Baba Yunus Muhammad

When dawn broke over Gaza on the 9^th of November, 2025, it brought neither peace nor silence. The roar of Israeli jets shattered the pretense of calm as explosions tore through crowded neighborhoods, refugee camps, and hospital shelters. By morning, at least 104 Palestinians were dead — 35 of them children. Among the ruins stood the Insan camp, a temporary refuge for cancer patients, reduced to dust and disbelief.

The strikes came just three weeks after a ceasefire agreement that the world hailed as a “turning point.” For Palestinians, ceasefires have long ceased to mean peace. They are pauses — brief, exhausted silences before the next storm.

Anatomy of a Fragile Ceasefire

The October 10 ceasefire, brokered by U.S. President Donald Trump, was the latest in a series of fragile truces. Like its predecessors, it emerged not from mutual understanding but mutual fatigue. Israel retained control of Gaza’s airspace, borders, and sea routes; its drones continued to hover overhead; its army remained positioned just beyond the fence. Gaza, meanwhile, was expected to disarm while receiving little relief from a blockade that has strangled its economy for more than seventeen years.

Netanyahu’s renewed airstrikes followed a firefight in which an Israeli soldier was killed. Hamas denied initiating the clash, accusing Israeli troops of provocation. The immediate spark came amid public outrage in Israel over Hamas handing over fragments of a hostage’s body — remains Israeli forces claimed to have recovered two years earlier. The symbolism ignited nationalist fury, and Netanyahu reached for a familiar weapon: war.

War as Political Theatre

To understand why ceasefires collapse, one must look beyond the battlefield to the political theatre surrounding it. Netanyahu has long used Gaza’s suffering as a backdrop for domestic consolidation. Each escalation allows him to recast himself as Israel’s “protector,” diverting attention from corruption charges, coalition infighting, and mounting social unrest.

For Hamas, resistance remains a key source of legitimacy. Under siege since 2007, governing one of the most densely populated and impoverished territories on earth, defiance is a declaration of existence. Each exchange of fire sustains the cycle: Israel bombs to restore deterrence; Hamas fires back to restore dignity. Civilians are left to mourn, rebuild, and wait for the next pause — one that will hold just long enough for the world to look away.

Ceasefire Without Justice

Ceasefires in Gaza are often truce agreements without justice. They pause the violence but leave structural oppression intact. Since 2009, more than a dozen ceasefires have been declared, yet the roots of the conflict — occupation, displacement, blockade — remain. The siege restricts movement, bans exports, and limits imports, including medical supplies and construction materials. Unemployment hovers around 50 percent, electricity is rationed, and most children have never known freedom.

The Global Theatre

President Trump’s declaration that “nothing will jeopardise the ceasefire” while endorsing Israel’s “right to hit back” exposes the moral contradictions of global diplomacy. The United States presents itself as a peace broker while supplying Israel with weapons that make peace impossible. Europe, too, speaks of international law even as it trades with settlement-based companies and arms the Israeli military. The result is complicity. For Palestinians, the “international community” has become a bitter phrase — a chorus that mourns the dead but funds the killers.

Counting the Cost

Behind the numbers lie human stories. Children who had survived multiple wars, doctors performing surgeries by flashlight, teachers turning bomb shelters into classrooms — all perished or struggled to survive in this latest attack. At the Insan camp, a sanctuary for cancer patients, survivors described a night of terror and despair: “We thought a medical facility would be safe. Now we know that nothing is.”

Amid devastation, Gaza endures. Volunteers dig through rubble with their bare hands. Teachers reopen classrooms in the shadows of ruins. Mothers cook what little food remains for neighbors who have lost everything. Survival itself is resistance.

The Economics of Occupation

Every war leaves Gaza poorer and more dependent. The destruction of infrastructure is systematic: roads, factories, schools, and farms targeted to erase economic independence. The blockade prevents reconstruction, ensuring reliance on international aid, often routed through Israeli checkpoints and banks.

Occupation thus creates a paradox: humanitarian relief sustains the very structures that destroy lives. For Islamic economists, this reveals the moral bankruptcy of a global financial order that profits from misery. Decolonisation, therefore, is not only political — it is economic. Ending occupation requires dismantling systems that convert suffering into commerce and war into industry.

