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September 28, 2007
Islam: Are Western Attitudes To Muslims Hardening?
This article by Adrian Morgan (Giraldus Cambrensis of Western Resistance) appeared today in Family Security Matters and is reproduced with their permission.
Are Attitudes To Islam Hardening?
A poll was published on Tuesday this week, compiled by the Pew Research Center and the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. This poll had sampled the opinions of 3,002 American adults, and found that 43% of respondents had a favorable view of Muslims, a drop of 5% from a similar poll from March 2004. In the recent poll, 35% had a negative view of Muslims, while in 2004 that figure had been 32%.
Amongst religious groups, 51% of white mainstream Protestants and 48% of white Catholics had favorable views of Muslims, while only 24% of white evangelicals held favorable views. Fortunately for Muslim Americans, the respondents viewed them more favorably (53%) than they did Muslims in general.
The poll also found that 58% of people said they "knew little or nothing about Islam's practices". Additionally, 70% of Americans questioned thought that their religion was "very different" from Islam. In 2005, the figure for people thinking that their faith differed substantially from Islam stood at 59%. Back in 2001, 52% of people thought that Islam was different from their own faith.
In 2001, 31% of people polled felt their religion had "a lot in common" with Islam, dropping to 27% in 2005 and to 19% in 2007.
Politically, the most positive views on Muslims come from people who class themselves as "liberal Democrats", with 66% of these having a favorable impression of Muslims. For "conservative and moderate Democrats", as well as "independents", 48% had positive views of Muslims. Amongst Republicans, there is less favorable opinion. Of those with "moderate and liberal" outlooks 41% had positive views of Muslims, compared to only 26% of "conservative Republicans".
People who knew a Muslim personally tend to have a more favorable view of Muslims in general. 56% of those who knew Muslims had a positive view, compared to 36% of people with no Muslim associates.
The Pew poll, which was conducted between August 1 and August 18, shows that there appears to be a trend which views Muslims and Islam less favorably than three years ago. Other polls from Europe similarly indicate that attitudes towards Islam seem to be hardening, rather than softening.
The authors of the Pew report claim that the "biggest influence on the public's impression of Muslims, particularly among those who express an unfavorable opinion of Muslims, is what people hear and read in the media. About a third of the public (32%) - including nearly half of those who offer a negative opinion of Muslims (48%) say what they have seen or read in the media has had the biggest influence on their views." The authors of the report claim that personal experience and education are less influential on people's opinions, though are more frequently cited as influential factors by those with supportive views.
The "media" is a broad term, What appears to be lacking in this report is a clear breakdown of which particular aspects, in which areas of media, have made American people develop more negative attitudes. Are people being influenced by negative portrayals in dramas on TV, or by what they see in news reports? There are numerous sites on the internet which are critical of Islamism (political Islam). Are these influential in forming public opinion? If news items on Islamic terrorism are influencing people negatively, it would still be unethical journalism to stop reporting such incidents. Are media-based threats from Al Qaeda influencing public opinion?
After the horrific events of 9/11, there was a backlash against people perceived to be Muslims. The FBI claimed that hate crimes enacted upon Arabs and Muslims in the United States increased by 1,700% in 2001. There have been reports of Islamist terror plots on US soil since 9/11, but there have been no significant Islamist terror attacks in the US to explain the apparent rise in mistrust displayed in the Pew report.
Findings from the recent Pew survey pose other questions. The proportion of people who view Islam as greatly different from their own faith have increased substantially. Are these people becoming more cynical, or are they understanding some of the basic tenets of Islam more clearly than they did before?
One group which has maintained a high media presence in the US is the Council on American Islamic Relations. Though highlighting cases of discrimination against Muslims, this group has been actively making the news, as in the case of the "flying imams" and more recently as an unindicted coconspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial, currently playing out in Texas. Are CAIR's attempts to highlight "Muslim issues" backfiring, and adding to a growing climate of mistrust?
Britain suffered a major terrorist attack in 2005, though killing significantly fewer individuals than 9/11 (52 fatalities and about 600 injuries on London Transport on July 7, 2005). In Britain there have been increases in public mistrust of Muslims according to a poll conducted for the Financial Times and published on August 19. This report was carried out by Harris Interactive, and involved a series of questions posed to respondents in the US and in five European countries - Germany, Italy, Spain, France and Britain.
Harris' comprehensive findings comprise a 233-page breakdown of responses. A shorter summary can be found here. A combined total of 6,398 adults were questioned in the six countries, between 1 and 13 August, 2007, corresponding closely with the time span for the recent Pew study.
When asked: "Does the presence of Muslims in your country pose a threat to national security or not?", British respondents had the highest proportion who answered in the affirmative (38%), with the US and France with the lowest proportion (21% and 20% respectively). Those who answered "no" were the lowest in Spain (45%) and Britain (45%), with France at the highest (68%). 58% of US respondents did not believe the presence of Muslims in their country posed a national security threat.
The issue of whether Muslims were seen to have too much or too little political power in respective countries, there was great uncertainty in the US, with 49% answering "not sure', the highest of the six countries surveyed. Only 20% of Americans thought Muslims in the US had "too much" political power, and 23% thought they had "the right amount".
For the British respondents, 46% said Muslims in the UK had "too much power", only 28% were "unsure" and 19% thought they had "the right amount".
Respondents in the six countries were asked: "Have Muslims in your country become the subject of unjustified criticism and prejudice or not?". Here, the answers had less variation, but again Britain's attitudes appeared to be different from those in the US. 44% of Britons answered "No" compared to 30% of Americans,. 47% of Spanish respondents said "No" to this question, with France (30%) having the fewest to answer "No' to the question.
The highest proportion of those who thought Muslims had suffered undue prejudice came from the French (51%) followed by Italians (49%), Americans (47%), Germans (40%) and Britain in the lowest place at 39%.
Respondents were asked "Do you have any friends who are Muslim?." Social relations with Muslims were highest in France, with 69% claiming to have Muslim friends, followed by Britain (38%), Germany (37%), Italy (32%), the US (28%), and Spain the lowest at 27%.
Spain appears to have the least social interaction with Muslims, with 70% of respondents claiming to have no Muslim friends, followed by Italy (67%), Germany (61%), the US (60%), Britain (55%) and France with the lowest amount answering "no" (28%).
On the issue of terror attacks happening on home territories within the next 12 months, the UK had the highest proportion (52%) who believed this would happen. 32% of Spaniards thought such an attack would happen on their soil, closely followed by 30% of Americans. France, Italy and Germany responded similarly, with between 15% and 18% believing an attack would happen within 12 months in their respective countries.
59% of Britons thought it was possible to be both a Muslim and a citizen of the country, a lower percentage than found in the other five nations surveyed. France had the highest number who believed Islam and citizenship were compatible, closely followed by the United States. ALmost 30% of Britons thought it was impossible for a Muslim to be a British citizen and a Muslim. In France, only 18% of respondents thought it was impossible for a French Muslim to be a citizen and a Muslim.
In May last year a national poll was published in the German newspaper Frankfurter Allegmaine which indicated that attitudes towards Islam had worsened in the two years since 2004. 91% of respondents thought that Islam oppressed women (in 2004, the amount was 85%). 83% of Germans thought Islam was dominated by fanaticism (in 2004, the figure was 75%). 71% of Germans questioned felt Islam was intolerant, compared to 66% in 2004. 56% thought the "Clash of Civilisations" had already started. In 2004, 46% believed it had started.
The German survey also asked if strict limits should be imposed upon Islam in Germany, and nearly half (40%) agreed. Germans were asked if building of mosques should be forbidden in their nation while some Islamic states refused permission for churches to be built. Again, more than half (56%) agreed. More than half (61%) of the respondents agreed that there would perpetually be "major conflict between both faiths". The pollsters concluded: "If one looks at this from a pessimistic viewpoint it could be seen as the start of a downward spiral toward conflict...The clash of civilizations has already begun in the minds of citizens."
France appeared in the August Financial Times study to have the best relations with Muslims of the five European countries polled. French respondents were the least concerned if one of their offspring married a Muslim, for example. It is possible that there is a correlation with these responses and the attitudes held by French Muslims. Though using only a small sample from France's estimated 6 million Muslims, a poll study carried out on 513 respondents in August 2006 found some surprising attitudes of tolerance towards French secular values. The study was commissioned by La Vie, a Roman Catholic weekly.
94% of the French Muslims believed people were equal "regardless of religion". 69% said they would accept a Muslim marrying someone outside of their faith. 73% believed in the separation of Church and state, and 46% thought it was acceptable for a Muslim to convert to Christianity.
Younger French Muslims aged 18 to 24 were less tolerant of Muslims converting to Christianity, with 56% opposing conversions out of Islam. 31% of this age group opposed marriage between Muslims and non-Muslims. Some of the French Muslims appeared to be rather lax in their faith: 30% never read the Koran, only 17% attended a mosque on a weekly basis, and 49% of respondents claimed that they never went to mosque.
Even though 56% of younger French Muslims opposed conversions out of Islam, this is hardly comparable to the situation in Britain. A poll conducted by Populus in Britain, which was published by the Policy Exchange in January of this year found that among young British Muslims aged 16 to 24, 36% believed that a Muslim who converts to another religion should be "punished by death". One in eight young Muslims said that they admired groups such as Al Qaeda which are "prepared to fight the West". 37% of younger Muslims wanted to live under Sharia law. The full report (pdf document) entitled Living Apart Together can be found here.
Britain, probably more so than any of the countries listed in the Harris/Financial Times poll, has tried to force policies of "multiculturalism" onto the general public, and has an administration which attempts to show favor to Islam. The attitudes of British Muslims have not been ameliorated by such policies, if polls are to be believed. The hostility to Western values expressed by Britain's Muslims was highlighted in June 2006 in a survey by Pew Global Attitudes. Amongst Muslims of all ages, 81% of British Muslims surveyed claimed to see themselves as "Muslims first" citizens second, compared to 69% of Spanish Muslims, 66% of German Muslims and only 46% of French Muslims.
