Here at the Spittoon we have covered HT’s attempts to destabilize and even mount a coup in Pakistan, an HT member’s assault on Quilliam’s director, the various unpleasantries of HT’s ideology yet even their copyright violations have so far failed to convince me (as all these matters have the Tories) that HT deserves to be designated an illegal organisation.
It is indisputable that HT’s rejection of free speech, democracy, equal rights, secularism (and on and on and on) is deeply unhelpful in British society. Their rejection of the key values (and democratic institutions) which bind our society together is certainly not something that should go unchallenged, but is this enough reason to ban them?
Well, this week the argument for banning has got that little bit stronger. Pakistan’s Daily Times reports:
Nuclear scientist among held Hizbut Tahrir activists
The recently arrested Hizbut Tahrir activists from Islamabad include a nuclear scientist, a private TV channel reported on Monday.
According to the channel, the arrested men include the scientist, a USAID official and an environmental scientist. The activists who are being interrogated by the Islamabad police include: Rizwan Aleem, a nuclear scientist and currently a PhD student at the Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology; Abid Mehmood, an officer of a United States Agency for International Development; and Aman Hamza, an environmental scientist. Sources say the Hizbut Tahrir activists were likely to be handed over to intelligence agencies for further interrogation. Nearly, all the 32 arrested activists belonged to educated families, the channel reported.
When Maajid Nawaz first left HT he spoke about how HT first took an interest in Pakistan when it became a nuclear power. Nawaz traveled there from Britain to help set up an HT branch there in the hope that it could infiltrate Pakistan’s military to wrest control of Pakistan and its nuclear weapons from the Pakistani people. The arrest of a Hizb ut-Tahrir member who had infiltrated the Pakistani nuclear establishment is terrifying proof that HT has not given up on this bellicose ambition.
HT Pakistan was set up by British HT member Imtiaz Malik with the help of other HT activists based in London; the group that organises spectacularly ill-attended conferences in Birmingham is the same group as the one in Pakistan lusting after nuclear weapons. The only reason HT has mounted no similar attempts to undermine British national security is due to lack of numbers, not ambition.
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UPDATE: As David from Media Watch Watch observes below, Hizb ut-Tahrir has just been banned in Bangladesh. The only Arab countries that it can operate in are Yemen, Lebanon and the UAE [and Sudan, thank you Abu Faris]. It is also banned across Central Asia, Russia and Turkey, whilst Germany has banned it from public activity.
6 Comments
They’ve just been banned in Bangladesh.
Hardly worth the effort of a ban. Just enrol them at some college and give them basic history and politics lessons.
I would like to ammend this. Hizb ut-Tahrir are a legal and active party in Sudan.
They maintain a rather large and very public headquarters just of Mek Nimer Street in Khartoum North, resplendent with their adopted Abbasid flag and a large sign announcing their presence here.
HT fly-post a lot in Khartoum North and around the embassy district in Amarat. Although, why they think the staff of the Russian or French or other foreign embassies would be in anyway phased or influenced by their turgid propaganda is another matter.
That Hizb ut-Tahrir are tolerated by the Islamist regime here must speak volumes.
Agree and disagree.
A principle other reason is also that British security vetting procedures are deep enough to catch such attempts at infiltration (in the normal run of things).
Given HT’s strategy of infiltration and entryism of the state structures (especially the military and its ancillaries) in order to take over the state from within, together with the recorded Islamist leanings of elements within the Pakistani military-intelligence community (especially ISI), together with the known connections between the Pakistani nuclear scientific community, the intelligence community there and Islamism, this is a very worrying development indeed.
Muttering darkly, Hizb ut-Tahrir has responded to the banning of its organisation in Bangladesh:
I must admit I haven’t seen such a train-wreck of a headline since the bad old days of Pravda and the Soviet press. Perhaps these Hizbies moonlight at the North Korean press agency?
Interesting to see HT explicit about their attempts to infiltrate the Bangladeshi military, though.
Those who enjoy inflicting pain upon themselves can read more of the same sinister yet turgid yet surreal rubbish at:
http://www.hizb.org.uk/hizb/press-centre/press-release/oppressive-bangladeshi-govt-banned-ht-due-to-our-work-for-khilafah-&-support-for-the-defense-forces.html
Your conclusion is based upon a false premise. HT would not try to take power through infiltraiting the military here, fo many reasons but mainly because it wouldn’t be feasible with a non-Muslim majority in the military.
Banning for what they might decide to do in the future to destroy our democracy is not a good reason nor would it ever be illegal in any kind of liberal society.
If there are laws that would oblige a proscription then fair enough, but otherwise your reasoning sounds odd.
Unless you are trying to appease Grayling and Cameron I would strongly argue against a ban, rather prosecute individuals for violating the law, prevent them from indoctrinating children, shun them on public media, destroy their pathetic devious theological foundations, expose the nature of their sub-human ideology refute their policy assertions and force communities to shun them.