[Reader-list] Hizb ut Tahrir in America

[Pawan Durani]

http://www.hudson-ny.org/1413/hizb-ut-tahrir-in-america

Hizb ut Tahrir (HuT), a transnational revolutionary movement which has
flourished in the West and which is seeking to create an Islamist
super-state. Founded in Jerusalem in 1953 the group aims to unite all
Muslims under one ruler, the Caliph, and impose a rigid version of
Shariah law throughout the world, is turning its attention to the
United States where it hopes to win support from American Muslims.

The group has been planning to hold a conference in Chicago on July 11
at the Marriot Oat Brook Hotel. It will focus on the "emerging world
order: how the Khilafah [Caliphate] will shape the world" and is part
of a "global campaign for Khilafah." Attendees are told to "join the
revival."

HuT is banned across the Middle East, in parts of Central and South
East Asia, and in Germany as well -- in part because of its
revolutionary nature, which seeks to seize power by inciting the
armies of Muslim countries to rebel. But many Western governments are
also concerned by the extreme ideology HuT promotes.

In the United Kingdom, throughout the 1990s, groups like HuT were
allowed to grow unchecked, causing untold damage that will take years
to reverse. Following the 7/7 terrorist attacks in 2005, Prime
Minister Tony Blair vowed to ban the group, but later backtracked
after failing to find a sufficient legal basis for doing so. This
illustrates, vividly, the problem at hand: The challenge posed by
groups like HuT is not their message (which is easily overcome), but
their methods.

By steering clear of actual involvement in terrorism, HuT is able to
present itself as an intellectual revivalist movement, testing the
limits of liberal societies such as Britain and America, which
tolerate – and indeed cherish – dissent of all kinds. Yet they are
clearly more than a talking shop. HuT creates the moral justification
for terrorism by serving as a "political wing" for the global jihad
movement, thereby supporting it with intellectual arguments if nothing
else.

Although the group has never been directly implicated in acts of
terrorism, its fingerprints have frequently turned up on the periphery
of actual plots, leading commentators such as Zeyno Baran to regard it
as a "conveyor belt" for terrorism.

Two of al-Qaeda's most senior members, for example, Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, are alleged to have been
one-time associates of the group. In Britain, HuT has been blamed for
radicalizing Britain's first suicide bomber, Omar Sharif, who killed
three diners in a Tel Aviv restaurant. Similarly, one of the attackers
in the abortive terrorist attack on Glasgow airport in 2007, Kafeel
Ahmed, was a flatmate of a HuT member in Cambridge.

The fact that the group has inspired terrorism should come as no
surprise. Article 56 of HuT's draft constitution for its proposed
Islamic state states: "Every male Muslim, fifteen years and over, is
obliged to undergo military training in readiness for jihad."

The group's most extreme rhetoric is reserved for Jews. A leaflet
issued by the group in 2001 stated: "In origin, no one likes the Jews
except the Jews. Even they themselves rarely like each other." Another
leaflet stated: "The Jews are a people of slander. They are a
treacherous people who violate oaths and covenants….Allah forbids you
to befriend them."

More recently, following the storming by Israelis of the of the
Turkish boat, the Mavi Marmara, the HuT chapter in Bangladesh issued a
press release declaring: "O Muslim Armies! Teach the Jews a lesson
after which they will need no further lessons. March forth to fight
them, eradicate their entity and purify the earth of their filth."

American members are expressing similar sentiments. Maajid Eshaaq, a
Chicago resident, is heavily promoting HuT's upcoming conference on
social networking sites such as Facebook, on which he has created a
group called: "Only a Muslim Army Can Solve Israeli Menace." Its
description states:

Salauddin Ayyubi set an example for us when he liberated Palestine
from the crusaders. We believe this menace can only be solved by a
sincere Muslim army...We call the Muslim rulers, dictators and kings
to fear Allah and stop helping the kuffar [infidel]] and stop lying to
the Muslims and stop shedding fake tears. Bring back the Islamic
Khilafah and the Islamic system and its armies to take care of this
disease called Israel.

HuT's broader political agenda is deeply reactionary and hostile,
promoting ideas of confrontation and separation among Muslims in the
West. Muslims in America, for example, will be told that participating
in the democratic process is forbidden, that secularism and democracy
are incompatible with Islam, and that American Muslims should isolate
themselves from civil society. One of its publications states "The
basis of the democratic system is that people possess the right of
sovereignty, choice and implementation. ... it is a Kufr [infidel's]
system because it is laid down by man and it is not from the Shari'ah
Laws".

Working out how to draw a line against that kind of activity while
preserving civil liberties remains a problem that many politicians in
Britain have been unable to resolve. Now, it would seem, US policy
makers will likely be facing the same swamp.