The left-leaning Guardian newspaper commented on the 2006 Pew report in an article entitled "Poll shows Muslims in Britain are the most anti-Western in Europe": "The poll found that 63% of all Britons had a favourable opinion of Muslims, down slightly from 67% in 2004, suggesting last year's London bombings did not trigger a significant rise in prejudice. Attitudes in Britain were more positive than in the US, Germany and Spain (where the popularity of Muslims has plummeted to 29%), and about the same as in France.
Less than a third of British non-Muslims said they viewed Muslims as violent, significantly fewer than non-Muslims in Spain (60%), Germany (52%), the US (45%) and France (41%).
By contrast, the poll found that British Muslims represented a "notable exception" in Europe, with far more negative views of westerners than Islamic minorities elsewhere on the continent. A significant majority viewed western populations as selfish, arrogant, greedy and immoral. Just over half said westerners were violent. While the overwhelming majority of European Muslims said westerners were respectful of women, fewer than half British Muslims agreed."
Muslims in Britain, according to this report, showed anti-Semitic attitudes. Only 32% of British Muslims had a favorable opinion of Jews, whereas 71% of French Muslims viewed Jews favorably.
The June 2006 poll by Pew surveyed 14,000 individuals in 15 countries. One of the co-chairs of the study, Senator John Danforth (St Louis) said: "It seems to me that where they (Muslims) really tilt against the West has to do with values or with lifestyle or with perceptions that the West is a place of selfishness and arrogance and violence. Where do they get that idea? Maybe on television, I don't know."
It is significant that a proportion the non-Muslim respondents in the most recent Pew report are, by the authors' admission, finding that the media is fueling negative perceptions of Muslims and Islam. Perhaps a very specific poll should be carried out in the US and elsewhere to specify exactly which areas of the media are creating "negative" perceptions.
In Britain, a leftist commentator from the Guardian appears to blame the rise in mistrust of Muslims - as reported in the August Harris/FT poll - entirely upon the media.
Attitudes towards Muslims are becoming less trusting in the West, and in Britain, this rise in mistrust seems linked to an increase in physical attacks upon Muslims. Polls are good at indicating trends, but they are not always so clear on the issues of causality. More polls are needed, both to gauge the attitudes of Muslims to the Western countries they live in, and the attitudes of Westerners to Muslims. It is not enough to merely document deteriorating relations. The causes need to be explored more fully, and once identified, they can be addressed.
Merely "blaming the media" is not enough.
Adrian Morgan
© 2003-2007 FamilySecurityMatters.org All Rights Reserved
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 7:30 AM | Comments (0)
September 26, 2007
Israel's Raid On Syria: What Is Going On?
This article by Adrian Morgan (Giraldus Cambrensis of Western Resistance) appeared today in Family Security Matters and is reproduced with their permission.
It took more than a week before news reached the rest of the world. On September 6, Israel launched an aerial raid on a site within Syria. This site at Dayr az-Zawr in the north of the country had been under surveillance for some time. Israel and Washington knew that there were North Koreans at the site, according to Andrew Semmel of the US State Department. He said: "There are North Korean people there. There's no question about that." He claimed that the network set up by Abdul Qadeer Khan could be involved.
A. Q. Khan, who developed Pakistan's nuclear capability using stolen and smuggled material, admitted in February 2004 that he had sold nuclear information and technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea. Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, publicly forgave Khan for subjecting the world to another nuclear arms race. One of the fruits of Khan's greed was the detonation of a small nuclear bomb by North Korea on October 9, 2006.
Syria, in conjunction with Iran, was known to have been attempting to develop Scud missiles with a greater range than their maximum of 300 miles. A recent report from Jane's Defense Weekly claimed that in late July this year in Aleppo, a Syrian military team, accompanied by Iranian advisers, was attempting to attach a chemical warhead to a Scud when its fuel ignited. This caused a chemical explosion, containing VX, Sarin and mustard gas. VX or S-2-(diisopropylamino)ethyl O-ethyl methylphosphonothioate is a nerve agent, developed in Britain in 1952, and Sarin or O-Isopropyl methylphosphonofluoridate was developed for the Nazis in 1938. Sarin has a short shelf-life, but VX lasts considerably longer, and can be made adhesive for maximum effect. Sarin, VX and mustard gas were among substances listed as Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) by the UN's 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention.
The Scud nerve gas explosion was reported in the Syrian press as taking place on July 26, claiming the lives of 15 Syrian military personnel and injuring 50 others, though no mention was made of the "dozens" of Iranian advisers who were also killed in the blast. North Korea had technically assisted in increasing the range of existing Scuds. With Syria actively involved in developing WMDs close to its border, with the assistance of Iran and possibly North Korea, the developments taking place at Dayr az-Zawr which appeared to involve nuclear plans were a serious cause for alarm.
Before an air strike would be approved by Washington, there had to be proof that North Korea's presence in Dayr az-Zawr was connected to nuclear materials. Three days before the raid, an Israeli commando raid by the Sayeret Matkal unit, under orders from Ehud Barak, took place. The commandos took material from the site, and this was brought back to Israel for analysis. Israeli analysts confirmed that the material came from North Korea, and the US gave approval for the air strike by F151s from the 69th Squadron.
The Sayeret Matkal raid on Dayr az-Zawr, which gathered what is now presumed to be nuclear material, was a "fabrication", stated Muhsin Bilal, Syria's information minister. On Monday, in Arabic language news source al-Sharq al-Awsat, he was quoted as saying: "These reports are not true. This is a baseless fabrication like the ones that have been spread against Iraq." In addition to denying that the raids took place, he warned that Syria would respond "when the time is right".
Syria has not denied that the September 6 raid against Dayr az-Zawr took place, and a Syrian official told Reuters on Monday September 24 that: "After this raid, you can forget about peace. It is no secret that our forces have been on alert for some time, but Syria will not be the first to start a war." In what appeared to be an implicit justification for Syria's new ties with North Korea, another official said: "Arab states have not exactly rallied in our support. As for peace, the international picture could start changing late next year with a new administration in Washington." Syria has officially said that Israel had bombed an "empty area".
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Sultanov has apparently advised Syria not to retaliate against Israel other than by sending a letter of protest.
On Saturday, September 22, a delegation of Syrian diplomats had a meeting in Pyongyang, capital of North Korea. This delegation, led by Saaeed Eleia Dawood, a leading figure in the Ba'athist party, was met by the head of Korea's legislature, Kim Yong-nam. In this "friendly talk", the strengthening ties between Syria and North Korea were praised. It appears that Kim il-Jong, North Korea's "Dear Leader" did not meet with the Syrian delegation.
On Monday, September 24, a South Korean news report claimed that North Korea has denounced the US for defending the Israeli air strike.Yonhap news agency quoted from North Korea's main newspaper Rodong Sinmun, which claimed: "Israeli warplanes' intrusion into the territorial airspace of Syria and bomb-dropping are an outright violation of Syria's sovereignty and a grave crime that destroys regional peace and security," and stated that the US had supported this "brazen behavior".
On Tuesday, an editorial in Rodong Sinmun claimed that the US has "long actively promoted and cooperated with the Israeli nuclear armament plan." Additionally, the commentary blamed the US for assisting Israel, while denying North Korea the "right" to develop nuclear technology for "peaceful" means. The editorial stated that the US had "dispatched nuclear experts to Israel and transferred highly enriched uranium, the key ingredient for nuclear weapons, to them."
Reports that first appeared in Friday's Washington Post claimed that Washington and Israel had shared intelligence before the air strike of September 6. Neither George W Bush nor Israeli officials have agreed to talk about the events preceding the air strike. Syria has officially denied that it has received nuclear assistance from North Korea, and North Korea has denied cooperation. The missile development by North Korea on behalf of Syria has been in operation since 1995 under a "barter system". Farm products and computers are sent to North Korea, which in turn trains Syrian engineers and provides missiles, which have been "streamlined" by North Korean technicians.
The tension in the region has had its effects. On Saturday, September 22, a Syrian fighter jet which was being monitored disappeared from radar view, causing alarm. Ir later turned out that the plane had crashed on Syrian territory. On Thursday there had been another alarm in the Golan Heights, along the border with Syria. "Suspicious activity" had been reported, but this was a false alarm, caused by migrating birds. On Sunday, an abandoned Israeli car at Golan Heights again caused concern. It was feared that the vehicle's four occupants had been kidnapped (in the manner of the events in the summer of 2006 that led to conflict). The four individuals were soon located - they had gone hiking. The Golan Heights were captured by Israel in the six-day War of 1967.
The US nuclear envoy, Christopher Hill, will be in Beijing on Thursday this week, to attend six-nation talks, where he is expected to continue arguments for the "denuclearization" of North Korea. These talks will involve China, the US, Russia, Japan, North Korea and South Korea.
In July, the six nations met after North Korea had shut down five "key" nuclear facilities, as part of a deal brokered in February in which North Korea would receive financial aid. North Korea has officially promised to remove its nuclear programs. Earlier this month, nuclear experts from the US, China and Russia, met to discuss the disabling of the main nuclear facilities at Yongbyon which are currently "shut down". The findings of these experts will be presented to the summit on Thursday.
North Korea's chief nuclear envoy, Kim Kye Gwan, warned on Tuesday that the peace talks on North Korea's "denuclearization" could fail if the six-country summit does not reach clear consensus. He was speaking as he arrived at Beijing ahead of the conference. He also denied that North Korea had provided nuclear material to Syria. He said: "That matter is fabricated by lunatics. So you can ask those lunatics to explain it."
Despite Syria's involvement, along with Iran, with North Korea scientists developing Scud missile technology to be more deadly, the US administration is keen to have Syria attending peace talks between Israel and Palestians, which will take place this fall. The US also hopes that other Arab countries which have refused to have dealings with Israel, such as Saudi Arabia, will also attend. Condoleezza Rice said on Monday: "We hope that those who come are really committed to helping the Israelis and Palestinians find a way through. That means renouncing violence. Working for a peaceful solution. Coming to this meeting also brings with it certain responsibilities."
In a sign that Israel is committed to the latest plans in the Palestinian peace process, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert confirmed on Monday that his country would not object to Syria and other Arab states attending the international summit. He additionally claimed that he believes that the tensions between Syria and Israel will subside. Spokesman Mark Regev stated: "Israel is interested in as many Arab states attending this meeting as possible, states that support peace, that support reconciliation, that oppose terrorism."
