The Lost Century

On March 3, 1924, a full hundred years have passed without a Caliphate (Khilafah).

The Caliphate, which began with the death of the Messenger of Allah (saw), ruled the Islamic Ummah for 13 centuries. However, when our commitment to Islam weakened and we started to fall back intellectually, collapse was inevitable.

Our inability to respond to the thought and industrial revolution taking place in the West with a development based on Islamic thought has resulted in a great defeat against the colonialist infidel (kufr) Western civilization.

As the Islamic Ummah, we could not protect the Caliphate, we lost the leadership, we were fragmented, divided, we had to live in humiliation under the great pressures of the non-Islamic administrations established by the colonial infidels on Islamic lands.

The colonialist infidel West led by the British tore apart the Ottoman Empire, which they saw as an obstacle to their world leadership, with the First World War, and pioneered the creation of numerous new states acting with a nation-state mentality in order to end the understanding of the Islamic Ummah in the Ottoman Geography. By appointing rulers who admired the colonialist infidel west as the head of these states, it was wanted to keep the Muslim peoples under control on behalf of the colonialist infidel West by these rulers.

March October 3, 1924, the Caliphate that provided the political unity of the Islamic Ummah and led the Ummah was abolished by the Republic of Turkey, which was established on October 29, 1923 as one of these states, and the independence and leadership of Muslims were destroyed.

These newly established states ignored their own people, without consulting their own people, their opinions and their consent, forcibly imposed the constitution and laws they received from the colonialist infidel west on their peoples and made the corrupt culture of the west the basis of life. These administrations put great pressure in order to alienate from Islam and Westernize their own people. The colonialist infidel West has caused great destruction in these lands by these self-serving administrations. Blood, tears, hunger and misery, backwardness, terror, anarchy, chaos, civil wars, political and economic crises have become the fate of these lands.

The colonialist infidel Western civilization has captured our minds by showing itself to us as the level of modern civilization. He has vilified our past full of victories against them and our glorious history to us. He made us ashamed of our ancestors. He has weakened us by tearing us from our roots, where we will get strength. He chained our hands and put shackles on our feet.

This situation created a great decoupling and a deep gulf between the rulers and the people, and gave rise to a state people's conflict. The consumption of energy and opportunities that should be spent on development in a state popular conflict has led to the Muslim peoples falling behind, experiencing a major collapse, moving away from the high goals and goals that Allah has shown them by pursuing their own small lives, and being erased from the world stage.

Countries whose people are Muslims have been abandoned to a state of dereliction in which conflicts of influence have been experienced between colonial states in order to exploit their wealth and resources by colonial states and to become a Sunday for goods produced by the colonial infidel west. Thus, the new world, where there is no Caliphate and Muslims are ignored, has been reshaped by colonial infidel states and capitalism.

The colonialist infidel West deceived humanity and achieved world leadership by presenting capitalism and itself as a savior to all humanity with brilliant slogans such as secularism, democracy, freedom, justice, equality, human rights, the right of nations to self-determination. However, it soon became clear that the savior was not a savior, but rather a destroyer. The colonialist West established a new world order with capitalism that serves a handful of minorities. Leaving humanity alone with colonialism, bloody coups, civil wars, massacres, occupations, hunger, misery, injustice in income distribution, economic and political crises, individualism, atheism, deism, spiral of violence and sexual perversions, it caused a severe depression and depression.

Along with the interest of the caliphate, we lost our independence and being governed by Islam, primarily by the decrees of Allah (swt).

We have lost the world leadership that we had for 13 centuries.

We have lost our ability to be the best ummah that has been created for people.

As an Ummah, we have lost our unity and brotherhood.

We have lost our honor along with our independence.

We have lost our wealth, our wealth and living in prosperity.

We have also lost our political will through dependence on Western systems and Western states.

The latest events in Gaza have once again shown how great what we have lost with the interest of the Caliphate. As the Islamic Ummah, despite our 2 billion number and huge armies, we had to face the painful fact that no concrete steps could be taken beyond condemning the usurping Jewish existence in the face of massacres, atrocities, genocide and crimes against humanity, and the solution was left to the infidel colonialist West that produced the problem. From the beginning of the Caliphate on March 3, 1924 to the present, the last century has been a lost century not only for Muslims, but also for humanity. This century is the darkest age that both Muslims and humanity have experienced. Muslims and humanity have never witnessed such a dark era in any period of history.

So how do we end this dark age?

Since this dark age and our losses took place in the absence of Islam and the caliphate, then by starting Islamic life again and establishing the caliphate, we can end this dark age and regain what we have lost with more.

The Messenger of Allah, may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him, completed the end of a long hadith in which he informed the periods after him with the glad tidings, ‘Then there will be a caliphate based on the method of prophethood,’ he said. With the help and grace of Allah, we carry hope that this century will be the century of Islam and the Caliphate. If we can restore the Caliphate and start the Islamic life and unite the Islamic Ummah under the banner of the Caliphate, then with the help of Allah, with the power of the Caliphate and the Ummah, we can put an end to the world order of the colonialist infidel West. Then we can save Palestine and extend a hand to our Muslim brothers and sisters living under persecution in East Turkestan, Kashmir, Myanmar, India, the Caucasus and other parts of the world. That is when we can lift our bowed heads from the ground in this lost century and start leading the world again as the best Ummah.

Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Remzi Özer – Wilayah Türkiye