Inside ‘Islam’s political insurgency’ in Europe

Daniel Strieff Reporter • Profile • E-mail

LONDON — Merely a radical Islamic political party or a “conveyor belt for terrorists”?

That is the question British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government hopes to answer when it decides whether to join Germany, Russia and many Muslim-majority states in formally banning the activities of Hizb ut-Tahrir (Party of Liberation) for allegedly inciting violence.

Hizb ut-Tahrir says it is a nonviolent political party, but critics assert it is deeply divisive and potentially dangerous -- especially in Europe -- because it is openly anti-democratic, calls for a new world order based on uniting the world's 1.2 billion Muslims in a new state and shares a worldview, if not methodology, with some violent groups.

“Hizb ut-Tahrir is very dangerous for the long-term in Western countries because it pushes forward an ideology that doesn’t believe in these countries’ constitution, in the system, in the laws, but says there is only one answer: a new Islamic state,” said Zeyno Baran of the Washington-based Nixon Center and the author of "Hizb ut-Tahrir: Islam's Political Insurgency."

Hizb ut-Tahrir wants all Muslims united in a single state led by a caliph, or a successor to the prophet of God.

Despite a changing power base and structure, the caliphate as an institution represented a united political leadership that governed the affairs of Muslims for around 1,400 years after the death of the Prophet Muhammad. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk dismantled the last caliphate, in Ottoman Turkey, in 1924.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush has often cast the fight against radical Islam as a wider struggle between the West and those who want to establish "a totalitarian Islamic empire reaching from Spain to Indonesia."

Blair singles out Hizb ut-Tahrir
Less than a month after July 7, 2005, when four British Muslims detonated suicide bombs on three London subway trains and one bus, killing 52 people and wounding hundreds of others, Blair singled out plans to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir as part of his anti-terrorism plan.

To that end, parliament in March approved a terrorism bill that made it a criminal offense to "encourage" or "glorify" terrorism.

A Home Office spokesman declined to elaborate on Blair's statements. Hizb ut-Tahrir's legal status remains in limbo.

Regardless, Hizb ut-Tahrir insists it is a political party, albeit one without offices nor a base of operations.

"We do not have a military wing, we have never had a military wing, we do not plan to ever have a military wing," Jamal Harwood, a spokesman for the group in Britain, said during an interview in London's gleaming Canary Wharf area, one of the financial and media hubs of the city.

Although founded in Jerusalem half a century ago as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, experts say London has become the group's ideological and logistical center.

The Nixon Center's Baran believes Hizb ut-Tahrir is dangerous because it contends Islam and the West are inherently at odds. She has called the group "radical Sunni Islamism's ideological vanguard" and a "conveyor belt for terrorists."

“Hizb ut-Tahrir is a threat because once someone is so ideologically certain that the caliphate is the answer and that Muslims must be united, that Western laws are not legitimate, that the United States is holding down Muslims everywhere and must be destroyed, you become a person who is very confused internally," Baran said. "That kind of person may easily jump onto the next step and say, ‘I don’t want to wait 50 years, I want it now,’ and then resort to violence.”

But Harwood, a Canadian convert, rejected Baran's characterization as "baseless."

“We’ve had many Muslims from more radical jihadist groups who have left those parties and joined Hizb ut-Tahrir because they can see futility in terms of what they were doing previously,” he said.

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