Alon Liel, an Israeli analysts, urges caution: "Syria all the time said that it has one hand extended to peace and the other one is preparing for war. Israel believes the second half, that Syria is preparing for war, and did not believe the peace option." Official invites to the conference have still not been sent out.
North Korea may claim innocence over the Dayr az-Zawr incident. But it is in a vulnerable position, which is why it agreed in February to running down its nuclear plans in exchange for assistance. The nation has been on a military footing since 1953 and the end of the Korean War. South Korea has thrived since then, while North Korea's Stalinist policies and mismanagement have led to mass starvations. In the 1990s, 3 million people are said to have starved to death during one such famine. While its people starved, the People's Democratic Republic diverted funds, given to assist famine, into its nuclear weapons programs. North Korea is still officially "at war" with the US.
Kim Jong-Il is reportedly severely ill, suffering complications from diabetes, and unlike his father, the "Great Leader" Kim il-Sun, in the years since 1994 when he took power, he is not able to exert much charisma to his downtrodden people. Abuses of human rights, which flourished under his predecessor, have not diminished, and the labor camps established by his father still exist. Financially, North Korea cannot support itself and is in many ways a "failed state". Last year, the Times reported last year that his regime has resorted to counterfeiting US currency and exporting amphetamines to Japan and South Korea.
Despite its claims to be complying with the February deal to denuclearize, the recent incident in Syria appears to undermine the sincerity of its stated intentions. After pursuing a policy of nuclear arms development for two decades, it has produced just one nuclear bomb test. It is still a threat to South Korea, but it should not be given benefits of any doubts. The people of North Korea should not be held hostage to the whims and ambitions of a physically weak, comic-obsessed lunatic.
Syria is in some ways a greater threat to international peace, linked as it is to the regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran. As Jonathan Strong pointed out in Family Security Matters, Syria has been made the co-chair of the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA). This body, under the auspices of the UN, has a role to prevent nuclear proliferation. It patently failed to prevent Iran from announcing on April 11, 2006, that it had produced its first batch of highly enriched uranium. Iran ignored requests by the UN Security Council to wind down its nuclear program, and accelerated it.
With Iran's ally Syria in a prime position within the IAEA, it appears that the foxes have been put in charge of the hen house.
The full story of what was going on at Dayr az-Zawr has not yet been revealed. But what is certain is that diplomacy must be made to work to pressure North Korea from exporting the products of its nuclear program. The alternative is too dreadful to contemplate.
Adrian Morgan
© 2003-2007 FamilySecurityMatters.org All Rights Reserved
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 6:31 AM | Comments (1)
September 25, 2007
The BBC - How Did It Get So Bad?
This article by Adrian Morgan (Giraldus Cambrensis of Western Resistance) appeared today in Family Security Matters and is reproduced with their permission.
High up on a hill in Wood Green, north London, is a Victorian brick building called Alexandra Palace. Surrounded by 196 acres of parkland, the edifice was constructed in 1873. In 1936, it was from Alexandra Palace that the BBC made its first television broadcasts. When I was growing up in 1960s Britain, the BBC was highly regarded. There was a time when people would validate a statement by claiming that they had heard it "on the BBC". Those days have long passed, and a once-revered institution is now being used to disseminate disinformation and political correctness.
Certain departments within the BBC seem to have their own political agenda. When BBC journalist Alan Johnston was kidnapped in Gaza this year, the head of the BBC Middle East bureau admitted engaging in secret talks with leaders of the terrorist group Hamas to secure a release. Before Johnston was freed, the journalist made a video statement in which he bemoaned the "huge suffering of the Palestinian people...." He spoke of their "absolute despair after nearly 40 years of Israeli occupation which has been supported by the West." Johnston turned his attention to Afghanistan, blaming the Americans and British: "In all this, we can see the British government endlessly working to occupy, err, the Muslim lands, against the will of the people in those places."
After his release, Johnston never said he had been subjected to violence to make him say such anti-British statements. After any Palestinian suicide bombing, Johnston would interview the mother and relatives of the terrorist involved, always failing to interview the relatives of the Israeli victims. Damien Thompson, a correspondent for the Daily Telegraph has noted that the BBC's "reporting of the Middle East has been so relentlessly pro-Palestinian for so long, and that coverage is so influential, that it finds itself an actual player in the conflict, as opposed to an impartial observer."
The Balen Report was an internal BBC document which was commissioned in 2004 to investigate complaints of anti-Israeli bias in the BBC's coverage of the Middle East conflicts. Even though the BBC is funded by the taxpayer, the organization allegedly spent $400,000 of tax-payers' money to prevent the report from being made available to the public. The Telegraph quoted lawyer Steven Sugar, who was using the Freedom of Information Act to have the Balen Report released. The report was widely believed to have found the BBC guilty of anti-Israeli bias.
Sugar said: "This is a serious report about a serious issue and has been compiled with public money. I lodged the request because I was concerned that the BBC's reporting of the second intifada was seriously unbalanced against Israel, but I think there are other issues at stake now in the light of the BBC's reaction." On April 27, 2007 the BBC won its battle to suppress the report's publication. In 2006, an independent review, commissioned by BBC governors, had found that the corporation's coverage of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict had been to "constitute a full and fair account of the conflict but rather, in important respects, presents an incomplete and, in that sense, misleading picture." That report had found that the BBC "favored Israel" and claimed there was a "failure to convey adequately the disparity in the Israeli and Palestinian experience, reflecting the fact that one side is in control and the other side lives under occupation."
The decision to suppress the Balen Report was condemned by Tory MP Philip Davies, who said: "This seems to be outrageous. If the BBC are embarrassed about what they are doing they should not be doing it. If they are not embarrassed they should release the information." On October 30, 2004, on the BBC Radio 4 show "From Our Own Correspondent", journalist Barbabra Plett had said she had cried when, in the previous month, Yasser Arafat was dying. She had said: "When the helicopter carrying the frail old man rose from his ruined compound, I started to cry." Immediately after Plett's radio statement, a BBC News spokesman admitted that there had been hundreds of complaints, but claimed that Plett had upheld high standards in "fairness, accuracy and balance". In November 2005, the BBC governors ruled that Plett had "breached the requirements of due impartiality".
The BBC runs a "rolling news" channel, called News 24. One of its frequent guests and commentators on Middle East events is Palestinian-born Abdel Bari-Atwan, editor of the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper. In June 2007, Bari-Atwan told a Lebanese TV station: "If the Iranian missiles strike Israel, by Allah, I will go to Trafalgar Square and dance with delight... Allah willing, [Iran] will attack Israel." Defending its decision to keep Bari-Atwan as a pundit, the BBC said that it was obliged to present "a range of views so that no significant strand of thought is knowingly unreflected or under-represented."
In 2002 the then-head of BBC News, RIchard Sambrook, warned his journalists that they needed to be more concerned about "impartiality" on contentious issues such as the Middle East, the European Union and the gap between those living in the countryside and those in towns. Sambrook would later commission the Balen Report. His warnings were not heeded. In January 2005 an independent review commissioned by BBC governors found that reporting on the European Union was riddled with ignorance. Presenters were described as "ill-briefed" and there was lack of knowledge about the EU "at every stage" of the news gathering and presenting process. The report claimed that BBC reporting of this subject needed to be "more demonstrably impartial", but stopped short of stating that the BBC was "pro-EU".
Even though the BBC's governors are appointed by the government, a poll revealed in July 2005 that four out of ten Labour party members of parliament (from the same party that has selected governors since 1997) claimed that they did not think the BBC was "free from influence and bias". The figure amongst Tory MPs was higher, with six out of ten believing this.
In 2005, the BBC advised journalists to be cautious in the use of the word "terrorist", as the term was deemed to be "judgmental". In October 2006, a senior executive at the BBC, Richard Klein, admitted at a conference that the corporation was "ignoring" mainstream opinion and was out of touch with the British public. A month earlier the BBC held an "impartiality" summit. Alan Yentob, head of BBC Drama, admitted that he would not air a Koran being thrown in a garbage can, lest the act offended Muslims, but he would allow a Bible to be shown being thrown in a bin. The impartiality summit found that there was an anti-Christian bias within the corporation, as well as an anti-American bias.
A former political editor for the BBC, Andrew Marr, announced in the 2006 impartiality summit that the BBC was "a publicly funded urban organisation with an abnormally large proportion of younger people, of people in ethnic minorities and almost certainly of gay people compared with the population at large." Jeff Randall, a former business editor at the BBC, gave damning testimony. He said that he had complained about the "multicultural stance" of the BBC to a top news executive and was told: "The BBC is not neutral in multiculturalism: it believes in it and it promotes it." When Randall wore cufflinks into work, which bore the Union Jack (the national flag) he was told: "You can't do that, that's like the National Front!" The National Front is a racist political group. To Americans, the notion of being accused of racism for wearing an item carrying the Stars and Stripes would be unthinkable, but not so in the Britain of the BBC.
The issue of the BBC's liberal and left-wing bias was brought to a head earlier this year. In June a BBC-commissioned report authored by John Bridcut was published, which stated that the corporation was existing in a "left-leaning comfort zone", and that it had an "innate liberal bias".
The full report, entitled From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel can be found in a pdf document.
In July 2005, after the 7/7 Muslim bombings in London, which killed 52 innocent people, the BBC had a discussion show entitled "Questions of Security: A BBC News Special". The corporation admitted that it had deliberately stacked the audience with Muslims. As a proportion of the audience, there were five times as many Muslims as the proportion of Muslims in the national demographic.
During the 2006 Lebanese/Israel conflict, one BBC report by Orla Guerin, wrongly claimed that the Lebanese town of Bint Jbail had been "wiped out" by an Israeli bombardment.
In October 2006, while the BBC was discussing plans to introduce news anchor women wearing Muslim headscarfs, it was noticed that an existing news presenter, Fiona Bruce, had been wearing a crucifix. She had worn this on BBC News for a few years. A discussion among BBC heads included suggestions that she should not be seen to show religious bias.
