GLOBAL UMMAH SOLIDARITY

GAZA IS NOT FOR SALE : 
DAVOS, TRUMP’s BOARD OF PEACE AND PORNOGRAPHY 
OF IMPERIAL POWER 
https://theislamiceconomist.org/editoria...of-justice


GAZA AND THE LONG WAR ON A PEOPLE : 
WHY TRUMP’s BOARD OF PEACE CANNOT DELIVER JUSTICE 
https://theislamiceconomist.org/politics...r-justice/




‘IMPERIAL’ AGENDA : WHAT’s TRUMP’s GAZA DEVELOPMENT PLAN, UNVEILED IN DAVOS ?


The plan promises coastal tourism, free trade, skyscrapers and jobs. But the people of Gaza have not been consulted
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/23...d-in-davos




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WHO SPEAKS FOR THE OPPRESSED ?
https://theislamiceconomist.org/politics...oppressed/

Why do some injustices dominate global headlines while others are softened, distorted, or quietly ignored? From Palestine and Venezuela to Iran and beyond, patterns of selective outrage reveal a deeper crisis—not of information, but of narrative power. Baba Yunus Muhammad examines how global media structures shape moral perception, why independent Muslim and Global South media platforms collapsed in the West, and what the resulting silence means for the oppressed in a world where power increasingly determines truth.

Injustice in the modern world is neither hidden nor undocumented. It is broadcast live, archived endlessly, and debated across platforms. Yet while some injustices are elevated into global emergencies, others—often deeper, longer, and more devastating—are rendered routine, peripheral, or morally ambiguous. This disparity is not accidental. It is the product of media power: who controls it, whose narratives it amplifies, and whose suffering it normalizes.

From Palestine to Venezuela, from Iran to other non-Western-aligned societies, a familiar pattern repeats itself. When crises unfold outside the Western political orbit, their causes are simplified, their histories compressed, and their victims filtered through language that subtly redistributes blame. Occupation becomes “conflict.” Economic warfare becomes “mismanagement.” Protest violence is magnified; the violence of sanctions, siege, and diplomatic strangulation fades into the background.

Nowhere is this clearer than in Palestine. Few injustices are as thoroughly documented and yet as persistently distorted. Decades of military occupation, blockade, settlement expansion, and civilian casualties are routinely framed as a symmetrical dispute between equal sides. Palestinian suffering is collectivized and anonymized; Israeli suffering is individualized and moralized. Language performs what weapons and checkpoints enforce: it reshapes perception until structural oppression appears as an endless cycle of unfortunate events.

Venezuela tells a similar story. Its economic collapse is almost universally attributed to domestic authoritarianism, with little sustained attention paid to the cumulative impact of sanctions, financial isolation, and external pressure. The humanitarian consequences are acknowledged, but responsibility is carefully displaced. The instruments of coercion disappear from view, while their effects remain permanently visible.

Iran, too, has been subjected to this selective moral gaze. Internal unrest is presented as definitive proof of illegitimacy, while the context of sanctions, covert pressure, and economic siege is treated as incidental. When protests turned violent, coverage focused almost exclusively on civilian casualties, largely ignoring officially acknowledged reports of widespread destruction of public infrastructure: mosques, prayer halls, hospitals, ambulances, fire service vehicles, and emergency facilities. Even the deaths of police officers and security personnel—events that would provoke national trauma and sweeping security measures in Western states—were marginalized, as though such lives carried no ethical weight.

This is not an argument in defence of any government. It is an argument against double standards. In Western capitals, the killing of security personnel during unrest is a red line. It justifies emergency laws, mass arrests, and extraordinary force. Elsewhere, the same reality is quietly erased to preserve a preferred narrative. Some states are granted the right to defend themselves; others are denied even the right to context.

