Press Release

The Tragedy of Gabès: A Victim of the Choices of the Modern State

﴿AND WHEN HE TURNS AWAY, HE STRIVES THROUGHOUT THE LAND TO CAUSE CORRUPTION THEREIN AND DESTROY CROPS AND ANIMALS. AND ALLAH DOES NOT LIKE CORRUPTION.﴾

Protests continue by the people of Gabès in southern Tunisia due to the toxins emitted from the chemical complex, which has turned the city into an environmentally and health-stricken area. It has directly affected the health of Gabès residents and its natural resources, leading to the spread of cancer and respiratory diseases, even reaching successive cases of suffocation among students. Decades of false promises and deliberate neglect have made Gabès a symbol of marginalization and pollution, where phosphate wealth has turned from a blessing into a curse due to the policies of the modern state that chose quick profit and the interests of major companies at the expense of people's health and their right to a decent life.

O people in the beautiful city of Gabès: Your city, under the rule of Islam, during the Islamic Caliphate, was a beautiful oasis where life was good and vibrant. It has turned, under the corrupt capitalist system, into a stricken city and a scene of suffocation and slow death. Therefore, do not wait for a solution to your problems from those who caused them, and take the initiative to solve them yourselves by returning to the way of your Lord and working to demolish the capitalist system imposed on you by your enemy, and establishing the system of Islam, which unites the Muslim countries into one dear state, caring for them with the law of their Lord, which detailed what the state owes and what it is due, and what the people owe and what they are due. It has made corruption on earth a heinous crime. Allah Almighty said: ﴿AND WHEN HE TURNS AWAY, HE STRIVES THROUGHOUT THE LAND TO CAUSE CORRUPTION THEREIN AND DESTROY CROPS AND ANIMALS. AND ALLAH DOES NOT LIKE CORRUPTION.﴾, and His noble Messenger ﷺ forbade causing harm to oneself and to others, saying: "There should be neither harming nor reciprocating harm," and said: "None of you should urinate in standing water that does not flow, and then wash in it," and the Sharia rule is that "the means to the forbidden is forbidden," and therefore polluting the environment in a harmful way or leading to harm or leading to the forbidden during the process of manufacturing, economic development, and exploitation of natural resources, is forbidden according to Sharia, regardless of the costs involved in avoiding it.

O people in the beautiful city of Gabès: The environmental problem cannot be solved through capitalist solutions that weigh everything by benefit and profit, and the reins of capitalist companies that have destroyed crops and animals will only be curbed by the rule of Islam under the righteous Caliphate following the method of Prophethood, because the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said: "The Imam is a shepherd and is responsible for his flock," so the treatment of this problem in the Islamic state is to allocate industrial areas far from residential areas for polluting industries, monitor industrial and agricultural facilities and any other sources of pollution, and obligate those facilities and sources to follow clean production methods and systems, such as industrial waste treatment units, and not allow pollutants to leak into the surrounding environment.

The Caliphate state also cares about establishing factories to re-manufacture permissible industrial waste and exploit it again as new forms of matter and energy, which is called recycling, to reduce the amount of industrial waste. What remains after that of this waste that is not exploitable or recyclable, is disposed of by burial in remote areas.

The protests of the heroic people of Gabès should be a starting point for overthrowing the savage capitalist system and establishing a righteous rule based on Islam under the righteous Caliphate following the method of Prophethood. He ﷺ said: "Then there will be a Caliphate according to the method of Prophethood."

The Media Office of Hizb ut-Tahrir, Wilayah Tunisia