The PC and leftist bias has extended to the BBC Drama Department. The popular drama "Spooks" is known in the US as "MI-5" and is entertaining hokum. In November 2006, the BBC was facing complaints ofo anti-Christian bias, after an episode of this show featured religious terrorists murdering people from another faith. The terrorists were evangelical Christians, and the victims were Muslims. The show again foundered on the banks of realism and showed political prejudice with the first episode of its fifth series. This involved Al Qaeda terrorists taking control of the Saudi Embassy and murdering people inside. Except the Al Qaeda terrorists were not Muslim terrorists - they were dastardly Israeli agents, posing as Muslims. Jew-hating Islamists across the country must have been pleased.
"Casualty" is a long-running hospital drama, where patients get injured, brought into an Emergency Room, and then all their emotional problems are solved by the improbably intrusive staff. Recently, the show was to have featured the aftermath of a suicide-bomber blowing himself up in a bus station, with all the consequent mayhem and social hand-wringing amongst the caring, sensitive hospital staff. The suicide bomber was originally written as an Islamist. By the time BBC executives had got their hands on the script, the bomber had changed his allegiance to become an animal rights activists. Animal rights campaigners in the UK have set off car bombs, sent letter bombs, and have even indulged in grave-robbing, but none has so far been a suicide bomber.
Lord Tebbitt, who served in Thatcher's government and whose wife was paralyzed in an IRA bomb attack in 1984, condemned the decision to change the Casualty storyline to avoid offending Muslims. He said: "People were perfectly free during the violence in Northern Ireland to produce dramas about terrorism for which presumably they might have been accused of stereotyping IRA terrorists or even suggesting that all Catholics were terrorists. What is the difference here? The BBC exists in a world of New Labour political correctness."
The BBC produces international radio shows on its "World Service", in the manner of "Voice of America". These are produced at Bush House near Piccadilly. The reports from the BBC World Service used to be influential - so much so that in 1978 Bulgarian dissident and World Service broadcaster Georgi Markov was assassinated by a Bulgarian communist in the street outside Bush House. A device disguised as an umbrella was used to inject Markov with a pellet of ricin, as he stood at a bus stop. Markov died four days later. Now, the BBC World Service has succumbed to the leftist climate. In March this year, Professor Frank Stewart claimed that the BBC's Arabic language service, which began in 1938, was "anti-Western and anti-democratic".
Professor Stewart claimed that the Arabic BBC service spoke of Saddam's 2002 election victory as if it was "straight" news, and said that Assad of Syria also received favorable coverage. When a member of the US State Department referred to Assad's Ba'athist regime as a dictatorship, the interviewer "immediately interrupted and reprimanded him". Stewart wrote that "authoritarian regimes and armed militants of the Arab world" had received "sympathetic treatment".
The bias which exists on the BBC has been so frequent that blog sites have been created to document its transgressions, such as Busting BBC Bias and Biased BBC. As an institution connected with government, and considering the current Labour government is obsessed with "spin" and propaganda, bias is to expected within the institution. But the extreme examples of its bias, as presented to innocent children, are shocking.
The BBC has a strong presence on the internet, which rarely mentions the word "Muslim" when dealing with Muslim terrorism or crimes. The word "Muslim" appears mainly when Muslim "victimhood" is described. The BBC has a show called "Newsround" which purports to present news in a way that young people can understand. Two BBC internet articles connected with this Newsround show were subsequently re-edited after they initially appeared. Tom Gross, writing in The National Review presented the original content of one recent article.
Published this month to coincide with the sixth anniversary of 9'11, the article was entitled "Why did they do it?". This gave an "explanation" of 9/11 from an Al Qaeda perspective: "The way America has got involved in conflicts in regions like the Middle East has made some people very angry, including a group called al-Qaeda - who are widely thought to have been behind the attacks. In the past, al-Qaeda leaders have declared a holy war - called a jihad - against the US. As part of this jihad, al-Qaeda members believe attacking US targets is something they should do. When the attacks happened in 2001, there were a number of US troops in a country called Saudi Arabia, and the leader of al-Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden, said he wanted them to leave."
Remember that this was aimed at children. And of course, Al Qaeda are "widely believed" but not explicitly stated to have carried out the 9/11 attacks, opening the door for leftist and lunatic conspiracy theories. The BBC later amended the text, but still maintain that "Al-Qaeda is unhappy with America and other countries getting involved in places like the Middle East." The amended text still tries to justify terrorism and thus implicitly blames the victims of 9/11. Another recent Newsround article aimed at kids begins: "Al-Qaeda has been accused of being behind a series of attacks and bombings since its formation in the late 1980s." Al Qaeda is not just "accused" of terror attacks, it admits and actively glorifies its involvement in terrorist atrocities.
Tom Gross has pointed out that in 2005, the same children's section of its internet site described the Holocaust, but astoundingly failed to mention the fact that Jews were victims, let alone that six million Jews died. The original text merely stated: "Most of the victims died because they belonged to certain racial or religious groups which the Nazis wanted to wipe out, even though they were German citizens. This kind of killing is called genocide." The article failed to mention the Jews in France, Poland, the Netherlands and elsewhere who were not German citizens, but still were sent to Nazi gas chambers.
It is bad enough for the BBC to be blatantly anti-American, anti-Israeli, anti-Christian and pro-Islamist. But recently in a series of scandals the BBC has been exposed blatantly lying to the public. To compound their guilt, they have lied to the nation's children. The problems began in March this year. "Blue Peter" is a children's magazine show which has been on air since 1958. It frequently invites child viewers to take part in competitions. When I was a child, the competition entries were sent by mail, but now premium rate phone lines are employed. It was revealed that a phone competition to raise money for Unicef had failed to select a winner, so a child who was visiting the studio was asked to "phone" the show. She was awarded the prize. TV regulator Ofcom ruled that the BBC should pay $100,000 for the deceit.
Most recently, the same show was involved in a similar incident. "Blue Peter" has a menagerie of "pets". The first of these was a mongrel called Petra who was introduced in 1963. The latest in the line of pets for children with no animals at home is a cat who first appeared in January 2006. The nation's children were given a vote, and chose the name "Cookie". For some reason, a producer decided to ignore the viewers' (expensive) phone votes and claimed that they had chosen the name "Socks". Perhaps a lover of Bill Clinton, whose cat bore the same name, the producer has since been fired. The BBC refuses to comment on its deception.
Though the story of Socks aka Cookie made front page news this weekend, one should not be surprised. I remember the lies they told about "Petra". On Friday November 22, 1963, aged five, I was waiting to see Blue Peter. The week before, the show had announced that the nation's kids had voted to name the new Blue Peter pet "Peter". Peter was a male puppy, but shortly before the show went on air, the creature had died. Rather than confront kids with the truth, presenters Valerie Singleton and Christopher Trace claimed that they had "made a mistake" and said that Peter was in fact a girl. Fiery producer Biddy Baxter had substituted a female puppy, as it was the closest look-alike for the deceased TV pet. This substitute animal was "Petra". Despite such deception, aimed at protecting children's feelings, the show was interrupted with the news that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. Which is why I remember my father (who was in the room at the time) fuming about the "nonsense" of the BBC being unable to ascertain the gender of a puppy.
In July this year, Mark Thompson, director-general of the BBC, admitted that at least six BBC shows had involved rigged competitions. As a result, he cancelled all subsequent phone-in competitions. More recent revelations of BBC deception involved a further five faked phone-in shows.
The BBC has come a long way since it began broadcasting radio shows in 1922, under its original title the "British Broadcasting Company". It began TV broadcasting in 1936 from Alexandra Palace, though these broadcasts were suspended for the duration of WWII. In 1937, the company became nationalized as the British Broadcasting Corporation. The BBC still produces good natural history documentaries, but its dramas are hackneyed. With a few rare exceptions its comedy fails to raise a titter. Its news output is still biased, and every UK citizen with a TV is expected to pay $270 per year to be patronized and lied to by the BBC's mandarins.
Is the BBC worth its license fee? If it cannot present the truth, and deliberately misinforms both adults and children, it short-changes the nation in more ways than one. What was once a great British institution is now a club for the commissars of political correctness. Alexandra Palace, where BBC TV began, is no longer used by the BBC. The last "Open University" shows were made there in 1981. Alexandra Palace was built when Britain had an empire. That empire was given away after World War II. In a symptom of the times we live in, Alexandra Palace still has a purpose. In 2006, while London marked the first anniversary of 7/7, Islamists from the Muslim Brotherhood held an "Islam Expo" at the site. Last month, the terror supporting Hizb ut-Tahrir held its annual conference at Alexandra Palace.
Adrian Morgan
© 2003-2007 FamilySecurityMatters.org All Rights Reserved
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 7:18 AM | Comments (0)
September 21, 2007
Islamism: Hizb ut-Tahrir: A Danger To The West? 4 of 4
This article by Adrian Morgan (Giraldus Cambrensis of Western Resistance) appeared earlier in Family Security Matters and is reproduced with their permission.
Hizb ut-Tahrir: A Danger To The West?
Part Four (of Four)
To Ban Or Not To Ban?
Omar Bakri Mohammed, who co-founded the British branch of Hizb ut-Tahrir in 1986, gave a revealing interview to the Jamestown Foundation in March 2004. Bakri said he had been actively involved in the Muslim Brotherhood from age 15 to 17 in his native Syria, and then joined Hizb ut-Tahrir in Lebanon. His MB connections had drawn attention from the Syrian authorities, causing him to flee to Lebanon. In 1979 he went to Egypt for six months, before going to Saudi Arabia where he established a branch of Hizb ut-Tahrir, which by 1983 had 38 members. In 1983, HT in Kuwait expelled him from the group, but he continued to operate a group which called itself "Al Muhajiroun".
Bakri arrived in Britain and was approached by the German head of Hizb ut-Tahrir who persuaded him to rejoin HT. He co-founded a British branch of HT in 1986 but this was, he claimed, not part of the official structure of international HT. Bakri stated that he had left HT UK voluntarily on January 16, 1996. It would be a month later that he would form his own group, which he called Al Muhajiroun.
What is interesting from Bakri's interview is the claim that under the leadership of the second emir, Abd al-Qadim Zallum (or Abdul Kaddim Zalloum) who governed HT from the end of 1977 until spring of 2003, there were splits within the international group. Bakri spoke of "camps" which officially came into existence after 1996. Camp 2, led by Abu Rami, was prominent in Jordan. An offshoot of Camp 1 (the main HT faction) was known as Hizb Waed (the Party of Promise) but is only active in Jerusalem. This is Camp 3. Bakri explained that Camp 4 comprised reformists, called Reformers of Hizb ut-Tahrir. This grouping was led in Germany by Dr Tawfiq Mustafa, and in the United States by Iyad Hilal.
