This is a guest post from Raziq, a former member of Hizb-ut-Tahrir
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Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HT) is an anti-Semitic, separatist and divisive group which justifies the use of violence. Ideologically it has the same goals as al-Qaeda (i.e. the creation of a super expansionist Islamist state) only the methods differ. HT is not a terrorist group, but it does believe in orchestrating offensive bloody wars once its version of an Islamist state is established.
In their manifesto they give the following interpretation of jihad (holy war):
“Jihad originally is fard kifayah (a collective duty to be fulfilled by a sufficient number of Muslims) but when the enemy attacks then it becomes an individual duty for all Muslims. The meaning that Jihad is fard kifayah originally is that we begin fighting the enemy even if he did not start fighting with us. If no one from the Muslims begins fighting in any period of time, all Muslims then would have committed a sin by leaving Jihad. And therefore jihad is not a defensive war: it is in fact a war to raise the Word of Allah (SWT), and it is compulsory originally in order to spread Islam and to carry its message even if the disbelievers did not attack us”. (Hizb-ut-Tahrir, Pg 71, Al-Khilafah Publications)
According to the above, HT believe jihad is a collective duty upon Muslims, but if Muslims are attacked it becomes an individual duty on all Muslims to fight. So according to this interpretation, all Muslims in the world today should be fighting against British and American troops because they have attacked Muslim countries. Furthermore, even if the disbelievers did not attack Muslims they should still be fought and it’s obligatory for a group of Muslims to be continually doing this. Therefore, just like al-Qaeda, HT believes jihad is not a defensive but an offensive war.
Further elaborations of this offensive jihad can be found in their literature:
“It is evident that Jihad is a material war against Kuffar in order to establish the rule of Islam. Its cause is to fight the Kuffar who have refused Islam after it has been presented to them in a manner that draws attention, i.e. Islam should be offered in a state that attracts attention, and then Jihad will take place.” (A Warm Call from Hizb ut-Tahrir to the Muslims, Pg 13, al-Khilafah Publications 2001)
“Jihad is the method defined by Islam to convey the Message of Islam to the world. Conveying the Islamic Da’wa is considered the main function of the Islamic state after implementing the rules of Islam internally.” (The Ruling System of Islam, Pg 159, Al-Khilafah publications, London, 1999)
According to HT’s founder Taqiuddin Nabhani, offensive jihad would become compulsory for all Muslims in their caliphate:
“Jihad is a compulsory duty (fard) on all Muslims. Military training is therefore compulsory. Thus, every male Muslim, fifteen years and over, is obliged to undergo military training in readiness for jihad”. (Systems of Islam by Taqiuddin al-Nabhani, Pg 131, The Draft Constitution- The Army; Article 56, al-Khilafah Publications, London 2002)
“The duty of the Islamic State is to implement Islam and execute its rules internally and carrying the Da’wah for it externally, and that the method for this is Jihad, performed by the State.” (Mafahim Hizb ut-Tahrir by Taqiuddin al-Nabhani, Pg 5, Khilafah Publications, 2001)
“As for the military conscription, this necessitates the assignment of people to permanently be part of the armed forces, i.e. to have Mujahedeen performing effective Jihad and whatever the duty of Jihad entails; this is compulsory. This is because the performance of Jihad is a continuous duty whether the enemy attacked us or not, which is why military conscription is a duty that is included in the Hukm of Jihad.” (The Ruling System of Islam, Pg 168, Al-Khilafah publications, London 1999)
HT also believes in hijacking (pdf) the aircraft of countries it perceives as being at war with Muslims (i.e. America, Britain and Israel):
“If the plane belongs to a country at war with Muslims, like Israel, it is allowed to hijack it, for there is no sanctity for Israel or for the Jews in it”. (‘The Islamic rule on hijacking aeroplanes’- HT Leaflet)
Incidentally, Jew hatred is another common passion HT shares with al-Qaeda. HT’s current global leader Ata Abu Rishta has the following to say about 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 community) before the end of the (Ottoman) 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”. (A Fundamental Quest: Hizb ut-Tahrir and the search for the Islamic Caliphate, page 162, Suha Taji-Farouki Grey Seal London)
In a HT leaflet entitled ‘The only place between Muslims and Jews is the battlefield’, HT state:
“Clearly, the scandalous and treacherous negotiations must end, the door that leads to the treacherous peace with the Jews must be slammed shut, we must rid ourselves from their bragging, arrogance and contempt of Muslims, and destroy their existence by the lawful Jihad until they are wiped out, and their survivors are left senseless, scattered and despised the world over”. (HT Leaflet)
They even justify the killing of Muslims who do not want to live by their system:
“..he who does not rule by Islam and rules by a Kufr system should either retract or be killed. Thus, the rule by a Kufr system would be prevented even if this led to several years of fighting and even if it led to the killing of millions of Muslims and to the martyrdom of millions of believers”. (How the Khilafah Was Destroyed, Pg 199, Al-Khilafah Publications: London)
The justification of violence, anti-Semitism, homophobia and the fundamental disregard of western liberal values makes HT a dangerous and problematic movement. The Tories in their 2010 manifesto have promised to ban HT, let’s see if they live up to their promise.
9 Comments
HT’s interpretation of Jihad is exactly the same one given by the Al-Qaeda ideologue Abdullah Azam in his book ‘Join the Caravan’. Yet, despite this and their methodology of orchestrating military coups, HT still claim to be non-violent.
