It lives off our resources. Nearly 80% of the world’s proven oil reserves and over 40% of its natural gas lie under Muslim lands. The Gulf states alone sit on trillions in sovereign wealth funds. The Muslim world is home to some of the youngest populations on earth-with over 60% of the population in many countries under the age of 30, brimming with energy, potential, and a thirst for meaning. How is it that we are rich in land, people power, minerals, intellect, and faith and yet we beg for protection from the very powers who profit from our dependence.
Its because the system is rigged. It was never built for us to win, only to play endlessly and lose quietly. Just as the abused woman will never find real love, respect, or recognition from her abuser-no matter how many times he professes his affection or apologizes-the Ummah will never be liberated through the institutions of those who profit from her subjugation. Her only option is to leave. Completely. Decisively. Painfully. Just as the Ummah’s only hope is to extract herself from this gilded, rotting cage of a system and build anew.
We will remain in this cycle of humiliation as long as we keep placing our hope in their structures. As long as we keep mistaking their gestures, their summits, their resolutions for change. Hope, when misplaced, is not a virtue. It’s a poison. A slow, paralyzing death.
Our leaders are groomed and installed by foreign hands to serve foreign interests. When one of them attempts to stray-whether it was Mossadegh in Iran or Saddam in Iraq-they were removed, imprisoned, or assassinated. The message is clear: independence will not be tolerated.
And like the abuser who fears the day his victim realizes her power, the West fears nothing more than a unified, self-aware, and politically independent Ummah.
Because it knows-if we stand up, if we believe in ourselves again-its control collapses. Its dominance is not built on invincible strength, but on the illusion of our weakness.
The West must keep us afraid-afraid of change, of independence, of Islam itself, the very source of our power. It bombards us with images of failed states and chaos, whispering that without its guiding hand, its leadership in the world, its international institutions, we will spiral into darkness. It sows division, hatred and fear of each other between us through mischief, psyops and nationalism just as the abused woman is isolated from those who would love and protect her. It celebrates our artists, our athletes, our engineers, but only if they disavow their political and spiritual convictions. It offers us platforms and praise, as long as we don’t speak of Gaza, Sudan, or Yemen, or Kashmir. And when we do, the mask falls, and the brutality returns.
Look at how the world responds to Gaza today. Over 60,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023, over 70% of them women and children. Hospitals have been erased, journalists murdered, water and food denied, entire cities razed to dust. It is obvious genocide, by every human, legal and moral standard. And yet the so-called “international community” offers only empty words-while continuing to arm and fund the killers.
What has the Ummah done in response? We have marched. We have tweeted. Some governments have recalled ambassadors. Thousands of brave voices have spoken out. But the machine rolls on. Because the truth is, we are not fighting only an external enemy. We are battling a psychological cage within the Ummah that has made us believe resistance is futile.
Some women don’t leave their abusers except in a body bag.
Some nations don’t either.
But this is not that nation. Because we are a nation built on immutable truth and unwavering belief, on the foundation of a revelation from the Creator Himself, and on the transformational model of the Prophet (saw).
By holding on to that truth firmly in its grip as burning embers, Gaza has proven its commitment to Allah. Despite the bombs, the siege, the starvation, our ummah there has shown the world what it means to stand with dignity. They are the penetrating beam of light in our darkness. The world has seen the diamond of faith in the face of unimaginable barbarity. Gaza has shaken the world but it’s not enough.
The sacrifice of Gaza is a call. A piercing cry that rips through the silence of our sleep. A shot fired into the heavens, echoing across the minarets and mountains of the Muslim world, demanding that we awaken. They are asking on livestreamed media, ‘Why do we stand alone? Where are the Muslim leaders? Where is the Ummah of Muhammad (saw)? Why do they watch from behind locked gates?
Because like the abused woman, we have convinced ourselves that leaving the abuser is too dangerous, too risky. We fear sanctions, war, isolation, chaos. We fear personal loss, financial loss, social stigma, and losing our comfort. The fear is not imaginary. The system we live under has been constructed to punish any attempt at dissent, resistance, and true independence. When Saudi Arabia leads an Arab coalition to bomb Yemen but refuses to lift a finger for Palestine, when Egypt seals Gaza’s only escape route while claiming solidarity, when Muslim leaders attend summits and return with nothing but statements, it is not incompetence-it is collusion in genocide.
