Following the campaign organized by Hizb ut Tahrir/ Wilayah Egypt introducing the proposed constitution for the Islamic State titled, "Egypt's Constitution Must be an Islamic Constitution." Wednesday, Dhul Hijjah 08, 1433 H, 24/10/2012;
I was on the phone speaking to someone in Nigeria and in the middle of the conversation, they asked about the news regarding Jimmy Savile. Oh dear, it seems the Jimmy Savile fiasco is now global news.
The past few weeks have seen a UK ‘national treasure' go from hero to zero. National treasure is used to refer to someone who is much loved, revered and respected in the UK. Some are actors, athletes, writers or other such personalities. In the case of Jimmy Savile, for many decades, he was closely associated with family entertainment on TV, radio and fundraising for charities. He had a BBC TV program where children wrote him letters about their wishes and he made them come through.
He died last year and was much mourned and much praised by many people. However, a year later his reputation has gone from hero to zero with over one hundred allegations that he sexually molested young women and girls throughout his career in TV, and charity fundraising. Some of the most disturbing allegations are that he molested vulnerable people who were ill in hospitals - while he was active in fundraising for that hospital. Whilst he was alive, he was so respected that he was decorated by the Queen who gave him a knighthood so he was called ‘Sir Jimmy Savile."
While the scale of the abuse allegations is truly shocking, it has now emerged that Saville's reputation was known amongst some BBC staff. Despite that he was promoted as a public figure and given access to young women and girls so it seems that some senior managers tolerated his abhorrent behaviour.
Moreover, others have described a wider problem within the BBC and it seems that such behaviour appears to have been commonplace. Former BBC radio presenter Liz Kershaw described her disturbing experiences of joining Radio One in the 1980s. She described how she was physically molested whilst on air, but that when she complained about it, nothing was done. Other female presenters have described similar realities in other media offices in the 1980s.
Unfortunately, such public opinion that permitted promiscuity, sexual harassment and dishonouring women is not a thing of the past, but exists in modern day Britain and the culture of viewing women as commodities is sadly alive and well. The UK has the phenomenon of ‘lads mags'- men's magazines that focus heavily on the sexual portrayal of women in order to sell magazines. ‘Page 3 girl' is another similar phenomenon and this is big money for some media houses.
Western societies have made the debasement of women a norm and people fail to address the causes of this attitude and behaviour towards women. It is argued that men desire women, and that such magazines and newspapers are there to meet a demand and that it is all a bit of harmless fun. Tackling this problem at the source would require a curtailment of freedoms and there are many powerful vested interests (like media owners) that oppose that. Furthermore, politicians in a capitalist democratic society dare not defy those vested interests. Also, these politicians are less likely to legislate to reduce people's choices and freedoms even though these cause to harm society.
As a consequence, we see them forever searching for ways to reduce the damage after it has been done; endless child protection strategies to safeguard children from predators, instead of curbing the environment that breeds and nurtures such predators. There is very rarely an admission that ‘freedom' has gone too far and is the ultimate cause of harm to women in society - exploiting them for their physical appearance. Without confronting this issue, Britain will forever be dealing with the aftermath of similar scandals.
Taji Mustafa
Media Representative of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Britain
Praise be to Allah, prayer and peace be upon the Messenger of Allah and on his family, companions, and allies... and upon those who followed in his footsteps, and made the Islamic faith the basis for his thought and the divine rulings as the criterion for his actions and the source of his judgments...O Muslims everywhere...