This asymmetry is reinforced by the global posture of the United States. A country that has directly or indirectly attacked Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, and exerted coercive pressure on Venezuela continues to present itself as the custodian of international order. Meanwhile, states that have not invaded others in modern history are branded existential threats, their leaders openly discussed in terms of “regime decapitation.” When senior American figures publicly dismiss international law as a constraint on their actions, relying instead on personal morality, the issue ceases to be hypocrisy alone. It becomes the normalization of power without accountability.

This order is sustained not only by military and economic dominance, but by media consensus. And here lies the quieter tragedy: the collapse of alternative media ecosystems capable of challenging dominant narratives with consistency and credibility.

There was a period when Muslim and Global South perspectives found serious expression in the West through intellectually grounded publications. Titles such as Araby (also known as Arabia), Afkar Inquiry, Impact International, and Crescent International sought to analyses global affairs beyond imperial assumptions and ideological conformity. They were not propaganda sheets. They were forums for debate, critique, and principled dissent.

Their fates, however, reveal the structural fragility of alternative media when it is built around personalities rather than institutions. Araby, a London-based publication that once enjoyed wide readership and influence, collapsed abruptly after its principal financial patron, Saudi oil minister Zaki Yamani, was removed from power. With his fall went the publication’s financial lifeline, exposing the fatal vulnerability of media dependent on political patronage rather than institutional endowment.

Afkar Inquiry, another London venture, followed a slower but equally instructive path. Despite its intellectual ambition, it struggled under the weight of high production costs, limited circulation, and the absence of sustained backing. Operating in a hostile media environment, it eventually ceased publication—not because it lacked ideas, but because ideas alone could not sustain professional journalism.

Impact International, launched in London around the same period and often mentioned alongside Crescent International, survived longer but ultimately folded in 2013. Its closure reflected the cumulative pressures facing independent Muslim media in the West: shrinking revenues, rising costs, and a rapidly changing media ecosystem dominated by digital platforms it could not fully adapt to or compete with.

Crescent International stands as the exception that proves the rule. Founded in the early 1970s, it endured where others fell, largely because it maintained low overheads, avoided dependence on a single political patron, and accepted marginality rather than compromise. Yet its survival has been one of endurance, not expansion. It persisted through sacrifice and ideological commitment, not through the kind of institutional investment that allows media organizations to scale, professionalize, and shape global discourse.

Taken together, these trajectories tell a sobering story. Muslim and Global South media did not collapse because their analysis was flawed or their audiences indifferent. They collapsed because truth without infrastructure is fragile, because reliance on individual benefactors creates fatal exposure to political change, and because media was never treated as strategic necessity comparable to diplomacy, finance, or defense.

The consequences of this collapse are now evident. When crises erupt, there are fewer platforms capable of speaking with independence, depth, and global reach from outside the dominant narrative space. This vacuum affects Muslims, Palestinians, Venezuelans, Africans, Asians—any society whose reality is routinely mediated through lenses not of its choosing.

The question, then, is no longer simply who speaks for Muslims. It is broader and more urgent: who speaks for the oppressed when power and narrative converge against them?

Until media plurality is treated as a matter of justice rather than preference, imbalance will persist. Until independent platforms are funded, professionalized, and protected, alternative perspectives will remain episodic and fragile. And until societies in the Global South recognize that narrative sovereignty is as vital as political or economic sovereignty, they will continue to appear in global discourse as subjects of analysis rather than authors of meaning.

This is not a call for sectarian media, nor for ideological echo chambers. It is a call for consistency—for journalism that applies the same moral scrutiny everywhere, that refuses to confuse power with legitimacy, and that recognizes silence itself as a political position. In an age saturated with information, the absence of principled voices is not accidental. It is produced. And it can be reversed—but only when media is finally understood for what it is: not a luxury, not a supplement, but a frontline of justice itself.

Baba Yunus Muhammad is the President of the Africa Islamic Economic Forum, a journalist, and an activist focusing on African governance, economic justice, and human rights. His   work combines incisive critique with rigorous analysis, advocating for accountability,  citizen empowerment, and the defense of African sovereignty.