For a group that claims to propose establishing global hegemony under a world-wide Caliphate, such splits only highlight how unrealistic HT's aims are. If its own structure cannot unite, it sets a poor model for others to follow. It is unknown if the current emir, Ata Abu Rashta, has managed to fully unite these various factions within HT.
On Saturday, August 4, 2007, Hizb UK held a conference at Alexandra Palace in north London. A poorly-made video presentation (available on YouTube) which advertised the conference attempts to show the global unity of HT. Using snippets of video and pictures from websites, HT activists are shown from the following countries: Pakistan Bangladesh, Switzerland, Jordan, UAE, Palestine, Jordan, Yemen, Turkey, Belgium, Indonesia, Australia and America.
According to Abdul-Adil's resume, he specializes in "evidence-based, culturally-sensitive family therapy for urban youth, including conduct disorder and oppositional defiant disorder, gang involvement, and inner-city violence. Dr. Abdul-Adil is the co-founder of Young Warriors, a youth intervention program that uses modern rap music and hip-hop media to promote critical thinking and prosocial skills in urban adolescents. He remains involved in developing other innovative youth interventions such as using movie and television materials and faith-based collaborations with local religious institutions.".
Abdul-Adil also dispenses online Islamic psychological advice, on CrescentLife.com. A video of Abdul-Adil giving a lecture on Islam can be found on YouTube.
The original emir of HTA, Iyad Hilal, is a US citizen of Palestinian-Jordanian origin. He is the author of several books - Treaties in Islam, Gull Crisis, Palestinian Quest, Masiiahah in Islamic Activities (all in Arabic) and also Muslims in the West, in English. He is better known for his book "Studies in Usul ul-Fiqh". This treatise on Islamic jurisprudence can be found online in an edited version. This book is a required part of course material in the Fiqh course at the Qatar-based Islamic Studies Academy.
In August 2005 Stratfor stated that Hilal had been in the US for 20 years. He had been involved in HT since his youth. Hilal would travel between Orange County in California and New York (from the 1980s onward) while he was establishing the group. HT had offices in these locations, and between around 1991 to 1995, Hilal was imam of a mosque in New York. By 1995, the chapter in New York lost members in rows over ideology and leadership, a situation made worse in 1997 by the splintering of the Jordanian "Camp 2" from "Camp 1". Stratfor states that by 2000 many members of the New York branch had defected to Omar Bakri's group Al Muhajiroun.
BBC journalist Richard Watson stated in a recent report (video) that at the end of the 1990s, Omar Bakri Mohammed wanted to expand into the US. The information on what had happened in New York's HT chapter was made more clear by private investigator Bill Warner. In 2005 he had taken BBC reporter Richard Watson to the Masjid al-Fatima on 37th Avenue, Woodside in Queens. Here, the BBC filmed Aqeel Khan, the founder and secretary of the Queens Islamic Center at the mosque, while Bill Warner interviewed him. During the mid 1990s, the mosque had been infiltrated by radical members of Hizb ut-Tahrir, much as they had tried to take over the Croydon mosque in London.
Aqeel Khan said: "They had their own programs, which were not the directions of the mosque... There were five times (a day) prayer, but then they had their own meetings here and we - the general public - were not invited." The Hizb ut-Tahrir members were officially ousted from the Queens mosque after $400,000 went missing from the masjid funds, but they continued to frequent the mosque. It appears to be at this mosque, where radical Hizb members already worshipped, that Al Muhajiroun developed its first US presence.
The ideology of Hizb was similar to that of Bakri's Al Muhajiroun, but the latter group's direct methods appealed to young radicals. Individuals such as Syed "Fahad" Hashmi from Flushing, Queens, had became involved in Al Muhajiroun. Hashmi, who formerly belonged to the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) is thought to have introduced Mohammed Junaid Babar to Al Muhajiroun. Babar had been a student at St John's University. Both attended the Masjid al-Fatima.
In 2004, Junaid Babar was convicted of setting up a terror training camp in Malakand, Pakistan, and assisting Al Qaeda. One of the individuals that attended this camp was Mohammed Sidique Khan, leader of the cell that killed 52 people in London on July 7, 2005. Babar gave evidence at the "Operation Crevice" trial: on April 30, 2007, five British individuals from Al Muhajiroun were given life sentences for plotting terror attacks in the UK. After the convictions, it was revealed that Omar Khyam, the leader of the Operation Crevice cell, had met and discussed jihad operations with Mohammed Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, another 7/7 bomber, on several occasions in 2004. Their meetings had been monitored by MI5.
Al Muhajiroun was officially disbanded by Omar Bakri Mohammed in October 2004. Using a tactic employed by HT, he continued to guide his followers who then belonged to new groups, operating under new names. In the UK, Al Muhajiroun members operated in groups called Al Ghurabaa, the Saviour Sect, (which changed its name to the Saved Sect) and these also founded a group called Ahlus Sunna Wal Jammah. Members of the US Al Muhajiroun group reformed as the Islamic Thinkers Society.
With its membership plundered by Al Muhajiroun's more radical sect, the US branch of Hizb ut-Tahrir appeared to be in poor shape. Iyad Halil, a greengrocer by trade, had gone back to Orange County. He apparently ceased his role as emir of HTA in 2000. Hizb continues to operate in North America, but its profile until recently has been low. Hizb ut-Tahrir frequently mounts anti-US demonstrations. In Britain, HT has 10,000 active members. With anti-American attitudes prevalent within international HT, it may be harder to recruit from the US Muslim population. Research from Pew Global Attitudes indicates that US Muslims are generally more supportive of America's statehood than British Muslims, who are the most anti-Western in Europe.
HT, regarding itself as an intellectual movement, is keen to indoctrinate its recruits in the intricacies of Islamic law and thought before they can reach positions of influence. According to a report by Madeleine Gruen of Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, because HT America members "have been raised on a steady diet of pop culture, they are endowed with the unique ability of being able to export HT and jihadist ideology to a world that dislikes America but loves its entertainment industry." She noted that after 2003, "public mention of HT in the US became scarce."
Despite the absence of overt mentions of the name Hizb ut-Tahrir in North America, Gruen notes that under front names, HTA continues and is undergoing a renaissance. Web businesses proliferate, such as "Khalifah Klothing" which is run from British Columbia in Canada, and in Los Angeles in January 2006, an HT "circle" formed Ummah Films. This group recruits young people from LA mosques to act as production assistants. American HT members are active on chat rooms on the internet.
In a report from last month, Gruen explains that while Iyad Halil had operated in Orange County and NYC, another leader called Mohammed Malkawi set up operations in Chicago and Wisconsin. Malkawi, of Palestinian-Jordanian origin, had been a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Wisconsin. He had recruited Naveed Butt, who is the spokesman of Pakistan HT, into the group when they had both worked for Motorola. Mohammed Malkawi has written on high-speed software architecture. His video lectures can be found on YouTube.
The arguments on banning or accepting HT are still current. The group has openly allowed anti-Semitic literature to be published. It was on account of its anti-Semitic attitudes that the group became outlawed in 2003 in Germany. In Denmark, HT is legal, but it has come into conflict with the authorities. In March and April 2002, HT Denmark was responsible for distributing copies of a leaflet in a Copenhagen square which, according to the BBC: "makes threats against Jews, using a quote from the Koran urging Muslims to 'kill them wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have been turned you out.' The leaflet also said, 'The Jews are a people of slander...a treacherous people... they fabricate lies and twist words from their right context.' And the leaflet describes suicide bombings in Israel as "legitimate" acts of "Martyrdom"."
The person responsible for these leaflets was Danish HT leader Fadi Abdullatif, was given a 60-day suspended jail sentence for distribution of racist propaganda in October 2002. In 2004, Abdullatif was responsible for leaflets which called upon Muslims to go to Fallujah in Iraq, to fight Americans. He claimed in these fliers that if any national leaders tried to prevent their travel, they should kill these leaders. In August 2005, Abdullatif was arrested for this offense and was officially indicted in March 2006 for threatening the government. On August 17, 2006, Fadi Abdullatif was found guilty, and was given a three month jail sentence.
In 2004, there were requests for Hizb ut-Tahrir to be banned in Denmark, but the director of public prosecutions ruled that the group was legal. Where the group directly calls for the overthrow of governments, such issues could relate either to threats against national security, or sedition. However, the reason why most Middle Eastern and North African countries have outlawed HT are less to do with national security, and more to do with lese-majesty, or "insulting the state". In the Central Asian republics, HT is banned partly because the group destabilizes secular political edifices, and partly because governments, particularly Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, appear threatened by anything that does not conform to their notions of strictly controlled religious practice.
In Pakistan, where there are 65 members of the National Assembly who belong to the Islamist MMA parties, the outlawing of Hizb ut-Tahrir seems irrational. In October 2005, the president of the MMA, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, openly called for an Islamic revolution to overthrow the government, and received no punishment. During the February 2006 cartoon protests, the same individual led calls for the death of the elected President. If the MMA, which seeks to turn Pakistan into an Islamic state, is officially legitimate, then why is HT Pakisitan illegal? Over the past few years members of HT Pakistan have been subjected to frequent arrests. In January 2006, Naveed Butt legally challenged the Pakistani government's decision to outlaw HT, but lost his case.
Maajid Nawaz, who defected from HT Britain after being a member for more than a decade, does not believe that the group should be banned, but it should be challenged and belittled intellectually. Ed Husain, who had only been involved in HT UK for a short time, does support a ban, on the grounds that HT's indoctrination is a springboard to acts of terrorism. The actions of some British individuals from Al Muhajiroun would seem to validate that claim. In November 2005 Britain's Association of Chief Police Officers argued that a ban on the group would send it underground. Shiraz Maher, a former leading member of HT UK, has argued that the group's main activities happen "underground" anyway.