Africa’s Mirror

For Africans, Palestine’s struggle is painfully familiar. From apartheid South Africa to colonial frontiers in Algeria and Kenya, the continent knows what it means to have land stolen, identity erased, and resistance criminalized. African solidarity with Palestine is not sentimentality; it is historical memory. Nelson Mandela captured this truth: “Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

Economic justice, rooted in ethics, equity, and human dignity, must be the foundation for lasting peace — not only for Palestine but for the Global South as a whole.

What Will It Take?

The question before the world is simple yet profound: Will the ceasefire hold?

History offers little optimism. A truce that leaves occupation intact is a truce built on sand. Peace cannot be sustained by fear or imposed by force. It requires justice — not as rhetoric, but as reality.

For Gaza, justice means an end to siege, reconstruction without interference, accountability for war crimes, and recognition of Palestinian rights. It demands that the world confront its complicity and act beyond rhetoric. Islamic ethical principles remind us that peace (salam) cannot exist without justice (adl), and wealth should serve humanity rather than domination.

Will the Ceasefire Hold?

Not as it stands. A ceasefire can stop bullets, but not the machinery that fires them. It can pause violence, but not the ideology that justifies it. True peace will hold only when Gaza is free, Palestinians are sovereign, and the international community prioritizes justice over geopolitics.

Until then, each ceasefire is not the end of war, but preparation for the next. Yet hope persists — in Gaza’s hospitals, in classrooms rebuilt from rubble, in mothers who refuse despair. The ceasefire will hold only when the world’s conscience does — when justice, not expedience, becomes the guiding principle.

Footnote:

AFRIEF Webinar — “Palestine: Stolen or Decolonised?”

The Africa Islamic Economic Forum (AFRIEF) will host a two-hour virtual webinar exploring the political economy of Palestine, the structures sustaining occupation, and pathways toward decolonisation. Scholars, economists, and policy experts will examine how ethical finance, economic justice, and international solidarity intersect with the struggle for Palestinian sovereignty.

This webinar builds on discussions highlighted in this feature, providing a platform for informed dialogue on justice-oriented economics, human dignity, and the moral imperatives that must guide responses to Gaza’s ongoing crisis.

Baba Yunus Muhammad is the President of the Africa Islamic Economic Forum and a political and economic analyst with a focus on sustainable development, global trade, and Islamic economics. He writes regularly on issues of economic justice, governance, and the intersection of faith and finance

Every economy rests on a foundation deeper than currency or trade — it rests on trust. When citizens no longer believe in their leaders, when institutions are captured and laws become elastic, the economy’s moral infrastructure collapses. This is the real cost of Africa’s democratic decay.

Illegitimate power corrodes fiscal discipline. Leaders who rule through manipulation rather than consent spend to survive, not to serve. They inflate bureaucracies, buy loyalty, and mortgage the future for immediate political calm. Public debt balloons, corruption thrives, and the poor — who have no lobby — bear the cost.

The link between governance and growth is now undeniable. The African Development Bank estimates that corruption and mismanagement cost the continent up to $150 billion annually. Countries with transparent elections enjoy three times higher foreign investment and twice the rate of economic diversification. By contrast, states governed by decree or deception face chronic capital flight and social unrest.

For the Islamic economist, legitimacy (sharʿiyyah) is not only a political concept; it is an economic principle. The Qur’an ties justice (ʿadl) to sustenance (rizq): “If the people of the towns had believed and been mindful of God, We would have opened for them blessings from the heavens and the earth.” (Qur’an 7:96).

Where rulers govern through consultation (shūrā) and accountability, nations prosper. Where deceit rules, even natural wealth turns into a curse. The lesson is clear: no budget, bond, or bailout can compensate for the loss of legitimacy.

……….Power Without Expiry Dates: The Continent’s Longest Reigns and the Price of Their Politics

Across Africa, the ballot box is losing its moral weight. Constitutions promise renewal, but power lingers. From Cameroon to Tanzania, the story is the same: elections are held, but accountability is postponed. What emerges is not people’s choice but political endurance — and the longer rulers stay, the weaker their nations grow.

