Foreign Masters, Client Kings and Betrayal of the Ummah

News:

Trump's White House hosts Saudi Crown Prince with big deals being inked. (https://www.npr.org/2025/11/18/nx-s1-5608100/saudi-prince-white-house-visit)

Comment:

The recent visit of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to Washington - marked by extravagant praise for President Donald Trump - once again revealed the painful reality that rulers in the Muslim world are dependent on U.S. protection rather than the support of their own people. Trump’s earlier comments echoed throughout the visit: “We protect Saudi Arabia... You might not be there for two weeks without us.” These were not offhand remarks; they were confessions. They revealed regimes whose survival relies not on legitimacy or accountability but on foreign patrons who treat Muslim lands as client states maintained through military guarantees and political obedience.

The agenda of this visit centered on security guarantees, arms deals, and U.S. designed frameworks for regional control - all reinforced by a Saudi pledge of $1 trillion to bolster the American economy. The immense wealth of the Ummah is thus diverted not to uplift, secure, or empower its people, but to preserve thrones propped up by colonial powers. Such investments deepen military and economic dependency and subservience to America.

Further, bin Salman signaled a willingness to join an expanded Abraham Accords, offering normalization with the Zionist entity in exchange for political concessions crafted in Washington. Every sanctity was treated as negotiable. The blessed land of Palestine - an Amanah entrusted upon the Ummah - was reduced to a bargaining chip traded across conference tables, bought and sold, while the Ummah’s wealth is usurped and squandered. The Muslim world possesses vast resources, strategic geography, demographic strength, and military capacity.

Yet its rulers continue to act as though powerless and insecure, relying on foreign armies and foreign markets for their own political survival. A trillion dollars can be deployed to save the U.S. economy, but not to defend the oppressed or advance the interests of the Ummah.

It is no secret that these rulers govern not through love or loyalty, but through fear, repression, and foreign colonial backing. Across the Muslim world, the people overwhelmingly despise their policies, reject their subservience to foreign powers, and view them as obstacles to justice, dignity, and independence. The Ummah is fully aware that these leaders neither reflect its aspirations nor embody its values. Their thrones persist only because they are shielded by external colonial powers like America and Britain and not because they possess the legitimacy that comes from serving the Ummah.

A growing realization is spreading among the Ummah: that true liberation and genuine political renewal require the removal of these subservient regimes and the establishment of a leadership rooted in Islam and its political authority. The Ummah does not lack capability, but lacks true independent and principled leadership. Until authority in the Muslim world is anchored in the Ummah and guided by its Aqeedah (doctrine) - rather than resting in foreign sponsorship - the Ummah will continue to pay for the survival of these despots with its wealth, honor, and blood.

Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Haitham Ibn Thbait
Media Representative of Hizb ut Tahrir in America