Zeyno Baran and Ariel Cohen are scholars who have argued passionately that the US government should ban Hizb ut-Tahrir. Both have given testimony before Congress to this end. Dr Cohen is the Central Asian expert at the Heritage Foundation and until May this year, Zeyno Baran was director of the international security program at the Nixon Center. Since May, she has been a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute.
An article in the Washington Post from December 2004 stated there had been no reports of HT being active in the US, even though Stratfor has claimed that the FBI (or some of its field offices) has been aware of HTA since early 1994. The article maintains that the International Crisis Group had opposed such a ban.
Zeno Baran has stated in a 144-page Nixon Center report from the same time that: "While HT as an organization does not engage in terrorist activities, it has become the vanguard of the radical Islamist ideology that encourages its followers to commit terrorist acts."
Maybe for this reason, the public face of Hizb ut-Tahrir is changing, at least in America. Madeleine Gruen points to the reinvention of the group's profile, although the underlying doctrine remains the same as it has ever been. Now HT America is trying to be "cool". Even the former regional emir, Iyad Halil, produced a magazine entitled "Khalifornia" as an attempt to make the group appeal. Dr Jaleel Abdul-Adil speaks to HT members like a true Salafist, yet he dresses in bright-colored robes at such events. He also has an interest in Hip Hop culture to boost his "credibility" with young people.
The British HT membership, predominantly made up of individuals whose ancestry comes from the Indian subcontinent, is currently careful not to fall foul of the Terrorism Act 2006. Schedule 1, section 1 (3) of this Act outlaws the "glorification of terrorism", including terrorism abroad. This severely limits what the group can publicly say.
British HT's leadership appears to be struggling, leading to defections. It is possible that Britain is the location of the current HQ of international HT. Its "pyramid structure" of management evolved in countries where the group was banned outright, where it was dangerous to know too many individuals. Such hierarchical principles belong to another time, another place, like the greatly mythologized Caliphate.
The intellectual upper levels of British HT discuss comparisons of Marxist theory against Islamic "Aqeeda" (doctrine) in student fashion, but the lower tiers of the pyramid are recruited from the street and are not restrained by such intellectual conceits. In the days of Omar Bakri Mohammed, senior members could say whatever they liked with impunity. Bakri made outrageous statements. He encouraged his supporters to commit acts of violence against others, including other members. But he had a personality and even a sense of humor that drew loyalty, unlike the current suit-wearing peddlers of dogma.
At the very base of the pyramid are British HT's disaffected and alienated young recruits, who have poor education and who will never hone their Aqeeda skills to rise to upper levels. For them, HT is a vehicle to express contempt and hatred for the society they live in. They are taught that the West hates all Muslims. Within such an environment their anger is encouraged. They are given empty promises of a Caliphate which would only come about in a hypothetical future. Among these youths, beyond the direct gaze of their leaders, threats and acts of violence already happen. How long before such violence involves explosives?
Adrian Morgan
© 2003-2007 FamilySecurityMatters.org All Rights Reserved
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 3:48 PM | Comments (0)
Islamism: Hizb ut-Tahrir: A Danger To The West? 3 of 4
This article by Adrian Morgan (Giraldus Cambrensis of Western Resistance) appeared earlier in Family Security Matters and is reproduced with their permission.
Hizb ut-Tahrir: A Danger To The West?
Part Three (of Four)
Acts of Violence
Hizb ut-Tahrir presents itself as an intellectual group, but there is a gap between what it professes and what is practically possible. It claims to be non-violent, yet argues for the installation of a world-wide Caliphate. To institute a new "world order" would unavoidably lead to violence. Political revolutions, by their nature, involve some amount of violence. There have been few examples of bloodless revolution. The 1989 "Velvet Revolution" of the former Czechoslovakia was bloodless, yet could have been crushed with violence, had the Soviets so desired.
The founder of HT, Taqiuddin al-Nabhani, spent much time discussing the nature of thought, but such sophistry is limited by its dogma. He believed that Islam was rational and therefore could be promoted through persuasion and rational discussion. Contradicting this, he maintained that the Koran cannot be questioned, and is thus beyond the bounds of true discussion. Persuading non-Muslims to accept Islam as a political system which allows no dissent from the tenets of one book would naturally result in conflict. This conflict was specifically alluded to on the group's UK website last November (since removed). The statement claimed that Hizb ut-Tahrir "also aims to bring back the Islamic guidance for mankind and to lead the Ummah into a struggle with Kufr, its systems and its thoughts so that Islam encapsulates the world."
For Nabhani's successors in Hizb ut-Tahrir the "non-violence" paradox is not resolved. The dogma assumes that there can be rational discussions to implement a non-negotiable fundamentalism. Violence is officially eschewed, but HT promises that all social and political ills would be solved under a Caliphate, as explained in a tract I took from their UK website in 2005: "Its aim is to resume the Islamic way of life and to convey the Islamic da'wah to the world. This objective means bringing the Muslims back to living an Islamic way of life in Dar al-Islam and in an Islamic society such that all of life's affairs in society are administered according to the Shari'ah rules, and the viewpoint in it is the halal and the haram under the shade of the Islamic State, which is the Khilafah State."
How people would live under such a Caliphate is spelled out in detail in its "draft constitution" (for the proposed Caliphate). Within parts of the Islamic world (Dar al-Islam, the "abode of submission") it may be possible to persuade Muslims to achieve such goals, but for democratic, non-Muslim lands (Dar al-Harb, "the abode of war"), or even democratic or clan-ruled Muslim lands, implementation will be harder to achieve without violence or extensive manipulation.
GlobalSecurity.org succinctly describes HT's proposed three-step strategy: "The first involves educating Muslims about its philosophies and goals. In the second step, the Muslims would then spread these views among others in their countries, especially members of government, the military and other power centers. In the third and final step, Hizb ut-Tahrir believes its faithful will cause secular governments to crumble because loyalties will then lie solely with Islam - not nationalities, politics or ethnic identifications.
Effectively, the strategy will involve indoctrination, infiltration, and undermining national stability. The arrival of Hizb ut-Tahrir in the Central Asian republics exemplifies all three modes, particularly undermining stability. In Tajikistan, for example, HT arrived in a country already destabilized by a civil war (1992 to 1997). In neighboring Kyrgyzstan, Hizb ut-Tahrir already appears to have infiltrated parts of the government administration. On September 3, 2007 it was revealed that two HT activists from Kara-Suu were able to have new identities issued to them in August, apparently with the assistance of municipal officials. The identification included birth and military registration certificates and medical security cards.
Such infiltration has happened in Britain, where HT has a strong following. In November last year it was revealed that Hizb member Abid Javaid works in the UK government's Immigration and Nationality Directorate, part of the Home Office. 41-year old Javaid had been issued with a government grant to mount an HT exhibition. He is also one of the HT organisers at Croydon mosque in south London. At this mosque, Hizb ut-Tahrir has been involved in attempts to radicalize worshippers, using violence. This has gone on for years, to the consternation of the mosque administration.
Activities at Croydon mosque were reported by the BBC in November 2006 (video here). Journalist Richard Watson spoke to Shuaib Yusaf, one of Croydon mosque's administrators. Mr Yusaf spoke of how HT members had instigated fights in the street outside the mosque. This "gang warfare", as Mr Yusaf described it, involved knives, and even a sword.
An undercover member of HT, code-named "Jay" gave testimony. He said he was part of a five-man cell, one of 50 within the south London region. To gain full membership he had to gain five more recruits, part of a pyramid structure. To prove his allegiance to HT, he was told to "mug" a non-Muslim on the street. He said that he was told: "It's all right to hurt non-believers... They asked me to take money from three guys.. by force."
The BBC reported that while filming, information came that some HT members were intending to fire-bomb a synagogue. Incendiary substances were located in woodland, at the same time as police arrived. As expected, HT's official spokesman, Dr Abdul Wahid, disassociated Hizb ut-Tahrir from the claims made in the report.
There have recently been high-profile defections of Islamists from Hizb ut-Tahrir UK. These individuals - Ed Husain, Shiraz Maher and Maajid Nawaz - are still Muslims, but have rejected the methods and ideology of HT. Maajid Nawaz, who grew up in Westcliff-on-Sea in Essex, had spent years in jail in Egypt for promoting HT, which has been banned in Egypt since 1974. Nawaz (center in piciture), along with two other British nationals and 23 Egyptians, had been convicted in 2004. Sentenced to five years' jail for membership of a banned group, Nawaz and his British companions were released in February 2006.
After 12 years' membership, he now condemns HT, saying: "They are prepared to, once they've established the state, to fight other countries and to kill people in the pursuit of unifying this state into one state. And what I'd like to emphasize is that such a policy is not agreed upon within Islamic theology.. I think that what I taught has not only damaged British society and British Muslim relations and damaged the position of Muslims in this society as British citizens, I think it's damaged the world."
It was in his Egyptian prison that Nawaz discovered that "what I had been propagating was far from true Islam. I began to realise that what I had subscribed to was actually Islamism sold to me in the name of Islam... Now I am involved in trying to counter the black and white mindset that I once so vehemently encouraged. Although I was young when I was recruited to Hizb ut-Tahrir, I take full responsibility for my actions. I made the decisions that I did and I am responsible for undoing them. With this in mind I hope to publish a series of papers reevaluating certain core Islamist ideas that are essential to their message."
Ed Husain (a pseudonym) is the author of The Islamist, an account of his times in Hizb ut-Tahrir. Within a week of the book's publication, he was receiving death threats. He states: "From my involvement with Hizb ut-Tahrir I know it to be a sophisticated organisation: it rarely ever pulls the trigger. It raises the temperature and allows others to do the deed. That is how the murder of an innocent young man, Ayotunde Obonobi, took place in Newham in 1995." Husain had attended Newham College when the Nigerian student was murdered by Hizb followers.
Husain recently wrote: " The rhetoric of jihad introduced by Hizb ut-Tahrir in my days was the preamble to 7/7 and several other attempted attacks. By proscribing Hizb ut-Tahrir, we would send a strong message to extremists that Britain will not tolerate intolerance."
From 2001 to 2005, Shiraz Maher was a regional officer for Hizb ut-Tahrir UK in the northeast of England. He also wrote many of the articles produced by HT. He found it hard to leave the group and de-program its ideas from his thinking. He now advises the BBC on political Islam. On a July 4, 2007 video report from the BBC, Maher affirms that there is now a vast disparity between what HT publicly pronounces and what it privately preaches.