In Cameroon, Paul Biya has ruled since 1982 — a staggering 43 years — recently securing another victory amid boycotts and fraud claims. Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, in power since 1986, continues to suppress dissent and throttle the internet at every poll. Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea has outlasted every African Union chairman since 1979, routinely “winning” with over 95% of the vote. In Eritrea, Isaias Afwerki governs without a single national election since independence in 1993.

Others are newer but no less troubling. Alassane Ouattara of Côte d’Ivoire claimed a constitutional “reset” to justify a third term in 2020. Samia Suluhu Hassan of Tanzania returned to power in 2025 with 98% of the vote, following arrests of opposition figures and curbs on the press. In Guinea, Mamadi Doumbouya — the military ruler who once promised civilian rule — has now banned opponents while announcing his own candidacy.

These are not aberrations; they are the architecture of Africa’s political stagnation.

Rigged Votes, Real Losses

Weak governance has an economic signature — and it’s written in red.
The IMF reports that Africa’s average risk premium on sovereign bonds stands at 6.8%, more than double the emerging-market norm. UNCTAD finds foreign investment fell 12% in unstable states since 2019. Youth unemployment averages 33% across the region. Tax systems collect barely 13–15% of GDP, compared to 33% globally. The African Development Bank estimates 5–7% of GDP is lost yearly to corruption and mismanagement.

Where leaders cling to power, capital flees. Where institutions collapse, the poor are left to pay in silence.

Where Ballots Bow to Bayonets

Across the continent, only a handful of nations — Botswana, Mauritius, Cabo Verde — maintain genuinely free and fair elections. Others, like Kenya, Ghana, and Senegal, wobble between progress and regression. The majority now live under systems where democracy is a façade: Tanzania, Uganda, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, and Egypt — all red on the Freedom House map, where gavel, crown, and tank replace the ballot box.

The Democracy–Development Disconnect

The numbers expose the paradox: the top 10 authoritarian states have an average per capita income of USD 2,100; the most democratic average USD 6,700.
Over 25 African nations have known one-party or one-man rule for more than a quarter-century.
Only nine have experienced peaceful power transfers in the past decade.
And according to Freedom House (2025), 77% of Africans now live under “partly free” or “not free” regimes.

“No economy can flourish where institutions are hollow, and no democracy can endure where justice is for sale.”
\Justice Is the Currency of Governance

Islamic values offer a forgotten metric of leadership. The Prophet ﷺ ruled through shūrā (consultation), ʿadl (justice), amānah (trust), and maṣlaḥah (the public good). These principles are the “coins” of moral legitimacy — yet today, most regimes rate dangerously low on each. Governance has become transactional, not ethical.

Until Africa restores the moral foundation of its politics, democracy will remain ritual — and economic reform, an illusion.

……..When the Pulpit Falls Silent: Why Africa’s Ulema Must Speak for Justice

Silence is not neutrality. In the Qur’an, the Prophet Shuʿayb was sent to a people whose commerce was unjust; he warned them that cheating the scales invites divine wrath. Today, across much of Africa, our scales — political, economic, moral — are badly tilted. Leaders cling to office through manipulation, youth lose faith in ballots, and public wealth is consumed by private greed.

This is not merely a political failure; it is a spiritual one. The Qur’an commands: “O you who believe, stand firmly for justice, witnesses for Allah, even if against yourselves or your kin.” (4:135). If the faithful will not hold rulers accountable, who will?

Africa’s mosques and religious institutions wield enormous moral authority. They educate, they counsel, they comfort — but too often, they retreat from confronting injustice for fear of politics. Yet the Prophet ﷺ said: “The greatest jihad is to speak a word of truth before a tyrant ruler.” Silence before oppression is not prudence; it is complicity.

Imams, scholars, and Islamic economists can champion reform without partisanship. They can preach about stewardship (amānah), integrity in public service, and the sin of corruption. They can organise civic literacy workshops that teach believers their constitutional rights and responsibilities. They can remind the wealthy and powerful that every dinar taken unjustly will be accounted for before Allah.

Africa does not lack constitutions; it lacks conscience. When mosques become centres of justice education, when the faithful demand accountability as a religious duty, when economic policy is shaped by moral restraint — then democracy will cease to be a ritual and become a trust once more.