From The Washington Post, an article by David B. Ottaway
The militant Islamic group exhorts Muslims to suicide bombings, martyrdom against American "infidels" and the killing of Jews. It openly advocates replacing all Middle East governments with an Islamic caliphate and rails against "the American campaign to suppress Islam." The group has been outlawed in all Arab countries, as well as in Turkey, Pakistan, Russia and throughout Central Asia, where hundreds of its members have been jailed. Germany, too, has banned the group because it "supports the use of violence as a means to realize political interests," according to the German Interior Ministry.
| Apparently they know something the reporter doesn't ... |
| They've probably spent more than 15 minutes researching the subject, unlike the reporter... |
But the Bush administration, which has designated more than 390 groups and individuals as "global terrorists," has declined to add this particular one to the list. How to handle Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami -- the Islamic Liberation Party or HT -- has become the focus of a debate inside and outside the Bush administration that weighs the president's promise to promote democracy in the greater Middle East against the new imperatives of the fight against terrorism. Two conservative think tanks, the Nixon Center and the Heritage Foundation, are pressing the administration to designate the Islamic Liberation Party as a terrorist group. Human Rights Watch, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, and experts at the liberal Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Brookings Institution contend that such a step would fan the fires of Islamic extremism. ....
| And boy howdy, we sure wouldn't want that, now would we? |
| I'm trying to figure how not putting the Hezbies on the terror list is going to damp the fires of Islamic extremism. Anything, to include doing nothing, makes them seethe, so just do it and get it over with. |
Despite the inflammatory rhetoric on its Web site and in pamphlets, the Islamic Liberation Party does not explicitly espouse violence as a means of coming to power itself. Nor has the party been found engaging in terrorism, according to State Department officials.
| But golly, Mr. Reporter, you just told me that even the Germans think these guys advocate violence. I'm so confused! I feel faint, I'd best go lie down. |
| They ostentatiously don't engage in violence. What they do is sign people up for groups that do engage in violence. |
The party is gaining followers throughout Central Asia, and some U.S. officials say that a decision to brand it a terrorist entity could turn it into another al Qaeda and undermine U.S. efforts to encourage the emergence of moderate Islamic groups throughout the region. .....
| Killing them all might also encourage the emergence of moderate Islamic groups. Just a thought ... |
The party was founded in 1952 by a Palestinian judge, Taqiuddin Nabhani, who lived in East Jerusalem, then under Jordanian rule. He broke away from the Muslim Brotherhood, an Egypt-based militant Islamic group, rejecting its willingness to even consider cooperation with Egypt's secular authorities in seeking power. Jordanian authorities refused to recognize the party and arrested some of its leaders, forcing it underground, where it continued to spread slowly throughout the Muslim world. Today, it has branches in 30 to 40 counties from Indonesia to Denmark, recruiting particularly on college campuses and at mosques. Still, little is known about this international organization other than that they're violent nut-cases that has attracted tens of thousands of followers worldwide. Its Web site, www.hizb-ut-tahrir.org, says it is "a political party whose ideology is Islam." Yet, it has shown no interest in participating in elections and none in sharing power with other parties.
| Because caliphates don't share power. |
Although its spokesmen renounce violence, the party's Web site describes a three-stage plan aimed at "seizing the reins of power" across the Muslim world. "It is forbidden to seize partial power," the Web site states, and "the implementation of Islam must be comprehensive."
| Wouldn't that seem to imply that when they do turn violent, they plan on being overwhelmingly violent? |
Its tactics for achieving these goals seem inspired by those of communist parties. The first stage of its plan calls for indoctrinating recruits in small "study groups" that subsequently morph into secret cells of five to six people operating independently of each other, according to a report from the International Crisis Group, which has issued several reports on the party.
| Nothing about whether they can form 527 groups, however. |
Islamic Liberation was involved in failed coup attempts in both Jordan and Egypt before renouncing violence in the mid-1970s. When Nabhani died in 1978, another Palestinian, Abdul Kaddim Zalloum, a religious scholar educated at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, became party leader and remained so until his death in April 2003. The current leader is Sheik Ata Abu Rashta, a Palestinian Jordanian Islamic scholar about whom little is known, including his whereabouts.
| But his ideology seems pretty clear. |
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