بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
The Women’s Section in the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir, International Women’s Conference, “The Family: Challenges & Islamic Solutions”
TALK 5
LEBANON
Countering International and National Agendas against Islamic Family Laws
(Translated)
I greet you with the greeting of Islam, Assalamu Alaikum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuh,
Allah said in His Holy Book, after Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Raheem:
﴿وَلَن تَرْضَى عَنكَ الْيَهُودُ وَلاَ النَّصَارَى حَتَّى تَتَّبِعَ مِلَّتَهُمْ قُلْ إِنَّ هُدَى اللّهِ هُوَ الْهُدَى وَلَئِنِ اتَّبَعْتَ أَهْوَاءهُم بَعْدَ الَّذِي جَاءكَ مِنَ الْعِلْمِ مَا لَكَ مِنَ اللّهِ مِن وَلِيٍّ وَلاَ نَصِيرٍ﴾
“And the Jews will not be pleased with you, nor the Christians until you follow their religion. Say; “Surely Allah's guidance, that is the (true) guidance”. And if you follow their desires after the knowledge that has come to you, you shall have no guardian from Allah, nor any helper” [Al-Baqara:120].
Honorable Sisters:
The so-called women's issue is one of the issues that the West adopts in spreading its civilization and concepts, especially in the Islamic world. So, they set the goals, drew up the plans, determined the means, and assigned large sums of money in order to impose their secular democratic model, which focuses on the elimination of the cohesive Muslim family, with a view to disrupting the pillars of society in the Islamic countries and the fragmentation of family ties, and ensuing spreading the Western concepts with all their decline in values, ethics and behavior, as in the Western societies, leading to destroying the society in the Muslim countries, and this is what they seek.
And after the West used to deliberately cover the concepts of Kufr with an Islamic facade for the ease of being accepted by Muslims to be planted in the Islamic life as Islam, it has recently shown its concealed hatred openly and arrogantly to declare relentless war against the provisions of the Islamic religion without any equivocation or falsification. So, it focused on important and dangerous titles to prepare for its victory over the provisions of Islam, such as the renewal of religion, developing religious discourse and amending the divine rules to conform to their claims with modernity and novelty, especially those relating to the Muslim family by directing their poisonous arrows towards Muslim women and their original role and chastity because they understand the importance of the role of women in the family and society life. To carry out their plans to strike Islam and eliminate it in the hearts of Muslims, it was necessary to reach out to woman and remove her from her primary role of being a mother, a wife,and a begetter of men, the pious, conscious and knowledgeable about her Deen and her very existence and a maker of heroes.
Accordingly, America and the so-called "United Nations with its organizations" have adopted this by all means: several international conventions and declarations have been concluded, such as the Convention on the Political Rights of Women in 1952, the Tehran Declaration on the Rights of Women in 1968 and the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in 1979, as well as a series of international conferences on women in order to consecrate and implement the conventions. The first conference in 1975 (International Women's Year), held in Mexico City, calling for equality, development and peace. The Copenhagen Conference on Women in 1980, the Nairobi Conference in 1985 and the Population and Development Conference held in Cairo in 1994 which called for access to sexual and reproductive health services, including birth control. Then the Beijing Conference in 1995, and the Netherlands Conference in 1999, where they legalized homosexuality, safe abortion and the practice of adultery under the name of sexual freedom for adolescents!!
From these international conferences, regional conferences have also emerged; each discussing women's issues such as: women and information, women and education, women and the family, women and development, women's economic empowerment, and other topics designed to mislead the woman who is part and parcel, rather the bedrock in the integration and cohesion of the family. We should not forget the various organizations such as UNICEF, UNESCO and UNIFEM which have focused on the concept of "gender", which is an explicit call to homosexuality through absolute equality between men and women and the abolition of all congenital differences between them, even the biological ones, denying the saying of the Almighty:﴾ يَا أَيُّهَا النَّاسُ إِنَّا خَلَقْنَاكُم مِّن ذَكَرٍ وَأُنثَى﴿ “O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female” [Al-Hujurat:13].
They have also focused on the concept of early marriage, mixed with reproductive culture, which led to a high percentage of spinsterhood and the prevalence of obscenity and vice.
And of course, all these organizations, associations and conferences have been generously funded by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and Amnesty International not for love and generosity, but for the reason explained by the Holy verse:
﴿مَّا يَوَدُّ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا مِنْ أَهْلِ الْكِتَابِ وَلَا الْمُشْرِكِينَ أَن يُنَزَّلَ عَلَيْكُم مِّنْ خَيْرٍ مِّن رَّبِّكُمْ﴾
“Neither those who disbelieve from the People of the Scripture nor the polytheists wish that any good should be sent down to you from your Lord.” [Al-Baqara:105].