A Message from the Director of Central Media Office of Hizb-ut Tahrir
Osman Bakhach Congratulates the Muslim Ummah on the occasion of the Blessed Eid al-Adha
May Allah (swt) Restore Our Glory and Authority on Eid al-Adha al Mubarak of 1433 Hijri
Beirut, Lebanon
Headlines:
Details:
Russian Foreign Minister: U.S. Playing Geopolitical Game in the Middle East:
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the daily newspaper, Rossiiskaya, that the United States is playing a geopolitical game in the Middle East. Lavrov said accusations against al-Assad "are only a camouflage to cover a big geopolitical game. Another round is playing now, aimed at re-making the Middle East geopolitically. And players are taking pains to secure their geopolitical positions." According to Lavrov, the orchestrated Arab Spring uprisings that swept Arab states in the Middle East and North Africa and led to the proxy war against Libya and now the al-Assad regime in Syria are the fruit of George W. Bush's labor and his Middle East "Pro-Democracy Policy," reports The Voice of Russia. Bush's Middle East policy was crafted by the American Enterprise Institute and other neocon think tanks. "Of course he should be getting credit because he socialized the world to the notion that somehow democracy was possible in the Arab world," Daniele Pletka, described as a foreign policy expert at the American Enterprise Institute, told McClatchy last November. "This was an almost ridiculous notion before his presidency. And we shouldn't discount the liberation of 50 million Muslims who'd lived under oppressive Afghan and Iraqi rule." In June, the benefactor of the Arab Spring hatched by the CIA, the Egyptian Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, staffed with former Mubarak loyalists, put a capstone on its victory and declared a military dictatorship in Egypt. After the Muslim Brotherhood was installed in the Egyptian parliament, it engaged in a predictable purge and began jailing opponents and journalists like Egyptian television presenter Tawfiq Okasha, who was imprisoned for defaming Salafist president Mohamed Morsi, a former member of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood from its inception has served the interests of British intelligence and later worked with the CIA. Without the British, "Radical Islam would have remained the illegitimate, repressive minority movement that it has always been, and the Middle East would have remained stable and prosperous," notes John Coleman, a former British Intelligence agent. The clash of civilizations agenda fomented by the globalists and the neocon faction requires endless discord and sectarian violence if the balkanization of the Arab and Muslim world is to be accomplished. In his translation of Oded Yinon's "The Zionist Plan for the Middle East," Israel Shahak notes that the idea of sowing discord and fragmenting the Arab and Muslim world "is not a new idea, nor does it surface for the first time in Zionist strategic thinking. Indeed, fragmenting all Arab states into smaller units has been a recurrent theme." Shahak points out that the American neocons who dominated foreign policy under Bush - and may once again do so under Romney - enthusiastically adopted the Israeli plan, which was conceived in the early 1950s soon after the establishment of the Israeli state. It resurfaced in the "Clean Break" document prepared in 1996 by a study group led by Richard Perle for Benjamin Netanyahu, at the time the prime minister of Israel.
Qatar Aims to Rehabilitate Hamas Image in the Eyes of the West:
The Emir of Qatar's visit to Gaza on Tuesday was a daring move according to analysts who believe the aim is to rehabilitate Hamas' image in Western eyes. This could coax it into the peace camp at a time when the Arab Spring revolts, and civil war in Syria, have been reshaping power balances across the Middle East. The Emir, Shaikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani, who is rare among Arab rulers in having met senior Israeli officials, denounced Israel's policies and praised people in Gaza for standing up to it with "bare chests" - but he also urged rival Palestinian leaders to abandon their feuds. The Gaza Strip is all but cut off from the world under a land and sea blockade by Israel and Egypt that is intended to obstruct the import of arms to Hamas. A Sunni Islamist group like several others supported by Qatar elsewhere, it has long been aided by Shiite Iran and its allies Syria and Hezbollah. In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas, Hamas' arch-rival, said it hoped the Qatari visit would not hinder the rebuilding of Palestinian unity, nor endorse a separate Palestinian territory in Gaza. This was the first visit to Gaza by any national leader since Hamas seized control of the enclave where 1.7 million people live from Abbas' forces in 2007. Israel had pulled out its troops and colonists from the territory two years earlier.
