About this blog

In recent times a plethora of misconceptions, misrepresentation and myths have been forged about Islam
and Muslims. Many western influentials from politicians, policymakers to judges have taken it upon
themselves to undermine the Islamic beliefs, values and rules so to make it palatable to their
egotistic minds and the secular liberal thoughts.

This blog is dedicated:-

1. To argue the point for Islam in its belief and systems and to refute the misconceptions.
2. To expose the weakness and contradictions of all forms of secularism.

15 Jan 2011

Tunisia: The end of oppressive rulers

Tunisia has now become a long list of nations where a popular uprising has led to the removal of a dictator that long oppressed his own people.

The catalyst for the this popular uprising was when 26-year-old unemployed graduate Mohammed Bouazizi was brutally beaten by Tunisian police and the produce on his market stall confiscated, because of his crime, for not having the correct permit needed to sell produce. In a country with a 14% unemployment rate, this was the last straw and pushed him over the edge. He doused himself in gasoline and set himself on fire outside government offices, he eventually died of his injuries on the 5th January 2011.

From December 2010 demonstrations only grew in size as the economic situation of the country never improved as Ben Ali, the president long promised. The death of Mohammed Bouazizi led to the masses to take to the streets due to corruption, inflation and unemployment, since then nearly a hundred people have been killed by security forces.

The government of Ben Ali, initially responded with defiance, it was stunned by the scale of public disquiet. Ben Ali, an absolute dictator, has left no opposition within the country. Ben Ali came to power 23 years ago in 1987 in a similar situation. Then, president Habib Bourgiba, who was similarly unpopular, he had ruled for over 30 years but was forced out and replaced by one of his inner circle - Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.

It appears the month long popular uprising led to a coup reportedly by Gen. Rachid Ammar, who previously was fired by Ben Ali for refusing to use deadly force against the protesters demonstrating across the country.

With this in mind the following points need to be understood:-

1. Tunisia has shown that change can evolve very quickly with the overthrow of ruler no matter how strong the regime may appear. Many regimes in the Muslim world make use of the army and the secret service to maintain order and their positions of power. With the masses on the streets no amount of state apparatus can stop thousands of people wanting change. The Muslim rulers have created a mirage that the status quo requires submission with change impossible due to poverty and a system that is non-operational. They have constructed this so any movement is crippled and unable to sustain the momentum for change as they lack resources and the unity. The West have added to this through calls of reform and democratic change which only ensures the status quo remains. Tunisia contradicts all this as there was no organised movement to lead the demonstrators as the president had for long clamped down upon them. All of this shows that change is not just easy but inevitable, when the rulers do not represent their people.

2. It is important those calling for change do not take help from foreigners, however desperate the group may be. There are numerous examples of foreign nations supporting groups that called for change, which led to foreign interference once the existing regime was overthrown. Also such change is weak and not sustainable. The colour revolutions in Eurasia are a case in point. The West supported, funded and aided the otherthrow of pro-Russian leaders in Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine and Georgia, using the sentiment for change to take such nations out of Russia's orbit. However Russia has managed to reverse such changes. In the case of Ukraine Russia even brought the ruler who was over thrown in the Orange revolution back to power. It is important that the call for change remains pure and it remains indigenous, in such a case the change is for the people rather then for the interests of another power.

3. Those calling for and leading the call for change must ensure there is a post-regime strategy. There is no point over throwing the regime when someone from the existing rulers inner circle will take over. Similarly the establishment of elections after the removal of a dictator does not constitute change as elections are the simplest exercise that can be manipulated to ensure the pre-revolution infrastructure remains. Pakistan and Bangladesh are good examples of this. In Iran in 1979 after years of oppressive rule by the Shah supported by the West events reached boiling point when protesters were fired upon under orders by the Shah. This situation led to the emergence of communist, Marxist groups with academics, secularists and Islamic groups, all coming together to overthrow the Shah with no plan for the post-Shah government or system. Ayatollah Raholla Khomeini filled the void, once in power he worked to remove all those who could challenge his grip on power - which were all those groups who worked to otherthrow the Shah, many were assassinated, imprisoned or sent into exile. The details of the post - revolution architecture needs to be outlined first and on this basis groups and individuals should come together, without this the movement for change is destined to fail, even if it gains power.