If we look, my sisters, at the situation of women in the countries of those who claim to carry the flame of their liberation in our Islamic world, we see the dire situation that women have reached in their secular democratic system. This is reflected in documented statistics which there is no space to be mentioned here but can be limited to some examples in America only as it is the apex of the so called Western civilization, where 74% of the poor elderly and homeless people are women and 85% live alone without any helper or assistant!! From 1980 to 1990, almost a million women were engaged in prostitution in America. According to the International Labor Organization, at least 100,000 children are used as prostitutes each year as part of the $ 9.8 billion US sex trafficking industry.
According to a report on CNN in November 2017, a total number of 249,078 children were born to women aged 15–19 years. Here, they do not attack the illegitimate relationships in their country of this age group that they considered to be young for early marriage in the Muslim world - despite the foundlings and young single mothers that result from it - while we see it to be the top agenda of women's organizations in our Islamic countries!!
In the year 2000, families with unmarried people comprised 48%, the percentage of unmarried fathers was 35% and unmarried mothers 42%. One million female minors in America were pregnant outside a marriage, and 400,000 of them undergone abortion. More than 50% of males and 1.5 million women have practiced homosexuality. This is just the tip of the iceberg of the results of their democracy and freedoms; the life of chaos and social disintegration that they live and want to export to us by all means.
So, is this how, my dear sisters, the advancement of women and their families take place? Or is the purpose behind these projects and conventions to gain access to the social life of Muslims and to destroy the Muslim family by corrupting Muslim women and thereby corrupting the entire Muslim generation?
I think that the answer is clear, and unfortunately a large part of their goals and plans were achieved!! It is not hidden from the ovserver of the status of the social life in the Islamic world the bad and extremely precarious conditions in which the Muslim family is going through, and the turmoil and anxiety that almost surrounds it in every aspect of it.
Yes, this is the case of a coalition and meeting, and this is what the family today is; divided and lost because of the legal amendments and political measures that affected our family life in all its aspects, starting with marriage, the solemn covenant, and ending with birth control. In Egypt, President Sisi stressed on 30/9/2017 the need to preserve minor girls from the phenomenon of marriage, which led the People's Assembly to enact legislation to ban marriage before the age of 18. Moreover, the Organization of Justice and Development - a non-governmental organization that operates in accordance with the principles of the Universal Declaration of Rights Human rights and international human rights legislations issued by the United Nations - called to enact strict legislation to raise the age of marriage for males and females to 20 years in addition to the enactment of a law to criminalize early marriage and criminalize minors or customary marriages. And to address what they call the danger of population increase in Egypt and the increase in birth rate, this national organization has suggested to pass a law and legislation prohibiting family from having more than two children for 10 years, with the third child not receiving support or free education, whereas the Shara’ urged for marriage to reproduce and beget and increase the human type due to the saying of the Messenger of Allah (saw): «تَنَاكَحُوا تَكَاثَرُوا تَنَاسَلُوا فَإِنِّي مُبَاهٍ بِكُمُ الأُمَمَ يَوْمَ الْقِيَامَةِ»“Marry and beget children for I'll be proud of you before the nations on the Day of Resurrection”.
In Tunisia, the Ministry of Women and the Family has lifted the reservations to the CEDAW Convention, which contravenes many of the Shara’ provisions which are known by necessity in religion. It issued a law permitting a Muslim to marry a non-Muslim while the Shara’ forbids this type of marriage in a clear and explicit text in His (swt) saying:
﴿يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا إِذَا جَاءكُمُ الْمُؤْمِنَاتُ مُهَاجِرَاتٍ فَامْتَحِنُوهُنَّ اللَّهُ أَعْلَمُ بِإِيمَانِهِنَّ فَإِنْ عَلِمْتُمُوهُنَّ مُؤْمِنَاتٍ فَلَا تَرْجِعُوهُنَّ إِلَى الْكُفَّارِ لَا هُنَّ حِلٌّ لَّهُمْ وَلَا هُمْ يَحِلُّونَ لَهُنَّ﴾
“O you who have believed, when the believing women come to you as emigrants, examine them. Allah is most knowing as to their faith. And if you know them to be believers, then do not return them to the disbelievers; they are not lawful [wives] for them, nor are they lawful [husbands] for them.” [Al-Mumtahina:10].
