Our Muslim brothers are being martyred, in very cruel ways, in Burma, 5% of whose population is made up of Arakanese Muslims.
Arakan first turned to Islam through Arab traders. The great move toward Islam ended with the foundation of an Islamic state in the region in 1430. That state survived for the next 350 years, at the end of which Arakan was invaded by Buddhists, who put an end to the state.
March 28th 1942; Rakhine people who attacked Muslims in the village of Chanbilli martyred men, women and children there using swords and spears. The Rakhines savagely murdered the women after raping them first. After the slaughter they pillaged all the Muslims’ belongings. These attacks spread over all of Arakan and lasted for the next 40 days or so, during which time around 150,000 of our Arakanese brothers were martyred. Villages were looted and destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of people were injured, and 500,000 forced to leave their lands.
In 1962, the communists seized power in Burma. The communist general Ne Win mobilized just about all the means available to the state in order to annihilate Muslims. An immigrant investigation known as the "King Dragon operation" was set in motion. People living in small hamlets were forced into wire-enclosed encampments. Villages, mosques and madrassas were destroyed. All Islamic education institutions, mosques and similar religious bodies were closed down. Mosques were turned into places of entertainment or Buddhist temples. Going on the hajj, sacrificing animals, mass worship and other religious practices were all banned. Murder, rape, detentions and torture were commonplace. Because of this persecution, more than a million Muslims were forced to abandon Arakan and flee to Bangladesh. Muslims lived in terrible poverty, facing hunger and epidemics, in the refugee camps.
Between 1942 and 1996, 15,000 settlement units in Burma were destroyed and 2 million people were forced to migrate. Another 300,000 people were martyred and 20,000 women raped. Five thousand mosques and madrassas were burned down.
January 1992; Seven hundred Arakanese Muslims were drowned near the border with Bangladesh.
In 1994, more than 1,000 Muslims were martyred in extrajudicial executions.
The attacks on Muslims flared up again as of June 2012. More than 330 Muslim villages have been burned, including their mosques and madrassas, with our Muslim brothers burning to death inside their homes. According to independent human rights organizations, 1,000 people were ruthlessly slaughtered in the region during June, while thousands of Muslims were forced out of their homes and villages and left to fend for themselves in the jungle. Some Muslims took to the ocean in order to seek refuge in Bangladesh but the Bangladeshi government refused to admit the refugees, and hundreds of Muslims drown in the rivers and ocean.
Allah reveals in the Qur’an that all Muslims are brothers and commands them to be united and unified and to support one another. Aware of this commandment of the Qur’an, during the Balkan wars in 1912 our Arakanese brothers sent aid they collected to Turkey through the consulate, the Ottoman Bank and European banks. Despite living under very difficult conditions and as a minority in their country, our Arakanese brothers sent whatever they had to the Ottomans, in compliance with the moral values of the Qur’an. That is because Allah commands Muslims to support one another in the Qur’an:
Allah loves those who fight in His way in ranksऀlike well-built walls. (Surat as-Saff, 4)
The women, children, old and young people and all the Muslims savagely slaughtered in Burma are our brothers. The right to life of these brothers of ours was taken away, their mosques and madrassas were destroyed and they were forbidden to travel. They are only permitted to live in ramshackle wooden houses, and if that house should burn down by accident they would be sentenced to 6 years’ imprisonment. They are not allowed to attend state hospitals, nor to work in state offices, nor to use the telephone or own motorized vehicles. They simply have no citizenship rights whatsoever.
Turkish-Islamic Union is the only way of ensuring that our Muslim brothers in Burma can live by Islam in safety, without endangering their lives. If the Islamic world of 1.5 billion people, with all its rich resources and important geostrategic position, were to unite, there would be no question of a hair on the head of our Muslim brothers being harmed, let alone their being burned alive. Nobody would even think of perpetrating such persecution. If Muslims are being persecuted in Arakan today, the fundamental reason for this is that Muslims are fragmented and have no leader. The responsibility for all this suffering lies not only with those who inflict it, but also with everyone who fails to strive for the unity of the Islamic world. That is why we must seek and strive together for Turkish-Islamic Union, not solely for the sake of our Arakanese brothers, but for the salvation of the whole Islamic world and indeed, the whole planet.
“WE WANT TURKISH-ISLAMIC UNION; O LORD, BESTOW TURKISH-ISLAMIC UNION ON US WITHOUT DELAY”
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