4. In the last decade the position of the Muslims rulers has become untenable. It should be remembered the post WW1 structure of the Muslim world was constructed to ensure they would never be independent. David Fromkin, Professor and expert on Economic History at the University of Chicago highlighted this: "Massive amounts of the wealth of the old Ottoman Empire were now claimed by the victors. But one must remember that the Islamic empire had tried for centuries to conquer Christian Europe and the power brokers deciding the fate of those defeated people were naturally determined that these countries should never be able to organize and threaten Western interests again. With centuries of mercantilist experience, Britain and France created small, unstable states whose rulers needed their support to stay in power. The development and trade of these states were controlled and they were meant never again to be a threat to the West. These external powers then made contracts with their puppets to buy Arab resources cheaply, making the feudal elite enormously wealthy while leaving most citizens in poverty." This system is now falling apart as the Muslim world has seen that the rulers are the gatekeepers of Western interests. The secret services across the Muslim world, poverty, sectarianism, nationalism and corruption have all failed to stem the tied for change the Muslims desire. The Muslim rulers have struggled to thwart the mobilisation of the Ummah in an age where communication technology has advanced tremendously. With the explosion of satellite television, the Internet and mobile phones, people have found it much easier to communicate and to mobilise. Tunisia has shown that the Muslim rulers are on their last legs, all the Ummah needs is for the call for change to spread across the Muslim world.

Conclusions

The Muslim world should take inspiration from Tunisia in bringing change to the Muslim world. As one commentator wrote recently in the Washington Post, the US's greatest threat in the Middle East is not war, it is revolution. Since the floods in Pakistan the call for change is slowly gaining momentum, In Egypt many are looking at the possibility of a system not inspired from the West as Hosni Mubarak is nearing his end. The Ummah globally needs to ensure the sentiment for change is not high jacked by the West or their agents. The Ummah needs to show the armies in the Muslim world nothing less then Khilafah will do.

[Written by Adnan Khan, January 2011]
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What they said...

“Islam represented the greatest military power on earth…It was the foremost economic power in the world…It had achieved the highest level so far in human history, in the arts and sciences of civilization...Islam in contrast created a world civilization, poly-ethnic, multiracial, international, one might even say intercontinental.”





[Bernard Lewis, Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Orientalist and Historian, 2001]





"There was once a civilization that was the greatest in the world. It was able to create a continental super-state that stretched from ocean to ocean, and from northern climes to tropics and deserts…the civilization I'm talking about was the Islamic world from the year 800 to 1600… Although we are often unaware of our indebtedness to this other civilization, its gifts are very much a part of our heritage"





[Carly Fiorina, ex-CEO of Hewlett-Packard, 2001]





"For the first three centuries of its existence (circ. A.D 650-1000) the realm of Islam was the most civilized and progressive portion of the world. Studded with splendid cities, gracious mosques and quiet universities where the wisdom of the ancient world was preserved and appreciated, the Moslem world offered a striking contrast to the Christian West, then sunk in the night of the Dark Ages."





[Lothrop Stoddard, Ph.D (Harvard), American political theorist and historian, 1932]





"Medieval Islam was technologically advanced and open to innovation. It achieved far higher literacy rates than in contemporary Europe;it assimilated the legacy of classical Greek civilization to such a degree that many classical books are now known to us only through Arabic copies. It invented windmills ,trigonometry, lateen sails and made major advances in metallurgy, mechanical and chemical engineering and irrigation methods. In the middle-ages the flow of technology was overwhelmingly from Islam to Europe rather from Europe to Islam. Only after the 1500's did the net direction of flow begin to reverse."





[Jared Diamond, UCLA sociologist and Author, 1997]



"No other society has such a record of success in uniting in an equality of status, of opportunity and endeavour so many and so varied races of mankind. The great Muslim communities of Africa, India and Indonesia, perhaps also the small community in Japan, show that Islam has still the power to reconcile apparently irreconcilable elements of race and tradition. If ever the opposition of the great societies of the East and west is to be replaced by cooperation, the mediation of Islam is an indispensable condition."





[Hamilton Alexander Rosskeen Gibb, Professor at Harvard University, 1932]





“The Muhammadan Law which is binding on all -- from the crowned head to the meanest subject is a law interwoven with a system of the wisest, the most learned and the most enlightened jurisprudence that ever existed in the world.”





[Edmund Burke, British Statesman and Philosopher, 1789]





"The Exile here is not like in our homeland. The Turks hold respectable Jews in esteem. Here and in Alexandria, Egypt, Jews are the chief officers and administrators of the customs, and the king’s revenues. No injuries are perpetuated against them in all the empire. Only this year, in consequence of the extraordinary expenditure caused by the war against Shah Tahmsap al-Sufi, were the Jews required to make advances of loans to the princes."





