Hibz Ut-Tahrir :: Should We Ban It?

standing outside the Egyptian embassy calling for a Muslim army to rise up in jihad should get an organization listed as a terrorist organization

Luqman Muqeem, a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir’s UK branch, said the Hamas attack on Israel “made us all very, very happy” and has also shared a quote on social media about “kill[ing]... the Jews”. (Telegraph, October 2023)

Hibz Ut-Tahrir (HuT) seeks the establishment of the Caliphate along with a global pan Islamic empire and is banned in most Arab and Muslim countries. The group has a lengthy history of promoting pan Islamist extremism in the UK dating back to the 1990s. Sources recalled that HuT targeted university campuses and so heavily indoctrinated students that they dominated the prayer rooms on campus. HuT targets young people seeking social change and convinces then that their radical global revolution aligns with Islam, when in reality one man’s socialist ideas, and not a search for or love of God, drives HuT. Similar to the progressive extremist groups operating on campus today, HuT created a great deal of social unrest and volatile atmosphere on campus, leading the National Union of Students to ban the group on all campuses. Former member Majid Nawaz reported that HuT would encourage students to engage in vigilantism against secular non Muslim students and secular Muslim women.

Following the signing of the Israel-Palestine Liberation Organisation Accord in September 1993, the party began openly targeting young second generation British Muslims on UK campuses and at mosques. HTB [HuT Britain] leaflets and meetings on campuses were increasingly reported to students' unions, many of which instigated a localised 'No Platform' policy in response to HTB's public antisemitism, anti-Hinduism and homophobia. In 1994 the Guardian reported that many mosque officials felt "besieged" by the party's increased activism, which included issuing leaflets condemning local imams who advocated tolerance and integration. One Muslim journalist, Ehsan Massoud, of Q-news, said that many young British Muslims felt that their communities and mosques were dominated by the "biraderi", or clan affiliations of older immigrant generations. In opposition, HTB deliberately marketed their totalitarian form of Islam as a comprehensive political alternative. (Ahmed and Stuart, 2009)

In 1994, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Jewish student leaders and a number of MPs petitioned the UK Home Secretary in an effort to ban the group throughout Britain. There was no ban and the group retreated. The bloke responsible for the rise of Hizb ut-Tahrir in the UK, Omar Bakri, left the group to form his own pan Islamist group called Al-Muhajiroun (AM), which reflected his Wahhabist leanings. Bakri’s group claimed responsibly for a 2005 suicide bombing in the London Underground, the 7/7, which killed 52 and injured 700. Bakri thereafter sought refuge in Lebanon and has not been allowed back into the UK. Bakri claimed his group had close ties to Al-Qaeda. In a 2005 BBC article, Ian McWilliams wrote "Hizb-ut-Tahrir plans its development in three stages," said Dr Satpayev. "First they convert new members. Secondly, they establish a network of secret cells, and finally, they try to infiltrate the government to work to legalise their party and its aims.""

HuT sought western support for its Islamist revolution and AM sought to bring trigger political change through terrorism. AM grew louder and provided a pro active alternative to the HuT “party of words”. Bakri sought a violent revolution and HuT hung back and developed a strategy to gain traction in the west and support for a Caliphate and pan Islamism. In the post 9/11 period the HuT focussed on presenting the narrative of the clash of values, the western aggressors and the system of statecraft weakening the global ummah. HuT. has carefully crafted its message to position Islamism as an alternative that would fit into a multicultural society. In each country where they have a presence, they choose to engage with the public and promote their message based on local politics and society. Both David Cameron and Tony Blair sought to ban HuT. The HuT is now aggressively campaigning against a ban using Twitter Spaces.

In 2021 HuT threatened “to wipe out that Zionist entity”. In a video posted online last month, a man identified as Belal Mohammed, a supporter of Hizb ut-Tahrir recorded himself at the protest on May 16.

A man calling himself Belal Mohammed posted a video online saying the following: “This goes out to the Muslim armies, what are you waiting for? Jihad is responsibility on you. Wipe out that Zionist entity. How dare they occupy Masjid Al-Aqsa [the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem] … The Muslim youth here, we the Muslims in the West, we are with you ... We don’t fear the United Nations, British government. We don’t give a damn. We only fear Allah. Jihad fi sabilillah via the armies.”

