the whole body is afflicted.” (Muslim).
- Nationalism is a disease that strips nations and states of their humanity such that they stand muted and paralysed in the midst of genocides with no political will to act unless it is in their national interests to do – as we see with the regimes in Turkey, Egypt and elsewhere who have stood idle while hundreds of thousands of Muslims have been slaughtered in Syria. Or successive governments in Pakistan, Bangladesh and elsewhere who have turned their backs on the oppressed Muslims of India, Kashmir and East Turkestan despite the Muslims having suffered the most horrific atrocities. We saw how Pakistan’s previous prime minister – Imran Khan – openly expressed his support for China’s treatment of the Uyghur Muslims despite Beijing’s anti-Muslim genocide in East Turkestan – because of Khan’s fear of losing China’s investment in the country, forsaking the words of our Prophet (saw), «الْمُسْلِمُ أَخُو الْمُسْلِمِ، لاَ يَظْلِمُهُ وَلاَ يُسْلِمُهُ» “A Muslim is the brother of a Muslim: he does not oppress him, nor does he abandon him.”
- And nationalism and nation-state politics is a disease that causes Muslim regimes to push away desperate Muslims seeking refuge in their lands, refusing them dignified sanctuary and citizenship because they view them as foreigners due to their nationality or ethnicity.
So, we see the governments of Malaysia, Indonesia and Bangladesh pushing away desperate Rohingya refugees, preferring to see them die at sea than to provide them protection in their lands. We see the Hasina regime in Bangladesh making life unbearable for Rohingya refugees in the Cox’s Bazar camps such that they accept to be exiled to the uninhabitable flood-prone island of Bhasan Char or return to the hands of their killers in Myanmar.
So we see the Bangladesh authorities beating or detaining Rohingya refugees who leave these squalid inhumane death camps, and destroying 1000’s of shops in the camps, denying refugees access to employment, and banning Rohingya-led community schools - all in an attempt to create the most atrocious conditions to force the Rohingya to return into the hands of those who executed a genocide against them – as reflected in the comments of Bangladesh’s foreign minister, Dr. AKM Abdul Momen who stated that the “early repatriation of the Rohingyas to Myanmar is our lead priority”.
• Brothers and sisters, this is the toxic legacy of nationalism in our Muslim lands, and the foul stench of the legacy of nationalistic leaderships, rulers and regimes.
(4) THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE NATIONALISTIC LEADERSHIPS OF TODAY WITH ENEMY STATES:
• These nationalistic rulers and regimes have not only abandoned oppressed Muslims...but have actively befriended, supported, and forged alliances with those who persecute and slaughter Muslims – all for the sake of their national interests or in submission to the orders of their western masters.
- So we see Erdogan and the Turkish regime strengthening ties with the brutal occupiers of Al Quds. Just this May, in the midst of Zionist forces storming and defiling Al-Aqsa and beating dozens of Palestinian Muslims, Turkey’s Foreign Minister visited the foreign minister of the Zionist entity with the goal of expanding economic, energy and civil cooperation, and to “re-energise” relations in many areas. Turkey is already a top trading partner with the Zionists. These are all deals written in the blood of our Palestinian brothers and sisters.
And we see Muslim regimes such as the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco falling over themselves to sign the Abraham Accords and establish normalization agreements with the Zionist terrorist entity, joining Egypt and Jordan as those states who have thrown the Palestinian Muslims to the wolves.
- In Asia, despite Modi’s brutal occupation and slaughter of the Muslims of Kashmir and persecution of Muslims in India, we see the Pakistan government exerting its utmost to normalise its relationship with the Butcher of Gujurat and his anti-Muslim Hinduvta state – surrendering Kashmir in the process. In April, Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Shehbaz Sharif tweeted to Modi, “Pakistan desires peaceful and co-operative ties with India” – smoothing the way for the American plan to make India a regional power and the creation of Akhand Bharat – a Greater India – recreating the tyrant Hindu kingdom of the likes of Raja Dahir who was defeated by the great Muslim general Muhammad bin Qasim.
- And we see the Arab regimes also strengthening the hand of this modern-day Raja Dahir state – the Middle East supplies over 50% of India’s oil, while in 2019, Qatar was the primary source of India’s liquified natural gas, supplying 41% of the country’s gas imports.
