News:

The Economist published an article titled “When America walks away,” with the subtitle “For decades America has enjoyed hegemony over the Middle East. That is about to end.” The article states that “America is stepping back from a region it never managed to remake.”

Comment:

Of course, the US walking away does not mean it is leaving the region entirely, but instead that it is relinquishing its role in managing its affairs. When world leaders gathered at the UN General Assembly in September 1991, an era of undisputed American hegemony in the Middle East seemed imminent. The Pentagon had just waged a lightning war, alongside numerous allies, to expel occupying Iraqi forces from Kuwait. Meanwhile, American diplomats were preparing to host the Madrid Conference, which marked the first direct talks between the Jewish entity and a group of its Arab neighbors. In 1991, with the Soviet Union nearing its end, the United States appeared poised to forge a new order in a turbulent region, but that did not occur.

It appears the author has bought into the lie propagated by the West: that colonialist America came to liberate the Muslim World from the very tyrants whom it—alongside other colonialist powers—had installed to torment, suppress, starve, impoverish, and keep the people in ignorance, all to ensure control over them.

America arrived in Muslim lands following World War II did not arrive as only to depart so easily. As the article notes, “America seems to be stuck in the Middle East. It has no easy way out of its war with Iran. Yet the conflict, however it ends, will in fact mark something quite different: the moment when America pulls back from the region—in the sense that it finally relinquishes its hegemony there.”

Thus, the author of the article distorts modern realities, portraying modern American colonialism in the Muslim World as an attempt to look after the affairs of the Muslim Ummah in the region—much like America distorted the history of its own occupation of the Americas and the slaughter of nearly one hundred million Native Americans, teaching schoolchildren instead that it arrived to spread a Western civilization founded on freedom and a free-market economy.

Yet, some 35 years, The Economist concluded that this endeavor failed to remake the region or impose a stable order; massive military influence, alliances, and repeated interventions did not produce the stable, US-led Middle East that had been envisioned. Indeed, achieving stability in the Muslim World is impossible amidst the injustice and tyranny perpetrated by regimes loyal to the US—regimes that rule according to a system antithetical to the Islamic Aqeedah (creed) held by the people. Furthermore, the notion that America seeks to establish stability in the region is entirely baseless; America is fully aware that achieving stability is out of reach, just as it knows that decisively resolving or settling thorny issues—such as the question of Palestine—is impossible.

Consequently, America focuses on crisis management, consolidating its colonial hold on the region and maximize its gains as a war profiteer and colonialist—a strategy known as “creative chaos,” devised by former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

The magazine concludes its article that a US withdrawal from the region would create a vacuum, yet the potential candidates to fill it—namely the Jewish state, Iran, and Turkey—are incapable of doing so due to the numerous challenges they face. However, the magazine does not fail to highlight that the Islamic Ummah is stirring, seeking to break free from the yoke of Western colonialism—spearheaded by the US. The article states, “Arabs have long yearned for a chance to recover lost glory from when they were a beacon of science and learning centuries ago. America’s retrenchment is about to give them a chance.” With this conclusion, the magazine reinforces the very point we consistently advocate: the necessity and imperative for the Islamic Ummah to fill the political vacuum within the Muslim World and establish its Khilafah (Caliphate) upon the ruins of Western colonialism—a system whose spearhead consists of the traitorous regimes currently ruling the Muslim world.