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The most recent provocations emanating from Europe are but one in a long line of hostilities directed at Islam and the Muslims.
The West’s campaign against Islam did not commence with the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, nor the production of Geert Wilder’s polemic ‘Fitna’, nor the publication of the blasphemous cartoons, nor the establishment of the ‘Stop the Islamisation of Europe’ coalition, nor the banning of the hijab, nor the expulsion of Muslims, nor the secret rendition of Muslim nationals, nor the provocations of the Pope, nor the adoption of forced assimilationist policies, nor the propaganda spurting from the mouths of Presidents, Prime Ministers and politicians.
On the contrary, George W Bush, the so called leader of the ‘free world’, has not shied away from reminding the world about the historical nature of this struggle when he makes repeated references to the ‘crusades’.
But what has brought upon the intensification of the West’s historical struggle against Islam? The answer is two-fold:
Since the earliest days of Islamic rule, the Christian world had sought to re-assert its authority over the holy lands of Palestine and its surrounding lands. The humiliation, however, of repeated defeats over countless centuries never extinguished Europe’s desire to fulfill what is regarded as a historical and religious imperative.
The success of the crusader campaign was realized after WWI - more than seven centuries after the first campaign was launched. The Europeans, led primarily by Britain and France at the time, succeeded in occupying not just Palestine but the entire Muslim world.
The Western world took comfort in the comprehensiveness of its victory: the Uthmani state had been dismantled, the lands of the Muslims divided, their leaders expunged, their Sharia uprooted, their culture corrupted, their thinking polluted and their vast resources of the Muslims secured. But the glee of the Europeans would prove premature.
After more than a century of occupation, enslavement and indoctrination, the Western world - now led by America - awoke to find the Muslims refusing to swallow the poison that had been forced upon them. The Muslim world had in fact sought to re-assert its Islamic roots, reconstruct its Islamic identity, and rebuild its Islamic political institutions. The Muslim world not only comprehensively rejected Western designs over its lands, it now sought to challenge the West’s authority over these lands and its stranglehold over the world. Given this predicament, the Western world searched urgently for the source of Muslim inspiration. The answer laid not in their numbers, nor their strategic lands, nor its immeasurable resources. It was not the millions of soldiers lying dormant in neither their barracks nor the nuclear weapons under its possession. The source of Muslim strength laid in that which the Western world never managed to
destroy - the Islamic Aqeedah.
So the West embarked upon a renewed campaign seeking to undermine the Aqeedah of the Muslims; the Aqeedah that serves as the backbone of Muslim revivalism, and serves as the pillar upon which the Ummah will re-assert its international presence and challenge anything that contradicts it.
It is for this reason that we witness concerted attacks upon Islam, the Prophet (saw) and the Quran; attacks upon the rationality of Islam, its belief systems and its message for humanity. The West is expending every effort seeking to shake the conviction of the Muslims in their Islam, its ability to free them from the shackles of Western hegemony and its ability to provide an alternative ideological viewpoint for humanity.
Alas, it is but another effort that will be met with ignominy, for Allah (swt) says:
إن الذين كفروا ينفقون أموالهم ليصدوا عن سبيل الله فسينفقونها ثم تكون عليهم حسرة ثم يغلبون والذين كفروا إلى جهنم يحشرون
“Verily, those who disbelieve spend their wealth to hinder (people) from the Path of Allah, and so will they continue to spend it; but in the end it will become an anguish for the; then they will be overcome, and those who disbelieve will be gathered unto Hell.” [Al-Anfal:36]
From the second angle, the ideological challenge confronting the West emanates not only from the Muslim world abroad, but also from Muslims living in Western societies.
The intensification of the anti-Islamic agenda in the West serves to generate a potent atmosphere of fear, hostility and distrust against Muslim populations in the West.
The question is: how far are Western governments prepared to go in the demonisation of Muslim communities, and are they willing to take responsibility for the inevitable conclusion of such a campaign?
Are Western governments planting the seeds for future radical policies, preparing for the expulsion of Muslim communities, even by force if necessary? The silence of Western leaders is deafening.
The struggle before us is indeed a struggle for humanity. The whole of mankind is suffering the horrors of modern day colonialism, the barbarity of military adventurism, the racism of colonial elitism and the travesties of economic liberalism. The
horrors, however, are not limited to the political or the economic, but extends to the deeply personal – the corruption of the individual, the family and the community.
O Muslims! You possess, by virtue of your Islam, the antidote to the poison that is Western ideology. Hizb ut-Tahrir calls you to join your hands with us so as to free the Muslim world from the shackles of Western hegemony. Joins your hands with us so as to establish the righteous Khilafah; the Khilafah that will rescue the Muslims and the whole of humanity, the Khilafah that is built upon the Islamic Aqeedah, implements the Sharia, protects the Deen, defends its honour, and silences, once and for all, the tongues of the evil.
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