Even the divine rules of Nafaqah (maintenance) were not saved; the judiciary issued an exceptional ruling that obligated a mother to take care of the Nafaqah of her children after divorce from her husband as a contribution to the Nafaqah of her children who are in the custody of her ex-husband!! While the Shara' does not oblige a woman to give Nafaqah even if she is capable of it but enjoined it on her male guardian. That Nafaqah is the right of women over men and not a favor from him, she takesit honored and cherished. The Almighty said:
﴿لِيُنفِقْ ذُو سَعَةٍ مِّن سَعَتِهِ وَمَن قُدِرَ عَلَيْهِ رِزْقُهُ فَلْيُنفِقْ مِمَّا آتَاهُ اللَّهُ لَا يُكَلِّفُ اللَّهُ نَفْسًا إِلَّا مَا آتَاهَا سَيَجْعَلُ اللَّهُ بَعْدَ عُسْرٍ يُسْرًا﴾
“Let a man of wealth spend from his wealth, and he whose provision is restricted - let him spend from what Allah has given him. Allah does not charge a soul except [according to] what He has given it. Allah will bring about, after hardship, ease” [At-Talaq: 7].
And He said:
﴿وَعَلَى الْمَوْلُودِ لَهُ رِزْقُهُنَّ وَكِسْوَتُهُنَّ بِالْمَعْرُوفِ﴾
“Upon the father is the mothers' provision and their clothing according to what is acceptable.” [Al-Baqara: 233]. This is in addition to preventing polygamy and giving women the right to divorce a husband without a legitimate reason.
In Sudan, Nafaqah cases are considered one of the most prevalent cases in the Sudanese courts, amounting to 70 Nafaqah cases per day due to the lack in the Sudanese personal status law of 1991, which is based on non-Islamic basis, of binding articles that facilitate the collection of Nafaqah from the husband, resulting in a real suffering experienced by the divorced woman and her children.
In Jordan, a Supreme Council for Population was established with the aim of reducing reproduction and begetting through birth control and infertility under the pretext of improving the economic conditions of the population and linking poverty and unemployment to family growth, while an official report was issued in 2004, indicating that the reproductive ratio in 1976 was (7.4) and it recently reached (2.1) while, unemployment, poverty and annual budget deficits are on the rise. The popular and union movement that has recently occurred is the best proof of their incorrect linking of the economic crisis with the increasing birth rate in order to mislead the public opinion and to divert it away from accounting the state, because it is the one which produced this deplorable reality as a result of the application of the capitalist economic vision in Muslim countries!!
In Turkey, Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said in a speech during his participation in an event organized by the Ministry of the Family on the International Women's Day that it is necessary to update the provisions of Islam, noting that Islam cannot be applied with rulings issued 14 or 15 centuries ago, and that the application of Islam differs according to place, time and circumstances and here lies the beauty of Islam in his opinion!! This is reflected in the laws of marriage in the country, which are conducted in civil courts in addition to the abolition of polygamy officially since 1926, while the Shara’ allowed polygamy by His (swt) saying: ﴾فَانْكِحُوا مَا طَابَ لَكُمْ مِنَ النِّسَاءِ مَثْنَىٰ وَثُلَاثَ وَرُبَاعَ“﴿"Then marry those that please you of [other] women, two or three or four.” [An-Nisa: 3].
So, my sisters, the dictates of Western organizations have met with the employment of governments and regimes, and the dupery of many of the women's movements and associations that have existed only for corrupting. The result was programs and projects advocating the liberation of women and their equality with men, in addition to legal amendments that aim to eradicate the remaining Islam in family relations, rather, to distort Allah’s laws in the eyes of all Muslims. These puppet regimes began to achieve the outcome of the international conventions and to occupy the Muslim women with issues and they deluded them that they are fundamental and essential to the elimination of injustice, after they had deluded that this injustice is coming from the provisions of Islam. So, they enacted laws attacking Allah's limits to make adultery permissible, and they distorted Allah's rulings in divorce, inheritance, polygamy and mixing, and changed the Shar’i marriage to a civil marriage, permitted the marriage of a Muslim woman to a Kaffir and gave the Muslim the right to marry his sister in breastfeeding. In addition to manipulating the legitimate waiting period of divorce and criminalizing and combating early marriage as a legal offense of human rights punishable by law, as well as encouraging pregnant women to have abortions and consume birth control pills, up to carrying out measures to implement the birth control policy in order to reduce the high rate of growth in births, which is becoming a terrible concern for the West. In addition to the absence of affection, mercy and tranquility between husbands and wives, the obedience of children to their parents, and the ties of relationship between one family. Along with the negative consequences of these poor conditions of divorce, tearing apart the family, dispersal of its members and other problems such as the invasion of free mixing in the lives of Muslims, repletion ofnursing homes with elderly people, and the spread of women who are naked even though they are wearing clothes andexhibitingtheir beauty and decorations, etc… In short, the follower of the family of Muslim finds that corruption has been spread and manifested openly and publicly. The family has become a mixture of Islamic and Western ideas, and more often than not, the ideas of Kufr predominate in the absence of the nurturing mother, whereas the ideas and concepts of Islam are being secluded in the corner of alienation from its members. Allah says: ﴿ظَهَرَ الْفَسَادُ فِي الْبَرِّ وَالْبَحْرِ بِمَا كَسَبَتْ أَيْدِي النَّاسِ لِيُذِيقَهُم بَعْضَ الَّذِي عَمِلُوا لَعَلَّهُمْ يَرْجِعُونَ﴾“Corruption has appeared throughout the land and sea by [reason of] what the hands of people have earned, so He may let them taste part of [the consequence of] what they have done that perhaps they will return [to righteousness].” [Ar-Rum:41].