'Pakistan to Remain at Receiving End Regardless of Whether Obama or Romney Wins':
White House race between President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney is a curious affair around the globe, but not for Pakistan, according to an editorial in a Pakistan daily. The editorial in the Express Tribune said that for Pakistan, it will make a very little difference which candidate ultimately wins the election. Both the candidates clearly dislike each other, have scant regard for their opponent, yet, closely agree to what the other believes on a lot of issues than they disagree. Most importantly, both Obama and Romney are wholly committed to drone strikes in Pakistan. According to the report, Romney tried to differentiate himself from Obama on his Pakistan policy by claiming that he would attach strings to the aid given to Pakistan, but seemed unaware that this has already happened under the terms of the Kerry-Lugar Bill. Traditionally, Republicans have maintained warmer ties and given more aid to Pakistan, but have also been more comfortable dealing with the country's military dictators, the report said. That history will not matter too much, though, since there is a bipartisan consensus in Washington that Pakistan is brimming with rogue actors and that a military option, in the form of drone strikes, is completely necessary, it added. According to the report, the military and civilian governments will breathe a sigh of relief after both candidates rejected the debate moderator's proposal that the US "divorce" Pakistan. The aid spigot will remain even if there is a change of guard in Washington, it said. Foreign policy has barely been a blip in this election both because of the tiny substantive difference between Obama and Romney and also because elections are settled on economic, not international, issues.
Hudud will not Impact Non-Muslims, Malaysian Minister Says:
Hudud will not have an impact on non-Muslims in Malaysia, Umno Minister Datuk Seri Jamil Khir Baharom has said, disputing the repeated warnings by political ally MCA to the Chinese community on the controversial Islamic penal code. In a written reply to Tan Tee Beng (IND-Nibong Tebal), the minister for Islamic affairs, explained that hudud, which prescribes the amputation of hands for theft, could only be applied to those who come under the jurisdiction of the Syariah court - Muslims. "Therefore, hudud law will not impact non-Muslims," he concluded. MCA has been using the hudud issue to warn the non-Muslim community away from voting for Pakatan Rakyat (PR) in the coming polls, insisting that the pact's "dominant" partner PAS would insist on its implementation despite its ties with secular DAP and PKR. Hudud has remained a sensitive touch point in Southeast Asia's third-largest economy, which has a 60 per cent Muslim population, with political parties continuing to spar over the subject in the run-up to the 13th general election. The idea of an Islamic criminal code has been used to either scare the minority Chinese voters, or shore up support among the majority Malay-Muslim community. The Malay community is seen today as split three-ways among the ruling BN's mainstay and the country's biggest Malay party, Umno, the opposition's Islamist PAS, and PKR, which is seen as an urban liberal party.
East Turkistan: Chinese Authorities Multiply Raids on Uyghur Homes
Authorities in China's troubled northwestern region of Xinjiang are carrying out raids on the homes of local residents following clashes between ethnic minority Muslim Uyghurs and armed police in the region's central city of Korla, an exile group said. Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress, said there had been deaths and injuries among police and protesters on Friday after angry Uyghurs gathered outside a police station on Tuanjie Road in the city. "There were deaths and injuries on both sides during the violence," Raxit said. "The local authorities have enforced a news blackout since the clashes took place, and have been conducting raids." Uyghur residents of Xinjiang frequently report midnight, house-to-house raids on their homes during "strike hard" anti-terrorism campaigns, and after violent incidents. Xinjiang has been rocked by sporadic violent incidents in recent years, including three days of deadly ethnic riots in Urumqi in 2009 that left at least 197 people dead, according to official figures. The region is currently under tight security ahead of the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha on Friday and a crucial leadership transition for China's ruling Communist Party at a national congress on Nov. 8. Security and surveillance personnel are stationed in mosques across the region, and public assembly is forbidden, Raxit said.
Abu Hashim
On Monday 22/10/2012 (The Moscow Times newspaper) investigated the headscarf ban and Putin's comments on Thursday 18th October 2012, according to Reuters and other media agencies, Russian President Vladimir Putin commented on the recent hijab bans in schools in Russia's southern Stavropol region by stating, "We must always treat the religious feelings of people with great respect. That must be shown in the state's activities, in the nuances, in everything," adding however, "We have a secular state and we must proceed from this basis." He also suggested that European states which implement school uniform policies that prohibit wearing of religious dress should be viewed as a model for Russian schools with regards to how they respond to female students adopting the Islamic headscarf. His comments have been interpreted by Russian and other media outlets as open support for a hijab ban in the country's schools. His stance emulates the position of other extremist secular states such as France, Belgium, Germany, Canada, Turkey, and Uzbekistan that have also imposed hijab or niqab bans in their society.
