Press Release
Egypt Under the Yoke of Debt
When the Ummah is Drained and Sovereignty is Confiscated
(Translated)

When the Institute of International Finance (IIF) announces that Egypt’s debts have reached 316.5 billion dollars by the end of the last quarter of the year, after they were 302.5 billion in the previous quarter, with an increase of approximately 5% in only three months, we are not standing before a passing number in an economic bulletin, but before a dangerous indicator of an economic path that is becoming increasingly suffocating. This rapid jump in debt, coupled with the rise of its ratio to the gross domestic product, reveals the extent of reliance on borrowing as a permanent pillar for financing the state.

Debt in Egypt is no longer a financial figure discussed in cold economic reports; rather, it has become a sword suspended over the necks of the people and a direct tool for plundering the wealth of the country and subjugating its political decision. When the IIF estimates that Egypt’s domestic and external debts have leapt to 316.5 billion dollars in just one quarter, with an increase of approximately 5%, then we are before clear evidence that the economy is proceeding on a path of decline, not reform, and on a path of dependency, not revival.

These numbers do not express “temporary challenges” as the regime promotes; rather, they reveal the reality of an economic model corrupt in its foundation, based on usurious borrowing and tying the country to the wheel of the global capitalist system, where the state transforms from a caretaker of the people’s affairs into a tax collector and debt intermediary on behalf of international creditors. Debt was not used to build a productive economy, nor to establish real industry, but to finance a permanent deficit, showy projects, and to plug the holes of a system incapable of managing wealth.

The general budget has become captive to debt service. Billions are drained annually in usurious loans (riba), paid from the pockets of the poor before the rich, through raising prices, expanding the tools and types of tax collection, and reducing spending on essential needs. Thus the people are pushed to bear the cost of choices in whose making they did not participate, while these policies are presented as “necessary reforms” with no alternative, whereas in reality they are conditions of submission imposed by the creditor.

External debt, under this unjust international system, is not neutral money; rather, it is a political shackle before it is a financial obligation. Every new loan means more conditions, more intervention in policies, and more relinquishment of sovereignty. What is called “economic reform” is nothing but a reordering of the economy in a way that serves the interests of colonial financial institutions, not the interests of the Ummah. As for domestic debt, it has turned the banking apparatus into a tool for financing the government; thus the private sector has suffocated, industry has retreated, and any real horizon for revival has disappeared.

The reaching of debt to nearly three-quarters of the gross domestic product is not a reassuring figure; rather, it is a danger alarm. It means that any external shock (a rise in the global interest rate, shortage of hard currency, disturbance in food and energy prices) is sufficient to ignite new waves of inflation, reduce the value of the currency, and deepen poverty. At that point, there is no solution except more borrowing, and the economy enters a vicious usurious cycle that accumulates crises instead of solving them.

The fundamental problem is not in partial mismanagement, but in adopting an economic system based on usury that makes money a commodity that produces money, not a tool to facilitate the exchange of benefits. This system by its nature absorbs wealth from peoples, concentrates it in the hands of a few, and turns weak states into subordinate markets and permanent sources of repayment. As long as Egypt is bound by this framework, every talk of “improvement or recovery” will be nothing but a media illusion quickly exposed by the numbers.

The continuation of this path warns of harsher crises, greater constriction upon the people, the sale of more public assets, privatization of what remains of facilities, and perhaps forced restructuring of debts imposed under conditions that deepen crises. All of this is presented to the people as an unavoidable destiny, while it is in reality a direct result of subordination to a corrupt economic system.

O People of Egypt al-Kinana: Know that what you are living of high prices and hardship is not a passing event, but the fruit of a system based on debt, usury, and freedom of ownership. Do not be deceived by the language of partial numbers nor by promises of postponed improvement. Restoring your living dignity begins with realizing that the problem is in the foundation, not in the details, and that deliverance is not by patching a corrupt system, but by changing it from its roots and establishing an economy that cares for your affairs and does not plunder you.

O Soldiers of al-Kinana: You are the strength of the Ummah and its shield. You are from the flesh and blood of this people; you are burned by what burns it and you feel pain for what pains it. The strength of armies is not measured by the number of weapons nor by the accumulation of equipment, but by the strength of their Aqeedah (creed), the extent of their alignment with their Ummah, their carrying of its concern, and their awareness of the project intended to be imposed upon them. An army that guards an economy mortgaged by debts and secures a path that leads to dependency does not protect the country; rather, it guards its crisis and prevents it from exiting it.

Protecting the country is not only at the frontiers, but in preserving its sovereignty and preventing its transformation into a hostage in the hand of creditors, whose decisions are managed from outside it and whose resources are harnessed to repay endless usurious debts. An economy that grants the wealth of the country to the West and is managed by usury weakens the state from within, shackles its decision, and turns military power into a tool without spirit, summoned to preserve apparent stability while the Ummah is drained in its depth.

Be with your Ummah, not above it; with its pains, not isolated from them. Carry its civilizational project that makes power in the service of truth, weapons in the protection of dignity, and decision emanating from the will of the Ummah, not from the conditions of financiers. The Ummah does not await from you mere discipline, but awareness; it does not ask you to depart from your duty, but to elevate it, so that it becomes a duty in supporting truth, preserving sovereignty, and protecting the future of coming generations.

Remember that the armies that were immortalized in the history of the Ummah were not immortalized because they were the most heavily armed, but because they were the most sincere in alignment, the clearest in vision, and the most attached to a civilizational project that brings people out from injustice and tyranny to justice, from dependency to liberation, and from the darkness of systems to the light of Islam and its care. So be worthy of this responsibility, and do not be guards of a path that burdens the Ummah, but supporters of it in restoring its honor, its decision, and its dignity, under Islam and its state, the Khilafah Rashidah (Rightly Guided Caliphate) on the method of the Prophethood.

[إِنَّ اللَّهَ يَأْمُرُكُمْ أَن تُؤَدُّوا الْأَمَانَاتِ إِلَىٰ أَهْلِهَا وَإِذَا حَكَمْتُم بَيْنَ النَّاسِ أَن تَحْكُمُوا بِالْعَدْلِ]

“Indeed, Allah commands you to render trusts to whom they are due and when you judge between people to judge with justice.” [Surat An-Nisa 4:58]

Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir in Wilayah Egypt