Remember Denis MacShane? He’s the British Foreign Office minister who drew the ire of British Muslims last month by urging British Muslims to choose between the “British way” of democratic dialogue and the way of Islamic terrorism. Muslim leaders demanded, and received, several apologies from MacShane, who said: “I apologise to anyone who felt that I suggested that British Muslims sympathise with such terrorist actions.”
Of course they don’t. Except, that is, for the good folks of the British branch of Hizb-ut-Tahrir, who have issued a statement about the capture of Saddam Hussein. It says:
“While the leaders of Western militant democracies such as the US and UK celebrate the capture of Saddam Hussein, Muslims in Britain will not be rejoicing until Bush, Blair and the band of Western inspired dictators and tyrants in the Muslim world stand alongside him in the dock to answer for their crimes.”
It decries “the imposition of Western secular liberal values over the barrel of a gun” and adds that “Imran Waheed, a UK based doctor and Representative of Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain, said, ‘One form of tyranny and oppression in Iraq has been replaced with another. Western values and governments must be put in the dock. The true celebration for Muslims and non-Muslims will only occur on the day when militant secularism and its colonialist worldview is discarded in history”s dustbin. That day is fast approaching.’
Dr. Waheed wants an Islamic Sharia state in Iraq: “Only the Islamic Khilafah is a practical alternative to the continued US and UK occupation of Iraq.”
The release adds a statement about Hizb-ut-Tahrir’s goals and its nonviolence. “Hizb ut-Tahrir is an independent political party whose ideology is Islam. The party works throughout the Islamic world, including Iraq, to resume the Islamic way of life by re-establishing the Islamic Khilafah [Caliphate]. The party adheres to the Islamic Shari”ah in all aspects of its work. It considers violence or armed struggle against the regime, as a method to re-establish the Islamic State, a violation of the Islamic Shari”ah.”
Interesting. I wonder what Hizb-ut-Tahrir would make of Sharia stipulations such as this one from a manual approved by the prestigious Al-Azhar Univerisity in Cairo: the Muslim community must make “war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians . . . until they become Muslim or else pay the non-Muslim poll tax” (‘Umdat al-Salik, o9.8).
“In the Western world, the party seeks to explain the Islamic ideology to Muslims, to create a dialogue with Western thinkers about Capitalism and its ills and to present Islam as an ideological alternative.”