Regarding jihad, The Telegraph reported that Mr Belal said: “Jihad is the foreign policy of the Islamic System which is established on the way of Prophethood. It has nothing to do with violence against civilians, as your newspaper often misportrayed it. Opposition to the illegal occupation of Palestine is not anti-Semitic”. HuT has publicly declared that it does not acknowledge the land of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people and insists Israel belongs to the Arabs and Muslims.

Facts about Hibz Ut-Tahrir

Formed in Jerusalem in 1953 by Tariq Al Nabhani. The party name Hibz Ut-Tahrir means party of liberation and the party seeks to unite the Muslim world under a caliphate and implement sharia globally. HuT operates in a closed and secretive manner, relies entirely on private funding, and clandestine networking. After the collapse of the USSR central Asia became a hotbed of extremism, and HuT played a role in radicalising Muslims. Despite the ban in countries like Uzbekistan, HuT continues to operate and remains elusive. The group operates under the global leadership of Ata Abu Rashida. Abdul Wahlid leads the UK branch of HuT.

HuT claims to reject the use of violence to bring about political change. That's a questionable claim given that it endorses radicalisation that leads to terrorism, as we have seen on October 21st, 2023 in London. A call for jihad is a call for violence towards Jews, Christians, Hindus, westerners, ex Muslims, reformist + Zionist Muslims. Every Muslim country, with the following exceptions: Malaysia, Lebanon, Pakistan and Yemen, has declared HuT a terrorist organisation and criminalised it. It has also been banned in Germany and Russia, China, Russia.

According to HuT, occupied Islamic lands include: the Palestinian Territories (by Israel); East Timor (by Australia); southern Central Asia (by China); the Caucasus, Crimea and Khazan (by Russia); Delhi, Kashmir and the whole of northern India (by India); Andalusia, Sabta and Maleela (by Spain); Sicily (by Italy); Serbia, Croatia, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Burma and the islands in the Mediterranean Sea. Burma and the Philippines are seen to be occupying Islamic lands. HuT states that, in the case of occupied lands, there is an 'inevitability of military conflict, where there is an obligation to wage "offensive" jihad." Militant Islamist groups such as al-Qaeda have also echoed HT's classification of occupied Islamic lands, setting the stage for problems with Islamist terrorism in these countries.

HuT embraces the following ideologies —

Pan-Islamism | Islamism | Muslim supremacism | Caliphalism | Salafism | Jihadism | Desecularization | Anti-Western sentiment | Anti-Christian sentiment | Anti-nationalism | Antisemitism | Anti-Zionism | Anti-democracy | Anti-liberalism | Anti-capitalism | Anti-communism | Anti-Kemalism

A few items from the HuT charter —

Arabic is the sole language | All political parties must be based on Islam | Apostasy from Islam punishable by death | No clergy | the purpose of the state is to promote Islam | Khaleefah has absolute authority | Mandatory military training for all males 15+ | wives must obey husband | sexual apartheid t/o society

From the HuT website —

Hizb ut-Tahrir undertakes the following actions:

1.   Culturing people about Islam in a concentrated manner in study circles with the culture of the Party.

2.   Culturing people in a collective manner with all the possible means.

3.   Adopting the real interests of the Ummah.

4.   Exposing the plans and the conspiracies of the kafir.

In case you still do not feel convinced of the necessity to ban HuT, here’s an excerpt that explains the current leader’s explains the position on Israel and the Jews.

There can be no peaceful relations with the Jews: this is prohibited by Islamic Law. It is also prohibited to settle for only part of Palestine. There can be neither negotiations, co-existence nor normalization of relations with the Jews in Palestine. None of the Jews in Palestine who arrived after the destruction of the Ottoman Empire have the right to remain there. The Islamic legal rule requires that those of whom are capable of fighting be killed until none survive. Any others should be forced to leave. Individual Jews who lived in Palestine (as part of a dhimma (non-Muslim - report's authors' insertion] community) before the end of the [Ottoman - original insertion] empire and are not guilty of any violent act against the Muslims can be allowed to stay... however, it is anticipated that none belong in this category. It is impossible to solve the problem of Palestine by peaceful means: what is required is actual war, in the form of Jihad. —Ata Abu Rishta, current leader of HT

Writing for the Statesman, a former member described her increasing discomfort with the group’s radical views, its clandestine operating practises, and what she saw as its veering away from Islam. She writes a party text by Abdul Qadeem Zallum, the second leader of HT, states that if necessary millions of Muslims and non-Muslims will be killed. How would this fact make the party different from the tyrannical rulers it continuously curses and defames?