Cast your mind back a few years to the Hizb ut-Tahrir annual conferences of yore. That extremist, violent, Antisemitic global Islamist party which thinks reintroducing a Caliphate is the answer to all of life’s little problems was able to persuade several thousands of British Muslims to attend its annual Khilafah conferences.
For example, its 2003 Birmingham conference was held at the prestigious National Indoor Arena (where ‘Gladiators‘ used to be filmed) and over 7,000 delegates were reported – by independent sources – to have attended.
Now look what’s happened to them. Going on the 2001 census figures (which must inevitably underestimate the numbers) there are 1,591,000 Muslims in the UK, of which 607,083 are in London. This leaves at least 983,917 Muslims outside London and potential attendees at HT’s Birmingham (actually West Bromwich) conference. How many of them turned up to HT’s recent Birmingham conference?
Although HT claim to have convinced “thousands” to attend, the pictures on their own website tell a different story.
Large numbers of empty seats (especially at the far left, but also in the middle)
Hardly a great turn out – looks like a few hundred (say 800, if we’re being generous). An estimation which is confirmed when you look at the details of the hall booked by HT. This event was held at the Bethel Convention Centre in West Bromwich; as their website confirms, the main auditorium (if the back lounges are closed – which they were) can hold a maximum of 1,830 – HT clearly wasn’t expecting a mass turnout and, given the multitude of empty seats, even the smaller numbers HT had expected failed to turn up.
So I thought I’d give the reception at Bethel Convention Centre a call – they confirmed that HT’s headline “Thousands attend Hizb ut-Tahrir’s Birmingham Conference” was a lie. In fact, the nice lady on reception confirmed, there had been less than a thousand – confirming my rough estimations from the pictures.
Sad stuff, Hizbies.
And it gets even worse. People who went to the conference (and, again, the pictures kindly provided by HT on their website) confirm that many of the people at the conference were party loyalists who had come up from London for the day. This makes my estimation of 800 look overly generous. Clearly, out of a target audience of 983,917 Muslims outside London, only 550-700 are interested in what HT have to say.
Yet more evidence of the total bankruptcy of Hizb ut-Tahrir as a movement and ideology. Perhaps, in a couple of years, they’ll be holding their events here.
UPDATE:
It seems that this little article may have disturbed Hizb ut-Tahrir. They have now updated their website. Unfortunately for them, they may have edited the text of the page but they haven’t updated its URL. So, here is a screenshot before they realise what they’ve done.
The URL (highlighted) still reveals the original title of this article
10 Comments
Yes I can see them booking Kebab shops for future conferences. So much for the Ummah universally supporting their call. To put these pathetic figures in perspective, 6000 turned up for an event in Green Lane mosque which had much less publicity and shorter notice. Most mosques in Birmingham have more then 800 for Friday prayers. The upcoming Minhaj ul Quran event is expected to attract 3000 delegates, again less publicity and shorter notice.
So the HT slump continues, all the half-intelligent people have left, those remaining are demoralised, events are getting smaller and smaller.
David Icke can attract more people then that at three days notice.
Oh and now expect some HT supporters to turn up and deny the obvious. Sad and predictable.
Predictable, they don’t even bother booking big venues any more. Their London conference was a flop too. They attracted around 1800 people whilst holding it in the heart of Tower Hamlets which itself has over 180,000 Muslims and London over 700,000 Muslims.
There are going down faster then Monica Lewinsky.
Yossarian, well done! What an inspired move, calling the Bethel Convention centre to confirm numbers. Pizza HuT have been exposed for the deceitful liars they are…and yet they want to ‘lead’ the Ummah?!
What jokers.
We must publicise this far and wide.
I thought these guys were in the nusrah stage : )
Yes they need to seek nusrah from western human rights groups to campaign against their members being tortured in central asia.
To be honest, I’d be happy to help them with that campaigning. No matter how stupid and unpleasant HT’s ideology, their treatment in Turkey and central Asia (and other countries too) is a disgrace.
Indeed, boiling people alive can never be justified.
Oh how deliciously ironic! Bethel is taken from the Hebrew, meaning ‘house of God’. Has the Zionist conspiracy even got to HT?
Only 800 were reported by HT to have attended their first US Conference outside of Chicago in July: http://www.khilafahconference2009.com/. Evidence provided by their own pictures makes me suspect that that number was rounded up. Apparently catching the wave of HT extremism is not palatable to most Muslims in the United States.