[David dei Rossi, Jewish Traveller 17CE, quoted by Norman A. Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands]





"The notable religious tolerance towards Christians and Jew under Muslim rule had given way to the uncompromising zealotry of Spanish Inquisition. Jews and Muslims thus fled Spain with large numbers of Jews immigrating to the Ottoman Empire which was known for its tolerance to the Jews."





[Graham Fuller, Author and former CIA, 1995]





“If there is much misunderstanding in the West about the nature of Islam, there is also much ignorance about the debt our own culture and civilization owe to the Islamic world. It is a failure, which stems, I think, from the straightjacket of history, which we have inherited. The medieval Islamic world, from central Asia to the shores of the Atlantic, was a world where scholars and men of learning flourished. But because we have tended to see Islam as the enemy of the West, as an alien culture, society, and systems of beliefs, we have tended to ignore or erase its great relevance to our own history”





[Charles Philip Arthur George, HRH The Prince of Wales, 1993]





"...Not being subject to the Sharia, Jews and Christians were free to go to their own religious authorities for adjudication of disputes; but in many cases they went instead to the [Muslim] Qadi"





[Richard W. Bulliet, Professor of History and Author, 2004]





"Here in the land of the Turks we have nothing to complain of. We possess great fortunes; much gold and silver are in our hands. We are not oppressed by heavy taxes and our commerce is free and unhindered. Rich are the fruits of the earth. Everything is cheap and each one of us lives in freedom. Here a Jew is not compelled to wear a yellow star as a badge of shame as is the case in Germany where even wealth and great fortune is a curse for a Jew because he therewith arouses jealousy among the Christians and they devise all kinds of slander against him to rob him of his gold. Arise my brethren, gird up your loins, collect up your forces and come to us."





[In his book 'Constantinople', Philip Mansel quotes a rabbi in Turkey writing to his brethren in Europe where they were facing increasing persecution after 1453]





"Praise be to the beneficent God for his mercy towards me! Kings of the earth, to whom his [the Caliph’s] magnificence and power are known, bring gifts to him, conciliating his favour by costly presents, such as the king of the Germans, the king of the Gebalim, the king of Constantinople, and others. All their gifts pass through my hands, and I am charged with making gifts in return. (Let my lips express praise to the God in heaven who so far extends his loving kindness towards me without any merit of my own, but in the fullness of his mercies.) I always ask the ambassadors of these monarchs about our brethren the Jews, the remnant of the captivity, whether they have heard anything concerning the deliverance of those who have pined in bondage and had found no rest."





[Hasdai Ibn Shaprut (915-990 CE) Jewish physician, chief minister of Islamic Caliphate in Cordova, 'The Jewish Caravan']





"In Baghdad there are about forty thousand Jews, and they dwell in security, prosperity, and honour under the great Caliph [al-Mustanjid, 1160-70 CE], and amongst them are great sages, the Heads of the Academies engaged in the study of the Law…’"





[Benjamin of Tudela, Rabbi in Baghdad in the year 1168 CE, 'The Jew in the Medieval World']





"Those Eastern thinkers of the ninth century laid down, on the basis of their theology, the principle of the Rights of Man, in those very terms, comprehending the rights of individual liberty, and of inviolability of person and property; described the supreme power in Islam, or Califate, as based on a contract, implying conditions of capacity and performance, and subject to cancellation if the conditions under the contract were not fulfilled; elaborated a Law of War of which the humane, chivalrous prescriptions would have put to the blush certain belligerents in the Great War; expounded a doctrine of toleration of non-Moslem creeds so liberal that our West had to wait a thousand years before seeing equivalent principles adopted.





[Leon Ostorog, French Jurist]





"The debt of our science to that of the Arabs does not consist in startling discoveries or revolutionary theories; science owes a great deal more to Arab culture, it owes its existence"





[Robert Briffault, Novelist and Historian, 1928]





"The only effective link between the old and the new science is afforded by the Arabs. The dark ages come as an utter gap in the scientific history of Europe, and for more than a thousand years there was not a scientific man of note except in Arabia"





[Oliver Joseph Lodge, Writer and Professor of Physics, 1893]





“Thus, when Muslims crossed the straits of Gibraltar from North Africa in 711 and invaded the Iberian Peninsula, Jews welcomed them as liberators from Christian Persecution.”





[Zion Zohar, Jewish scholar at Florida International University, 2005]







“Throughout much of the period in question, Arabic served as the global language of scholarship, and learned men of all stripes could travel widely and hold serious and nuanced discussions in this lingua franca. Medieval Western scholars who wanted access to the latest findings also needed to master the Arabic Tongue or work from translations by those who had done so.”





[Jonathan Lyons, Author, Writer and Lecturer, 2009]