Press Release
D8: Yet Another Miserable Attempt to Forge Cooperation Amongst Islamic Countries

Islamabad is set to convene a summit of the Developing 8 countries (D8) between the 19th of November until the 22nd of November 2012 to discuss economic matters in addition to regional and international issues. Besides discussing these matters, Pakistan is keen to show that it is in full control of the country's security as well as the domestic law and order situation. A foreign ministry official recently commented that the government wants to send out a clear message that Pakistan is safe despite many security challenges.

The D8 was founded by Necmettin Erbakan, the former Turkish Prime Minister in 1997. Its members include: Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Turkey. The combined GDP is $3.2 trillion, total number of soldiers is about 3 million and the population is about 13% of the global population. Additionally, the D8 countries are well endowed with a wide array of military assets including Pakistan's one hundred or so nuclear weapons. Yet despite these impressive statistics, D8 has negligible impact on world's economy and the international situation.

The poor performance of the D8 is not unusual. Every economic and political organisation in the Muslim world shares the same fate. The GCC, the Arab League, and the OIC are just few of the infamous ones. Notwithstanding the apparent failure of such organisations, the leadership of the Muslim world continues to place its trust in them and seeks to emulate the model of the EU.

But such faith is misplaced. It only serves to weaken the Muslim world. This is because of two major reasons. Firstly, the current global economic crisis has exposed the flaws of the EU and has demonstrated that without political union all economic unions are bound to fail. Secondly, the real benefactors are neither the people or the leaders but colonial powers. One has to look no further than the Arab League and the OIC to see how America uses both organisations to rubber stamp its policies despite the routine street protests and the fortunes of the D8 is no different.

For if the real salvation of the Muslim Ummah is to occur, it must whole-heartedly abandon the nightmare of the nation state that has divided and imprisoned Muslims into more than fifty odd states. Muslims can become masters of their own destiny if they refuse to arrange themselves into organisations and unions as defined by the West.

There is only one method to unite the Muslims Ummah, which is the re-establishment of the Caliphate. The Caliphate is not a federation of states like the US, where each state defines its own laws, but defence, economy and foreign affairs are handled by the federal government. Nor is the Caliphate like the EU, where individual states have sacrificed some aspects of their economic sovereignty to Brussels, while keeping all other laws a matter for national parliaments to decide.

The Caliphate is a single state where Muslims choose a single leader to whom they pledge allegiance, and who rules by the Quran, Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah (saw), Ijma Sahaba and Qiyas. The Caliphate will subsume the fifty odd Muslims states into a single entity and create the most powerful state in the world that will truly be economically, militarily and politically independent of the West.

 The Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir in Wilayah of Pakistan