HT in Britain has exercised this duplicity for some time. Last year, under the "front" name of the East London Youth Forum it organized paint ball sessions as a means to recruitment. Other front groups have been named the Debate Society, the Muslim Women's Cultural Forum, the Islamic Society, the One Nation Society, the Millennium Society, the Pakistan Society and the 1924 Committee.
In September 2005 when the group was facing a possible ban, HT used deception to rent meeting rooms at the Quaker Friends House in Euston, North London. Rather than booking the space under their own name, the booking was made under the name: "Salsa Bill's Publishing House". The meeting was to discuss "Hizb-ut-Tahrir and the Vision of the Caliphate". Only after the booking was secured did the group produce fliers to advertise the event.
In 1995, Hizb ut-Tahrir was banned from university campuses for its rabid anti-semitism and its physical assaults upon women students who would not wear the hijab or Muslim headscarf. Despite the ban, in October 2005 the group reappeared on campuses, calling itself "Stop Islamophobia". This infiltration was taking place at University College London (UCL), the School of African and Oriental Studies, Luton University and other establishments. Around the same time, it was reported that Hizb ut-Tahrir members had tried to take over the Students Union of a West Yorkshire University, and had once again resumed its campaigns of bullying young women to make them wear the hijab. In the fall of 2005, HT had already taken control of the university's Islamic Society.
Techniques of infiltration appear to have taken place within the news media. In September 2005, journalist Shiv Malik reported that two Hizb members were working within the computer firm IBM, and "that Reuters, the international news and financial information agency, has at least one member among its employees." Shortly after the London bombings of 7/7, which killed 52 innocent people, a blogger - Steve Burgess of the Daily Ablution - revealed that a Hizb member was working as a trainee journalist at the Guardian newspaper. This man, Dilpazier Aslam, had even written articles about the London bombings, and co-written profiles of the four suicide bombers.
Dilpazier Aslam's Guardian articles show selective bias. An article on a Manchester-based Islamic faith school is entitled: "Islam is the secret of our success". An article celebrating Eid ul-Fitr, the end of Ramadan, is presented as a cheery discourse on cookery for Guardian readers. He reported on Shabina Begum, a schoolgirl (supported by Hizb ut-Tahrir) who tried to challenge existing school dress regulations to accommodate her Islamist costume. When she won a minor battle, Aslam's article was entitled "I could scream with happiness. I've given hope and strength to Muslim women." Begum later lost her case.
Six days after the London bombings, Aslam wrote an article entitled: "We rock the boat - Today's Muslims aren't prepared to ignore injustice". In this, he wrote: "Some 2,749 people were killed in the 9/11 attacks. To discover the cost of "liberating" Iraqis you need to multiply that figure by eight, and still you will fall short of the estimated minimum of 22,787 civilian Iraqi casualties to date. But it's not cool to say this, now that London's skyline has also has plumed grey."
When Aslam was confronted by his employers, and apparently refused a request to resign from HT, he was fired. He later threatened legal action, but in May 2006 he and the Guardian settled out of court.
A case of media bias in an already biased newspaper is infiltration, but not as serious as undermining democracies and societies. In Bangladesh, democracy was suspended indefinitely, amid reports of widespread corruption within the major parties. It is now under a "caretaker" administration. Dominic Whiteman of monitoring group VIGIL has noted that HT has been recruiting Bangladeshis in east London, and has been taking out adverts in local newspapers for the migrant Bangladeshi community. With the nation of Bangladesh in a political crisis, it seems that HT has designs which would exploit the current situation.
The "coordinator and spokesman" of the HT in Bangladesh is Mohiuddin Ahmed, who lectures in business management at Dhaka University. He is able to mobilize large gatherings for Islamist causes in the nation. In February 2006 HT mobilized 5,000 people to demonstrate at Dhaka, the capital, against Danish cartoons of Mohammed. Slogans on banners read: "Death to those who degrade our beloved prophet!", "Hang culprits", "Free speech is war on Islam".
Shortly after democratic campaigning was suspended this year, members of HT's youth front, the Bangladesh Chhatra Mukti, mounted an active campaign against the respected economist Dr Muhammad Yunus. In 2006, Yunus won the Noble Peace Prize for his work in establishing the Grameen ("village") Bank. This bank exists by making micro-loans and charging minimal interest, and has lifted untold people in Bangladesh, mostly women, out of the mire of poverty. When Dr Yunus was due to visit the university to receive an honorary Doctor of Law award, HT's youth wing circulated leaflets condemning him. In protests outside the university, Bangladesh Chhatra Mukti activists waved black flags and called Dr Yunus an "imperial agent".
In July 2004, HT Bangladesh was accused of making death threats against ten individuals. These included politicians, thinkers and journalists. Hizb denied any involvement. Two months before, HT was under suspicion when the British High Commissioner, Anwar Choudary, was injured in a bomb blast at an Islamic shrine in Sylhet, in the northeast of the country. Three people had died. Two days before the attack, Hizb had distributed leaflets around the shrine, condemning the British and Americans.
On its website and on the ground, Bangladesh HT has been making capital out of another cartoon crisis, this time involving the drawings of Swedish artist Lars Vilks. In protests made by HT, several people have been arrested, though some have recently been freed.
HT in Bangladesh began its life after Khondakar Golam Mowla, a lecturer in management at Dhaka University had gone to study in London in 1993. Here he met Nasimul Gani and Kawsar Shahnewaj. Following Mowla's return to Bangladesh, in 2000 the three individuals established Bangladesh HT. Some of Mowla's opinions can be found here. He is the author of the book "The Election of Caliph/Khalifa and World Peace". In 2005, intelligence officials were concerned that the group would try to mount a coup. During the current political crisis in the country, HT needs to be watched carefully.
HT is no stranger to attempts at destabilizing nations, as demonstrated in the volatile environments of the Central Asian republics. It is also active in Africa. Yemen is (with the United Arab Emirates) one of the few Arab nations where HT can operate legally. In Tanzania, HT appears to be deliberately attempting to destabilize the local economy of Zanzibar. This island is semi-autonomous, and most of its economy survives on tourism. IN 2005, a total of 500,00 tourists had visited the island. In September 2006, HT was campaigning on Zanzibar to persuade the Muslim population to turn against tourists. Abbas Hussein, a senior HT leader justified this action by saying: "Tourism is the source of moral and religious decay in Zanzibar. Visitors are just coming here to pollute the culture and religion of Zanzibar."
Traditionally, regional leaders of HT have been secretive. In Britain, Jalaluddin Patel, the leader of HT has spoken openly about his role. He can be seen addressing a conference in a YouTube video (nb - it is boring). He told the Jamestown Foundation in 2004 that he had been elected to his role in 2000 and 2002. Patel works in information technology. A lackluster speaker, Patel has been involved in HT UK since 1992, becoming a full member in 1994 when he was 18.
When Patel joined the British branch of Hizb ut-Tahrir, its leader was Omar Bakri Mohammed who was born in Syria in 1958. Unlike Patel, Bakri was immensely charismatic, even though he has openly supported terrorism. In 1991 he issued a "fatwa" against prime minister John Major. While senior leaders are currently defecting from UK HT, Bakri was able to attract young members to the group. With a Syrian man named Farid Kassim, Bakri (also called Omar Bakri Fostok) had founded the British branch of Hizb ut-Tahrir in 1986. Bakri had been in Saudi Arabia before he arrived in Britain in 1985. He had been expelled from the kingdom after he founded a group called "Al Muhajiroun" (the emigrants) which the Saudi authorities identified as a "front group" for Hizb ut-Tahrir. A decade later founding the British branch of HT, Bakri left, or was expelled. He took with him his most ardent supporters and founded a group which he called Al Muhajiroun.
As I will show in the final part of this article, Bakri's followers were directly involved acts of jihad, and also colluded with the establishment of Hizb ut-Tahrir in the United States.
Adrian Morgan
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Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at 3:27 PM | Comments (0)
September 18, 2007
Islamism: Hizb ut-Tahrir: A Danger To The West? 2 of 4
This article by Adrian Morgan (Giraldus Cambrensis of Western Resistance) appeared earlier today in Family Security Matters and is reproduced with their permission.
Hizb ut-Tahrir: A Danger To The West?
Part Two (of Four)
Acts of Violence
On Monday, July 31, 2006 two bombs were discovered on German trains. Both had been found hidden inside suitcases while the trains were moving. The first bomb was found in a train approaching Dortmund station, and the other was on a train bound for Koblenz. The bombs were of a similar design - containing canisters of propane gas, wires, and a timer. The devices were both dismantled on the platforms of the stations when the trains arrived. Federal prosecutors claimed that the devices, had they gone off, would have had the power to maim and kill. It was later revealed that both bombs contained packaging from Lebanon.
On August 19, Youssef Mohammed al-Hajdib, a 21-year old Lebanese Muslim student, was arrested at Kiel railway station. He was charged with "attempted murder, belonging to a terrorist organization and attempting to cause an explosion." He had been identified from closed circuit TV images, and another man shown accompanying him was being sought. On August 25 the second man - a Syrian called Fadi Al-Saleh - was apprehended. By this time, two individuals had been arrested in Lebanon.
One of the suspects in custody in Lebanon, who went under the code-name "Hamza" was found to be a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir. He had apparently been involved in smuggling Kurds into Lebanon via Syria. Only a few months earlier, the Lebanese Interior Ministry had granted HT permission to operate, the first time since the group had been outlawed in 1953. Hizb ut-Tahrir later denied connections with any of the suspects.
In April this year, four suspects stood trial in Lebanon for their involvement in the German bomb plots. Youssef Mohammed el Hajdib and his brother Saddam were placed on trial in absentia. The trial suffered adjournments. In May these were connected with an uprising at the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in Tripoli in the north of the country. The uprising was led by Fatah al-Islam and has continued since. On September 2, the fighting appeared to be over. Saddam el Hajdib, who was fourth in command of Fatah al-Islam, was killed in this conflict in May.
