Inside ‘Islam’s political insurgency’ in Europe

Hizb ut-Tahrir conceives that any Islamic state would harken back to Medina in the time of Muhammad and would be operated on shariah, a legal code derived from the Quran and Muhammad's teachings.

“We are calling for the caliphate based upon that which Prophet Muhammad gave us … with new ideas in areas of technology ... which Islam allows,” Harwood said.

Hizb ut-Tahrir also believes the establishment of the caliphate will ameliorate the divisions between Islamic sects, most notably between Sunnis and Shiites.

“The Islamic rules on leadership are very clear: they only accept one leadership for Muslims,” Harwood said.

Despite its protestations, controversy has dogged Hizb ut-Tahrir, including:

• In 1996, Omar Bakri Muhammad, a Syrian-born Muslim cleric living in Britain, broke off from Hizb ut-Tahrir and formed a virulently anti-Semitic group, Al Muhajiroun. That group, which Bakri formally dissolved in 2004 but which allegedly still exists under a different name, became known in the United States after holding a conference called "The Magnificent 19" which praised the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It also claimed to have sent British Muslims to fight Western forces in Afghanistan after the U.S.-led invasion. Bakri, who is now believed to reside in Lebanon, has since been banned from Britain on grounds that his presence here was “not conductive to the public good.”
• After the London bombings, a reporter for the Guardian newspaper was discovered to be a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir. The journalist, Dilpazier Aslam, who had covered stories relating to the attacks and authored an op-ed piece called "We rock the boat: today’s Muslims aren’t prepared to ignore injustice," was fired when he refused to quit Hizb ut-Tahrir.
• In the 1990s, the National Union of Students banned Hizb ut-Tahrir from British college campuses over alleged anti-Semitism.
• In October 2002, Hizb ut-Tahrir's spokesman in Denmark was convicted of distributing anti-Semitic propaganda and given a 60-day suspended sentence. Harwood defended the member and said the offending material, some of which praised suicide bombings, was taken out of context (the Danish court had rejected that argument.)
• Members of Hizb ut-Tahrir have been charged with plotting coups in Egypt and Jordan.

Hizb ut-Tahrir is active in dozens of countries and maintains several official Web sites.

“Western countries need to offer Muslims better teaching in proper Islam and more opportunities so that they are not so easily influenced by this overly politicized version of Islam espoused by Hizb ut-Tahrir,” Baran said.

But Harwood said any ban in Britain was unlikely to impact the group's activities significantly.

“Those ideas continue to circulate throughout the Muslim world and also throughout the Muslim community in non-Muslim countries," he said. "So in that sense we don’t see that there will be any change.”

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