In this blistering reflection, Imam Adil Tagari demands to know why the hunger of imprisoned Muslim women echoes louder than the courage of the Muslim men who should be defending them.
Fewer images are able to evoke man’s primal rage and instinctive urge to protect more than the bodily sacrilege of his civilisational companion: womankind. In Islamic tradition, this protective instinct is not rooted in machismo or ego, but in a moral obligation.
The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) once embarked on a journey accompanied by his Companions (may Allah be pleased with them all). Among them was his slave and camel driver, Anjashah. With female Companions seated atop the occasionally wild-spirited beasts, laden with luggage, Anjashah began steering them with haste. With characteristic grace, the Prophet called out to him: “May God have mercy on you, O Anjashah, drive slowly with the glass vessels.”
This prophetic simile consecrated God’s female creation as crystal-clear glassware: forged in a crucible of fire, persevering under pressure, yet pearlescent, precious and fragile. Women were to be handled with the softest of touches and the tenderest of words. Our mothers, wives, sisters and daughters were to be treated with delicacy and reverence. That is God’s dictate.
Yet when carelessly shattered, every shard of glass becomes a blade that tears through our collective conscience, reflecting back to us man’s failure to preserve the fragility entrusted to him.
The Filton 24 and Brize Norton 5
The aforementioned is the context in which the Filton 24 and the Brize Norton 5 must be understood. These political prisoners – of the now-proscribed direct action group Palestine Action – are languishing in British jails.
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They have been unlawfully incarcerated for conscientiously and intrepidly sabotaging Britain’s Israeli weapons supply chain at the Elbit Systems facility in Filton and at RAF Brize Norton, from which British reconnaissance flights were reportedly launched over Gaza to do the IDF’s genocidal bidding.
The British establishment has pulled every lever to ensure their liberties are curtailed and that arbitrary, demeaning treatment is meted out.
Prisoners have faced censorship of communication, non-association orders, remand without bail, the closure of trial documentation, and the wholesale criminalisation of Palestine Action through the draconian architecture of the “War on Terror” legislation.
Hunger strikes
To remonstrate the state’s gross injustice, seven prisoners have begun a rolling hunger strike. Over a month into the protest, several have been hospitalised. One doctor grimly warned: “This is a trajectory that ends with death.”
For Muslims, especially men, what deepens the wound is the captivity of our sisters – our crystal glassware – among the hunger strikers. Sisters Qesser Zuhrah, Heba Muraisi and Teuta Hoxha have gone weeks without food, offering their own flesh in the struggle, starving themselves to feed a greater, transcendental cause. Qesser was a teenager when she was thrown into what the Starmer regime calls “justice” – sterile dungeons where she marked her 20th birthday surrounded by depressing concrete.
As Muslims, does our blood not boil?
Why are we not seething with chagrin and frothing with indignation?
Is our honour not wounded by what we witness?
Why are we not boiling with sorrow and blazing with righteous wrath?
This is not a distant conflict. It is happening in our backyards and within our “circle of influence”. We can do something about it.
Are we worse than Ḥajjāj Ibn Yūsuf?
Yet dare one say that our hearts have calcified – that they have become more callous than the notorious historical despot Ḥajjāj Ibn Yūsuf (d. 714 CE).
This man was an Umayyad hatchet-man, with no scruples bombarding the Holy Sanctuary in Makkah. His reign of terror killed tens of thousands. He was a psychopathic governor who assassinated Companions and relished fountains of blood.
Yet even this cold-blooded tyrant was jolted into action by the captivity of Muslim women.
Around 711 CE, the king of Ceylon (modern-day Sri Lanka) maintained cordial relations with the caliph in Damascus. As a gesture of goodwill, he dispatched a small fleet of eight boats carrying trinkets and sumptuous gifts for the caliph’s viceroy in Iraq, Ḥajjāj. Onboard were also the daughters of early Muslim merchants who had settled on the island, being repatriated to their homeland.
Mid-voyage, as the vessels entered the perilous waters of the pirate cove at Deybul (modern Karachi), marauders intercepted them. They plundered the valuables and captured the women. The king’s officers and the Muslim prisoners pleaded that they were part of an official delegation. Their pleas were mocked. The pirates sneered: “If there is anyone to hear your complaint and to help liberate you, then go ahead and secure your freedom.”
In unison, the women cried out, “O Ḥajjāj, O Ḥajjāj, hear us and help us!”
Some captives managed to flee and reach Ḥajjāj, relaying the catastrophe and the women’s pleas. The enforcer, accustomed to wanton violence, was galvanised by their cries. “I am at your service,” he declared without hesitation.
The resources, personnel and firepower of an empire were mobilised. More than seven million silver coins (dirhams) were expended preparing invasion forces and strike teams to conquer the Indus Valley (modern-day Pakistan and northwest India), eradicate the pirate stronghold, and ultimately liberate the Muslim women from captivity.
If this man – cruel, ruthless and stained in iron hues by history – was shaken by the voices of oppressed damsels, why have our hearts not been pierced by the glass shards of today’s hunger strikers?
Their bodies have become the last instrument of resistance. Their hunger is a plea, petitioning our virility and humanity. As the women of Sindh called across the lands for deliverance, let the summons of the hunger strikers reverberate beyond their moribund confinement.
ʿUmar Ibn al-Khaṭṭāb (ra) once said: “To rescue a single Muslim from the hands of the enemy is more beloved to me than the land and treasures of the entire Arabian Peninsula.”
What can we do?
Raise awareness. Syndicate articles and videos on your social media profiles highlighting their plight, after educating yourselves on their cases and that of other prisoners of conscience.
Encourage your local mosques to dedicate the Jumuah khutba (sermon) to the hunger strikers, as well as signing the open letter to David Lammy via Action Network.
And most importantly, keep them all in your prayers and heartfelt supplications to Allah.
Adil Tagari is an Islamic scholar with an MA in Sociology/History. He teaches Higher Islamic Studies and lectures on Muslim history online.
