When I say that Islam has always been inherently political, Muslim spokesmen say that I don’t know anything about Islam, or hate Muslims, or some such nonsense. But when Muslims say it, they say nothing. The silence of “moderate” Muslim leaders in the face of radical Islamic theology is speaking volumes: either they are unwilling or unable to refute the radicals. From The Guardian, with thanks to Ali Dashti:
The east London hall echoes to the sound of the speaker’s voice: “They want us to redefine Islam to fit the agenda of the west,” he intones, and the audience murmurs. “Islam is going to be political, no matter how hard they try. Islam itself is political. Allah has not remained silent when it comes to political matters.”
The speaker is a member of Hizb ut Tahrir, the most controversial Islamic group in Britain today. Critics have called for the group to be banned, as it is in Germany, while supporters hail it as the saviour of the Muslim community. Hizb – the name means Party of Liberation in Arabic – is banned throughout the Middle East, and three British men are in jail in Egypt accused of propagating its views. In Uzbekistan, thousands of Hizb members are in jail, and a Russian thinktank has compared the group to al-Qaida.
Eighteen months ago, the group briefly appeared in the public eye when the wife of Omar Sharif, the Briton who launched a failed suicide-bomb attack in Tel Aviv, was found to have leaflets from the group in her home. Hizb ut Tahrir also has a presence on university campuses, where it has been accused of anti-semitism.
Until recently, the leadership of Hizb was secretive and cautious, reluctant to release details of the scale of its membership, its leadership structure or its funding. One ex-member who spent years with the group says there are probably only 500 members across the country, but the group may have 10 times that number as committed supporters. Hizb’s annual conference in Birmingham last year attracted about 8,000, by the far the most for a Muslim organisation….
The leader of the group, a 28-year-old IT consultant called Jalaluddin Patel, is the first leader in its 18-year history in the UK to speak to the national press. He says Hizb has nothing to hide but will not release membership figures: “It’s a genuine security issue. We’re unsure about the manner in which western society would treat a group like ours.”
Patel insists that Hizb is no threat to the west, but part of it. But he adds that the west “needs to understand what is really an inevitable matter, and that is that Islam is coming back, the Islamic caliphate is going to be implemented in the world very soon … The Muslim people need to realise that the way in which they will restore a form of dignity and bring civilisation back to the Islamic world is to establish a modern caliphate.”
Why has this group not been banned? Do British officials think that they mean for the caliphate to waft into Britain on a summer breeze?