London, UK, August 28, 2007 – George W. Bush’s pledge to fight those
seeking to re-establish the Islamic Caliphate in the Middle East, as
part of his ‘war on terror’, confirms the lengths western governments
will go to, to back the current tyrannical regimes in the region,
despite the desire of the masses for political change in the Islamic
world.
In his speech to the 89th Convention of the American Legion this afternoon, President Bush talked about the “extremism” that America has to fight. He talked in sensationalist terms of “extremists” that “hope to impose that same dark vision across the Middle East by raising up a violent and radical caliphate that spans from Spain to Indonesia" and of “Shia extremism, supported and embodied by the regime that sits in Tehran.” His statement was echoed by President Nicolas Sarkozy who warned against those who “wanted the restoration of a caliphate.”
Taji Mustafa, media representative of Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain, said: “Western leaders have again attempted to link the quest for the Caliphate with violence. Yet only two weeks ago, 100,000 people gathered for a political rally in Indonesia calling for the re-establishment of the Caliphate – people who represented mainstream non-violent Muslim political opinion. Similar gatherings took place in Palestine, Malaysia, Lebanon, and Sudan. Across the Islamic world, there is a non-violent mass movement seeking the re-establishment of the Caliphate as a means to liberate the people from brutal western-backed dictators who the governments of the US and UK regard as allies.”
“Bush’s accusation that people aspire to raise a Caliphate from Spain to Indonesia masks a reality where he is currently trying to forcibly create a capitalist empire from Caracas to Canberra, including the Middle East region with its strategic location and energy resources. The brutal invasion of Iraq, causing the death of over 650,000 innocent civilians, shows what western governments are prepared to do in their supremacist quest to export their ideology of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
"It is from them that the real threat of violence in the world emerges. The real extremism we face is the twin evils of western foreign policy – that uses brute force to impose its way of life on the world – and the tyrants in the Muslim world, who torture, kill and oppress the people in order to serve their own interests and those of their masters in London and Washington.”
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