Press Release
The ‘Democratic Project’ has Failed the Women of the Arab Spring!
Only a Truly Islamic Revolution can Revive their Dreams for a Dignified Future!

This January and February marks 5 years since the beginning of the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya and Syria against brutal dictatorships. Hopes were ignited amongst some that replacing tyrants with secular democracies would establish dignity for the people and create just and prosperous societies. Women played a significant role in the protests which led to the toppling of dictators and the birth of secular democracies in some states which many claimed would improve the status and rights of women in the Arab world. However five years on, this ‘Democratic Project’ has delivered nothing to the women of the region but a field of broken promises and shattered dreams. Tunisia and Egypt have come around full circle, ruled by repressive leaderships, governing over societies plagued with instability and insecurity, widespread unemployment and poverty, and ever-rising food and fuel prices, creating unbearable living conditions for their women. Meanwhile the women of Libya suffer the disastrous consequences of life in a failed state, dominated by corruption and violence, while the women of Yemen are now helpless victims of a US driven brutal war, facing death either from bombs and bullets or from a humanitarian catastrophe in which 6 million people are at the brink of starvation.

Furthermore, Tunisia’s claim of leading the fight for women’s rights in the region under its new secular democratic system through its lifting of all restrictions to CEDAW (the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women), or adopting Article 46 enshrining full gender equality into its new constitution, or establishing gender parity in its elected assemblies, did nothing to improve the lives of its women. Today almost 1 in 2 women in the country are victims of violence, unemployment is almost 30%, and around 1 in 6 of the population is below the poverty line. In Egypt, its new secular constitution which enshrined greater gender equality into law, did nothing to prevent the rise in violence against women in the state, nor did it prevent the marked acceleration of child poverty within the country (over 50% of children currently suffer from poverty), nor did it prevent an unemployment level of over a quarter of Egypt’s youth, and nor did it prevent the detention, torture, and murder of hundreds of women who opposed Egypt’s latest tyrant and butcher – Al-Sisi. 

All this is surely a stark reminder that not an atom of good can come to the daughters of this Ummah through the man-made Kufr secular democratic system that has proved utterly incapable of solving the plethora of political, economic, and social problems affecting women in the Muslim world and in other states from the East to the West. Therefore to continue along a path for democracy in our Muslim lands only holds the promise of recycling failure for the region’s women. What fruits can a struggle for such a defunct system under which violence, sexual abuse, exploitation, and poverty plagues the lives millions of women the world over, ever bring for the women of the Muslim world other than further disappointment, indignity, suffering and shattered dreams? The Prophet (saw) said, «لاَ يُلْدَغُ الْمُؤْمِنُ مِنْ جُحْرٍ مَرَّتَيْنِ»“The believer should not be stung from the same hole twice.”

We call our dear Muslim sisters to reject the Western colonial lie that our salvation lies in a secular democratic future for our lands – a lie which deceives women into engaging in a fruitless cycle of wasted efforts and has had disastrous consequences upon their lives. We say enough of accepting token gestures in constitutions and parliaments which offer women nothing but crumbs. We call our dear Muslim sisters to join the women of Hizb ut Tahrir in the noble struggle for a purely Islamic revolution to establish the System of Allah (swt), the Khilafah "Caliphate" Rashidah (Caliphate) based upon the way of the Prophethood. It is this system alone that will break the chains of our oppression for only the Laws from the Lord of the World (swt), the All-Knowledgeable, the All-Wise hold sound solutions to every human problem and can guarantee our rights as women and protect us from violence, poverty and injustice. It is therefore only through the birth of this Islamic system that our dreams for a dignified life will materialise.

Dr. Nazreen Nawaz

Director of the Women’s Section in the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir