Inside ‘Islam’s political insurgency’ in Europe

The caliphate as an idea resonates deeply with many Muslims, analysts say.

No doubt as an attempt to tap into that sentiment, the online "newscast" that al-Qaida launched in September is called "The Voice of the Caliphate."

But actual support for the re-establishment of a pan-Islamic state is difficult to ascertain.

As for Hizb ut-Tahrir, Sher Khan, of the moderate Muslim Council of Britain, said the notion that most Muslims in the West support its goals and methods is "ludicrous."

"They just shout louder than anyone else," he said. “It’s very detrimental to the Muslim community, the manner in which they call for these things.”

Yet a recent BBC poll found that 40 percent of British Muslims want Islamic law implemented in parts of the country.

The Nixon Center's Baran said Hizb ut-Tahrir's secrecy makes its size difficult to gauge, but that its membership likely ranges in the hundreds in Western countries such as Denmark and up to tens of thousands in Muslim states such as Uzbekistan.

She said the group's presence in the United States is small but growing, particularly on college campuses.

Alienation in the West?
Analysts say groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir prey upon alienation among second-generation Muslims and converts in the West.

“It gives a positive dimension to their exclusion. What they wanted to become, well-to-do Westerners, they cannot achieve, so they feel they have negative value,” said Olivier Roy, a renowned French scholar of political Islam.

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Not so, said Mohammed Akmal, 28, who has been a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir since 1994.

Akmal,  who described himself as a businessman, joined the group along with other students while he was in college in London after being impressed by the group's "intellectually appealing" message of a greater role for Islam in governance.

“There was nothing within that (college) environment that made us alien to the world in which we lived,” he said.

Instead, his generation was deeply affected by a number of recent events, including the first Gulf War and the fate of Bosnian Muslims in the Balkan Wars.

“There was an element of feeling that the Muslim world was in crisis,” he said. “Hizb ut-Tahrir had quite a coherent answer to how the Muslim world should tackle these problems.”

Hizb ut-Tahrir has been criticized because it does not participate in the political processes in the countries in which it operates and, analysts like Baran argue, it advocates noninvolvement for Muslims in the West.

Hizb ut-Tahrir defends its focus on geopolitics, saying Islamic tradition dictates that all Muslims remain involved in their communities.

“It would be hypocritical for us to call for a caliphate in the Muslim world, where our main problem is … and then engage in politics in this country,” Harwood said.

‘They are totally cut off from reality’
For Roy, that is precisely the problem.

“They have no real political program to establish this caliphate. They have no timetable. They have no policy … (no) solutions,” said Roy, whose books include "Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Umma."

“They are totally cut off from reality. They are more interested in this sort of psychodrama than in real political action,” he said. "In a sense it is closer to a cult than a political party.”

Hizb ut-Tahrir argues that Western-style democracy is incompatible with Islam because it allows people to be governed by laws other than those revealed by God. The group says any caliphate would be a "representative" government in an Islamic context.

"Hizb ut-Tahrir calls upon [Muslims] to mobilize your forces and rally your ranks to help and support it in its work to establish the Khilafah state (caliphate), by which you will restore your glory, attain the good pleasure of your lord and destroy your enemies," a 2005 publication exhorted.

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