Your days are numbered Hizbis!
Raziq,
Fine words.
In the Arab world, HuT are effectively regarded as a legal (Sudan), or quasi-legal parapolitical of the Muslim Brotherhood. These are the brothers who are cross – and the state at least tolerates them as brothers, for example in Sudan, where HuT are often critical of the Islamist regime – but, nonetheless, are openly tolerated, indeed funded.
So, in deepest Khartoum, one finds the ‘Abbasid Black Flag of Jihad and HuT deep, arm-in-arm. Recall, there the jihadis are often themselves pawns of bigger fights between shaiykhs – they turn them on and off like taps. This, for ordinary people in such places, makes them dangerous – they are unpredictable: you never know who they are really working for.
In Britain, you see but the tip of the huge great Islamist nightmare. HuT’s manoeuvres in the UK ring with irony in places where some of these people actually have the ear of people who hold the power of life and death over others.
Fight these people where ever you find them, they are the enemies of life and the gatekeepers of hell.
HT are so desperate for a Caliphate that they even wanted Saddam Hussein to declare himself as a Caliph…lol
Zalloom
In the early period of the rule of our illustrious President, ‘Umar al-Bashir, his adoring, mobile army of fans used to declare him the Fifth Caliph.
HT can’t establish a toilet, never mind an empire!
What about their several coup attempts in the past – surely that indicates they can convince some people who are capable of taking power with their mad ideas?
Is it really even possible to ban them under the current legislation?
Would it be correct to ban people for beleiving mad ideas, or undertaking madactions?
Trying to take over a foreig n country isn’t illegal especially arab tyrannical states- they would be worse no doubt, but you get my point?
They arejust modern neo-Kharijite failures…
No. What it indicates is how HuT have, at times, been useful to bigger fish swarming about in the Arab world.
In Sudan, the Muslim Brotherhood deployed a range of exigent allies in their struggle to overthrow the dictatorship of Nimeri. Nimeri responded by himself switching his regime from advocacy of secularism to a simulation of jihadi rage. It didn’t work and the Brothers, panning out from the University of Khartoum and the Islamic University in Omderman, had already forged links with a range of forces: from Hizbies on the one side, to army officers disgruntled with Nimeri, to members of the ‘Ummah Party sickened by the rapacious greed and incompetency of their spiritual/ political leaders in the al-Mahdi family and its associated Sufi order.
Nimeri validated Islamism by his opportunist deployment of an Islamist pose in the latter part of his rule – a rule. already deeply imperilled by the careful, oppositional, corrosive political machinations of the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood and their sea of carefully manoeuvred allies.
My point is: Even Turabi (now dissdent in pose), when he was the leader of the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood, had reputedly made it clear that the ideological turn of mind of his ally is of less import to politics than what this person can do to forward the Islamist cause. Certainly, Sudanese politics is basically an ever shifting and competing set of alignments, the one secular, the other clerical.
Orientalism rears its head. There has been a witless and naive tendency amongst some commentators in the West to flock to the feet of Turabi – and because he appears to be a moderate in opposition to the government of al-Bashir and the National Islamist Front.
But Turabi is far from a moderate when he pronounces in Sudanese dialect Arabic – he does not press the point on those issues he touches upon (women’s rights, divorce in Islam, the meaning of hijab) when chatting in impeccable English to khawejah (foreigners).
At mosque, his students (for he is a spiritual leader) may preach sermons that call on the Faithful to recall the story of Eden and the danger of eating from the Tree (and note, the tree is the party symbol of the ruling NIF (aka, the National Congress Party)). These things are noted by the state – and they do nothing, for even Turabi in opposition is better than Turabi at war with the state – and in Sudan, such happens.
Turabi is the Islamist who first learned how to play the media game – and he is a master strategist, incredibly intelligent and utterly ruthless. As many Sudanese would like to point out to the many heavyweight journos that seek audience with Turabi: – you seek audience with the man who created this regime, is too powerful and quick to be simply silenced. You seek audience with a man who – if it can be said of any individual – is responsible as an inspiration and director for the madness and mayhem that has gripped Sudan for much of its existence as an independent state.
HuT are overtly active in Sudan. One the games my wife and I like to play is to compare the tone, register and content of HuT materials published in Arabic in Sudan with the sort of bilge they let the non-Arabs see. There being not much other to do, you see, in the Islamist Paradise-on-earth that is Sudan.
And don’t get me started on the South – who are quite as bad (but Baptists or traditional religionists) as their Islamist cousins in northern, Arab, Sudan.
Africa is inflicted, diseased by belief in God or gods. It does not uplift the people there: it helps load them down with further self-inflicted burdens. Be it the Sufi-political antics of Saharan Africa, or the simony, corruption and rule of the horde of priests, deacons and bishops that thrive in non-Muslim Africa, organised religion is generally parasitic, intrusive and positively harmful to the peoples of Africa. Religion is everywhere, in everything and making lots of power and cash to no noticeable benefit to the people.
Sorry; but that is the way it is.
Yes, the deacons etc are corrupt, you are right, but I wouldn’t go as far as saying they are “as bad” as the Islamists. They don’t advocate charging into villages to rape, burn and loot. As well, many of the Christians get it right and simply preach love and compassion, and encourage fortitude…I have been to many such services in Sudan. Christianity is a VERY different religion from Islam!