- Even the disgusting insults against our beloved Prophet (saw) by India’s BJP spokespeople was not enough to deter these nationalistic Muslim regimes from their support of this apartheid Indian state. During an interaction with Indian journalists, Bangladesh’s Information and Broadcasting Minister Hasan Mahmud stated regarding the insults against our Rasul (saw): “It is not an internal matter (of Bangladesh), but an external issue. This is India’s internal issue” adding that “ties between India and Bangladesh are forged in blood.”
• Brothers and sisters, since when is an attack against the honour of our Rasul (saw), the Master of humankind, the Messenger of Allah - an external matter for Muslims? Since when is the suffering and slaughter of Muslims, no matter where they live – a foreign issue for this Ummah? It is only the case when the disease of nationalism infects lands and minds!
(5) NATIONALISM IS A FOREIGN CONCEPT?
• Dear brothers and sisters, protecting the honour of our Prophet (saw) can never be a foreign issue for us as Muslims, nor is the plight of our brothers and sisters of India, Kashmir, Palestine or elsewhere, or protecting the honour of our sisters.
• It is not Muslims who live in other lands to our own who should be viewed as foreign and alien but the concept of nationalism, nation-state politics, nationalistic regimes and national borders – for all this is imported and imposed from foreign colonial powers and used to divide and weaken this Ummah so that it can be easily subjected to their plans and interests.
• This toxic concept has eroded the bond of Muslim brotherhood, caused Muslims to see each other through the lens of enemy states, and caused complacency in action when Muslims are being oppressed and killed, and the sanctities of our Deen and honour of our sisters defiled.
• All this is the legacy of nationalism and nation-state leaderships – and it is one submerged with betrayal of the Ummah and our Deen, one laced with weakness and submission to foreign powers, and that has left Muslims abandoned and helpless.
(6) WHAT WILL BE OUR LEGACY?
• So brothers and sisters, what will be our legacy? Will it be to continue to embrace this poison of nationalism, or to continue to support nationalistic regimes who have forsaken our Deen and the Muslims? Will our legacy be to continue to see solutions to our problems as an Ummah through the malignant lens of national interests that views the defence of the honour of our sisters as a foreign issue, or to continue to place false hopes in the United Nations or western governments to protect the Muslims – when they are the ones who caused and fuel the problems in our lands and who stand side-by-side the oppressors, occupiers and killers of the Muslims?
• Will our legacy be to simply cry tears at the plight of our Ummah when our tears will not stop the pain of our brothers and sisters? Or to just give charity to ease the suffering of our Ummah, when pounds and dollars will not end the persecution or the bullets and bombs raining down on our brothers and sisters?
• Or will our legacy be to return to the way of our Prophet (saw) and Islam by re-establishing that great state and Islamic leadership that will be a guardian to all Muslims no matter their race, ethnicity, land of birth or place they live – the Khilafah state based upon the method of the Prophethood?
- A state that will once again mobilise its army to defend the honour of our sisters, protect the blood of the Muslims, and liberate every inch of occupied Muslim land.
- A state that will uproot every trace of this terrorist Zionist entity from the Blessed land of Palestine and raise the flag of Islam once again over Al Quds.
- A state that will open its lands to the Rohingya and all oppressed Muslims so that they will finally find their true home.
- A state that will free our dear sister Dr. Aafia Siddiqui from her prison walls and return her into the arms of her children and family.
- A state under which our hearts will no longer pain for the plight of our Ummah.
• Dear brothers and sisters, let’s make all this our legacy – by establishing the second Khilafah Rashidah
– mirroring the state of our beloved Prophet (saw)
- A state that we and our children will be proud of as one that genuinely stands for our Deen and for humanity and against all oppression and tyrants.
- A state that will stand guard over the dignity of Muslim women and raise their status once again to that which was described in the archives of the Ottoman Caliphate – as Taj al Dowla – the crown on the head of the state – the protected jewel of the Ummah.
- A state that will herald the start of a new chapter in the life of this Ummah and the beginning of a new dawn – one that is filled with security, guardianship, prosperity and honour! And Allah (swt) says,
(مَن كَانَ يُرِيدُ ٱلۡعِزَّةَ فَلِلَّهِ ٱلۡعِزَّةُ جَمِيعًا) “Whoever desires honour, power and glory – then to Allah belongs all honour, power and glory.” [Fatir: 10].