Honorable Sisters:
What we have said reinforces what we are trying to show that it is surprising and even outrageous to understand that these conferences and conventions, which apparently are part of the development projects and the empowerment of women while in fact they are part of the West's relentless attempts to divert the Muslim woman from her path which is drawn by the Creator of the universe, man and life, and to intensely corrupt the interconnected Muslim family based on the provisions of the Lord, as it is well known that the articles and provisions of those international conventions have been developed and enacted only to eradicate the provisions of Islam from the lives of Muslims, especially with regard to their social life system, which has to some extent retained some provisions of the true religion. To emphasis, article 2 of the CEDAW stipulates that “States parties shall abolish existing laws, regulations, customs and practices which constitute discrimination against women including those based on religion and replace them by international laws". As well as article 4 of the 1993 Universal Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women, states that "States should condemn violence against women, and should not invoke any custom, tradition or religious considerations to renounce their obligation to eradicate it, and should pursue by all means possible and without delay a policy aimed at eliminating violence against women ".
And so, my honorable sisters, we see how it is portrayed that all what women aspire to of security, safety and lifting injustice from them can only be achieved by removing the obstacle of religion, referring to the Islamic religion, because there is no other religion that regulates the life of all humanity but the Islamic religion. Consequently, they seek to replace legitimate provisions with international conventions and their clauses that claim to be concerned with women, their life and their families.
We conclude from this that all the initiatives that are being put forward today and the conferences that have been held and will be held are Western crusade maneuvers for disguising and fallacy, and they are doomed to failure, with Allah’s permission, as long as there are watchful and conscious minds, hearts and eyes. Such a civilization and its evils must be eradicated, for it has only caused misery and hardship to all humanity, and not only to women, as they are lost on the spiritual side, extremely degraded in the moral aspect, and the social life is all in disintegration and collapse. So, there are no families, no households and no lineage and other negative effects of this civilization on its people, which we mentioned a small part of them as there is no room to mention them all and to stop at them.
Let us work on not make them continue in this destruction, either on their own hands or in the hands of the advocates of Westernization and sabotage. This happens if the Islamic Ummah remains steadfast in its Aqeedah and its red lines. We are Muslims, and our angle of viewing the small and large matters must be from the point of view of the Islamic Aqeedah only. Let’s see what Islam has ordered us and showed us of provisions, so we follow them and act upon with. They are working with every effort to prevent the correct revival which will only be by a conscious generation of its Deen, aware of the fact that it will not achieve goodness, pride and prosperity but through an Islamic state governing by Allah’s law and His provisions.
We, as Muslim women, must fight any secular call with an Islamic facade and any international decisions that tamperwith all our affairs. We must weigh these false calls and corrupt organizations that they adopt with the scale of Shara’ and the righteous religion so that we do not slip with our families into dangerous slopes. Allah says
﴿وَمَنْ أَعْرَضَ عَن ذِكْرِي فَإِنَّ لَهُ مَعِيشَةً ضَنكًا﴾
“And whoever turns away from My remembrance - indeed, he will have a depressed life.’” [Ta-Ha: 124]
And the Almighty says:
﴿فَمَنِ اتَّبَعَ هُدَايَ فَلا يَضِلُّ وَلا يَشْقَى﴾
“Then whoever follows My guidance will neither go astray [in the world] nor suffer [in the Hereafter].” [Ta-Ha: 123].
Wa Assalamu Alaikum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuh
Rana Mustafa
Member of the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir