Hizb ut-Tahrir Hosts Influential Women’s Seminar Regarding the Economic Exploitation of Women in Indonesia and across the Muslim World

Press Statement

Hizb ut-Tahrir Hosts Influential Women’s Seminar Regarding the Economic Exploitation of Women in Indonesia and across the Muslim World

Southeast Asia Main Flows of Undocumented Migration

The Central Media Office of Hizb ut-Tahrir in coordination with Hizb ut-Tahrir Indonesia have organised this important seminar today, attended by influential women from across Indonesia to address the deplorable state of economic exploitation and mass dehumanization of millions of women in Indonesia and across the Muslim world. It is part of a campaign launched by the Central Media Office of Hizb ut-Tahrir that will culminate with an international women’s conference on the subject in Indonesia in December 2012. In this seminar and campaign, we make the following points:

(1)  Endemic corruption, economic mismanagement, and exploitative policies and laws, resulting from failed leaderships across the Muslim world as well as the detrimental capitalist system implemented by Indonesia and other governments in the region has generated widespread desperate poverty in the Muslim lands. This has forced millions of women in Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan and other parts of the Muslim world to leave their homes and children to seek employment, or work under slave-like conditions in backbreaking jobs to feed themselves and their families. These are women who are victims of both incompetent governments who have failed to provide for them effectively and the toxic capitalist system whose defining characteristic is concentrating wealth in the hands of the few while the masses go hungry and poor. The secular capitalist system, along with all other man-made systems and current leaderships of the Muslim world have failed the women of the region and need to be replaced by an alternative model of governance.

(2)  Governments across the Muslim world, including in Indonesia have often presented the billions of dollars of revenue from their female migrant workers as a proud achievement and positive contribution to economic growth in their countries, despite the fact that such revenue is tainted and generated from the economic enslavement and abuse of their women. This is also the nature of the capitalist system which views everything as a matter of supply and demand and securing profit as the primary goal of society, dehumanizing women and men to nothing but economic commodities that bring financial benefit to the country, regardless of the harmful impact upon individuals or society, for it is system where government revenue speaks louder than human suffering.

(3)  Such a deplorable state of financial hardship and exploitation cannot continue for the region’s women. A few changes in labour or migrant laws are meaningless actions that have no impact on alleviating this dire state of economic oppression. Every woman should be viewed and treated as a human being, protected, cared for, and provided for at all times, and NOT an object to generate wealth. However, this will only materialize under a way of life and system that holds the correct view towards the woman and truly cares for her wellbeing. This system is the Khilafah state that implements ALL the Islamic principles and laws upon the society. Islam’s view of the woman is that she is a human being, who should be financially provided for always by her male relatives or by the state, while at the same time permitting her to seek employment if she wishes. But Islam does NOT accept for her to work under conditions of enslavement, humiliation and oppression but rather in an environment of security and dignity, where her high status in society is always preserved. It is the Islamic Khilafah system alone that offers time-tested sound Islamic economic policies that can lift the women of the Muslim world from their desperate poverty and generate an environment of economic prosperity, alleviating their suffering and bringing real change to their lives.

We call the women of Indonesia and the Muslim world to engage in this noble Islamic obligation to establish the Khilafah that will transform the women of the region from economic commodities to dignified, protected, and respected human beings - for in Islam the woman deserves no less.

Dr. Nazreen Nawaz

Central Media Representative, Hizb-ut Tahrir