Central Media Representative of Hizb-ut Tahrir, Dr. Nazreen Nawaz responded to Mr. Putin's comments saying:
"The blatant hypocrisy and flagrant lie of Putin's call for the Russian state to demonstrate respect for the religious beliefs of its citizens is truly breath-taking considering that this is a state that has a long track-record of pursuing authoritarian repressive policies against its Muslim minority, as also confirmed by the Russian Human Rights Institute. Over the last few years, Muslim women related to men carrying the Islamic dawah have been harassed, imprisoned, abused and threatened with knives by Russian security agencies in order to pressure their men-folk to leave their Islamic duty. The children of some have even been placed in orphanages as part of the Russian state's "anti-extremism" alias "anti-Islam" policies. Now, not content with the persecution of innocent Muslim women, Putin has clearly set his sight on excluding pious Muslim girls from Russian schools, simply for dressing according to the tenets of their religious beliefs in an attempt to fight the rising adherence and commitment of Russia's Muslim women to Islam and to force-feed them flawed secular beliefs."
"While talking of respect for religious faiths, he simultaneously backs the relegation of Muslim girls to second-class status with regards to access to education for practicing their Islamic obligations. He proudly expresses the secular credentials of his state, while this is an ideology that has repeatedly demonstrated its intolerance towards religious minorities and its fault lines, and inadequacy in accommodating rights for all, illustrated by hijab, niqab, and minaret bans in secular states. Muslim women have understood clearly that "respect" in secular states is a privilege only for those who sign up to its beliefs, while marginalisation, stigmatisation, and discrimination are the diet which those devout to their religious faith have become accustomed to under the secular system. This is an ideology that has long-lost the intellectual debate on how to organise just, fair, and harmonious societies."
"Furthermore, how dare Mr. Putin speak of respecting the religious feelings of Muslim women when his government pursues a domestic and foreign policy that has terrorised the innocent Muslim women of Chechnya and supported mass-murder by the butcher Assad of the daughters of this Ummah in Syria whose only call is to live in dignity under the system of Islam."
"Moreover, what has the secular system that he celebrates actually brought Russian women? Today, Russian women face an epidemic of exploitation, trafficking, violence, and discrimination in pay. The secular liberal values promoted by Russia's government have created a social identity for women where they are condemned to be seen as nothing more than a sexual tool to be used and discarded like any other economic commodity. So those secularists who enjoy accusing Islam of oppressing women need to look in their own backyard, as well as recognise that it is not Islam that has stripped Muslim girls of an education and denied them their basic rights but fundamentalist secular systems and the imposition of fanatical liberal ideals upon Muslim women."
"As the women of Hizb-ut Tahrir, we call our dear, devout Muslim sisters in Russia to hold fast to their Islamic beliefs and noble Islamic dress that exemplifies the noble and virtuous value of modesty and dignity. Do not be intimidated or pressured into leaving obedience to your Creator by hijab bans or other anti-Islam policies that are nothing but desperate, weak tactics employed by a state that realises that it is unable to shake your intellectual conviction in Islam or strip from your heart your pure love for your deen. So reject the flawed secular beliefs and be steadfast in your Islamic beliefs and obligations, in the knowledge that you are the ones who have the gained the Pleasure of the Creator of the universe, Allah (swt). And work hard for the establishment of the Khilafah "Caliphate" state under which you will be able to wear your Islamic dress with honour and fulfil your Islamic obligations in an environment of security and true respect."
((إِنَّ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا يُنفِقُونَ أَمْوَالَهُمْ لِيَصُدُّوا عَن سَبِيلِ اللَّـهِ ۚ فَسَيُنفِقُونَهَا ثُمَّ تَكُونُ عَلَيْهِمْ حَسْرَةً ثُمَّ يُغْلَبُونَ ۗ وَالَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا إِلَىٰ جَهَنَّمَ يُحْشَرُونَ))
"Verily, those who disbelieve spend their wealth to hinder (men) from the Path of Allah, and so will they continue to spend it; but in the end it will become an anguish for them. Then they will be overcome." [TMQ Al-Anfal: 36]
Dr. Nazreen Nawaz
Central Media Representative, Hizb-ut Tahrir