This is certainly not the first instance where a Western European terror plot has involved a suspect who belonged to Hizb ut-Tahrir. It is a set pattern for HT to deny any involvement with its members who commit terrorist acts. On April 30, 2003 two British nationals tried to enter Mike's Place on the Tel Aviv sea-front. Both wore explosive belts. One individual, Asif Hanif from Hounslow, succeeded in blowing himself up. He killed three people and injured 65 others. His companion, Omar Sharif from Derby, could not detonate his belt and fled. His rotting body was found floating in the sea 12 days later. Both individuals were associated with the radical group Al Muhajiroun, which evolved from Hizb ut-Tahrir UK. Omar Sharif had initially become radicalized by HT at university, and was receiving emails from the group up until the time he tried to blow himself up. Hizb ut-Tahrir, of course, claims it had nothing to do with his radicalism.
The break-up of the former Soviet Union has created states in Central Asia which since the mid-1990s have become vulnerable to the advances of Hizb ut-Tahrir and its militant "liberation theology". The Central Asian states lie in a "buffer zone" between Russia, Afghanistan and China and already have extremist terror groups, such as the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) and its parent group, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). The Islamic Jihad Union is linked with the recent plot in Germany to blow up Frankfurt airport and an airbase in Ramstein used by US military. The IMU, founded in Kandahar, Afghanistan in 1998, aims to set up an Islamist super-state comprising Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkemenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and also China's Xinjiang province. This proposed super-state is sometimes called "Turkestan". Both IJU and IMU have strong Al Qaeda links.
Hizb ut-Tahrir has already gained a foothold in most the regions that the IMU seeks to conquer, including Xinjiang province. Only the repressive nation of Turkmenistan appears not to have been fully infiltrated by the group. According to the South Asia Analysis Group, the first HT missionaries in Central Asia were British-Pakistani members of the group, who arrived in Uzbekistan in 1995. The arrival of these Pakistani-origin members happened five years before HT started operating in Pakistan.
In February 2007, a Uighir separatist called Tursun Talip, who came originally from China's Xinjiang province, was arrested in southern Kyrgyzstan. A source claimed: "The Chinese citizen came to southern Kyrgyzstan in order to form a clandestine religious extremist organization. Talip planned to perpetrate terrorist acts and other actions targeted for socio-political destabilization with the assistance of the [Uighir separatist] group, which would unite members of outlawed radical groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir and the Turkestan Islamic Party."
At a terrorist trial involving 15 individuals in Uzbekistan in July 2004, the defendants pleaded guilty at the start of the trial. They also confessed to belonging to the IMU and Hizb ut-Tahrir. One defendant, 22-year old Farkhod Kazakbayev, spoke of an Uzbek group called "Zhamoat" or "Society" which had both Al Qaeda and HT links. IMU and HT have a shared aim, though the professed methods of achieving that aim differ. In some cases, there has been a crossover of membership, but here I must add a caveat.
Crackdowns against Hizb ut-Tahrir in Central Asian states have sometimes been violent and indiscriminate in their targets, particularly in Uzbekistan under the authoritarian leadership of Islam Karimov. Currently hundreds of Hizb ut-Tahrir members are in jail in Uzbekistan, mostly guilty of nothing more than not following state-approved religion. The fate of Muslims who do not follow accepted doctrine can be horrific. In August 2002 the bodies of two such Muslims who had died in prison were returned to their families. An examination of Mazafar Avazov's body showed he had effectively been boiled to death. On May 13, 2005, Muslims protesting peacefully in the Uzbek city of Andijan were massacred by troops. Hundreds died. The authorities blamed Hizb ut-Tahrir for violent incidents preceding the protests.
Tajikistan adjoins Afghanistan's northern border, and it has a growing number of HT members.The group was banned in 2001. During 2005 99 Hizb ut-Tahrir members were arrested in Tajikistan, including 16 women. By January 2006, 40% of those arrested had been convicted receiving jail terms of up to 12 years. According to prosecutor-general Abdasami Dadoboyev, during 2004 there had been 38 trials, in which 97 people had been sentenced. In 2003, 34 Hizb ut-Tahrir members were jailed in Tajikistan, rising to 70 in 2004. In September 2004, nine received sentences of 13 to 15 years' jail for crimes of organising a criminal group, inciting national, racial, religious and ethnic strife. In May last year 10 members of HT were sentenced to jail terms of 9 to 16 years for inciting social discord, and calling for the overthrow of the government.
In October 2006 Tajikistan's deputy interior minister Abdurahim Kakharov told a news conference: "For some time we have seen an intensification of operations by Hizb ut-Tahrir and IMU in Tajikistan... Hizb ut-Tahrir is not giving up its objective - the formation of an Islamic Caliphate in Central Asia through overthrowing the constitutional regimes in these countries." Mahmadsaid Jurakulov, head of the Department for Resisting Organized Crime, added: "We have detained several members of IMU who also belonged to Hizb ut-Tahrir. The movements have similar goals and the propaganda efforts of one are backed by the military support and arms of the other."
One individual who appeared to support Hizb ut-Tahrir and who seems to have been involved in terrorist activities was a mosque leader at Kara-Suu in Kyrgystan. This individual, Muhammadrafiq Kamalov, aka Rafiq Qori Kamoluddin, was imam of the Al-Sarahsiy Mosque. Kara-Suu lies on the border with Uzbekistan and was the first Kyrgyz location targeted by HT. It also saw an Islamist uprising in March 2002. Kara-Suu is split in half, with one side in Uzbek territory. In May 2005, an Islamist uprising took place on the Uzbek side.
Though he denied being a member of HT, Kamoluddin said he welcomed HT members at his mosque, on the condition that they did not hand out leaflets. He had been arrested in May 2006and questioned in connection with a raids upon border stations on May 12. Kamoluddin's name and phone number had been found among the possessions of four militants killed in the raids. The frontier post of Tajikistan at Lakkon and the customs post of Kyrgyzstan had been the subject of the May 12 attacks, and the raiders had seized guns from a guardroom. They had shot dead three Tajik border guards and six Kyrgyz soldiers and customs officers. Kyrgyz authorities made several arrests, and claimed they had "indisputable evidence" that the suspects were Hizb ut-Tahrir members.
On August 6, 2006, Kamoluddin was in a Daewoo vehicle seen speeding through the nearby city of Osh which had drawn the interest of members of Kyrgystan's National Security Service (SNB). The SNB hailed the car to stop, and gunfire was said to have come from inside the vehicle. SNB officers shot back and the car crashed, killing the occupants. Inside the vehicle was found "one AK-SU Kalashnikov automatic rifle, three full magazines, 266 cartridges, four RGD-5 hand grenades, one F-1 grenade, one RPK automatic rifle magazine, a road map of Uzbekistan where a number of locations were marked with the word 'jihad,' one pair of army binoculars, extremist religious literature in the Kyrgyz and Uzbek languages, and fake passports." The imam's family claimed his innocence. In October 2006 three individuals linked to Kamoluddin, who had been captured following the May raid upon a border post, were sentenced to death.
The literature disseminated throughout the Central Asian states by Hizb ut-Tahrir is frequently cited in arrests and raids. The magazine called Ong Al-Waie (Conscience) has been in existence since 1989. Since 1993, it has been available in printed editions in Uzbek, Kyrgyz and Russian languages. The material in the illegally produced leaflets is copied and translated from the Arabic website http://www.al-waie.org/. Though the magazine is not an official HT publication, all Hizb ut-Tahrir leaders in Central Asian states are ordered to purchase each new edition as its views concur with those of the group. In the south of Kyrgystan, these publications are distributed to the general public.
An Uzbek researcher, Bakhadyr Musayev, said in 2004: "As for the statements of Hizb-ut-Tahrir concerning its non-involvement, we all know that with organizations such as this deeds and words differ. We know that this organization is connected with terrorist organizations in the East. Nabkhani (founder of Hizb-ut-Tahrir) in his book System Of Islam said that whenever physical obstacles are encountered, they may to be removed by force or violence. Besides, the idea itself of the caliphate stipulates brainwashing. These men would not balk at it. Hizb-ut-Tahrir publishes Al-Vai magazine. One of its articles in 2001 was titled How To Become A Shakhid [martyr]."
The literature produced by HT in the region is virulently anti-Semitic and is hardly peaceful. One leaflet proclaimed: "Moslems!... Get rid of the chiefs, which do not pay attention to Shariat of Allah, sent warriors to Jihad and expel the Jews. There may be victims, maybe it is necessary to suffer and fight in the Jihad, and become a Shahid." The rise of Islamism in the states which became independent after Soviet collapse has led to mass emigration of Jews. In 1989 there were 150,000 Jews in Central Asia, but now there are only 22,000.
At the start of this decade, HT was able to operate in Central Asia much more openly, less fearful of violent crackdowns. In 2003, a member of HT from Kara-Suu, Kyrgystan, spoke openly of his involvement in the group. 32-year old Dilyar Jumbabayev said that he belonged to a cell of five individuals, and gave 10% of his income to have membership of HT. Though he claimed that violence was a "sin", he said he had no disagreement with the IMU or Bin Laden: "certainly my brother. Saddam Hussein is also my brother. No matter whether he is Arab, Kurd, Turk or Palestinian, he is also Muslim." DIsplayed outside his home was an illegal leaflet bearing the slogan: "All Muslims of the world unite against the infidels."
Last month, on August 15 it was announced that a group of 13 individuals were arrested in Shymkent in Kazakhstan. They were accused of plotting terrorist acts in April, to coincide with a visit by President Nazarbaev to Shymkent. Regional police official Khibratulla Doskaliev claimed that the suspects were members of Hizb ut-Tahrir.
Two groups have broken away from Hizb ut-Tahrir in Central Asia - Akramiya and Hizb an-Nustra (Party of Victory). Both groups seem restricted to Uzbekistan, and both are thought to have left HT because it did not officially support terrorism. Hizb an-Nustra Akramiya was formed by Akram Yuldasheyev, a former HT member from Andijan, Uzbekistan. According to Norway's Forum 18, this group was involved in the events leading up to the 2005 Andijan massacre. 23 businessmen (followers of Akramiya) had been on trial, and for four months there had been peaceful protests to have them released. On May 12, 2005, gunmen had freed the 23 accused men, and others, from their jail. These events, immediately preceding the Andijan massacre, were violent.
According to John C.K. Daly of Central Asia Caucasus Analyst: "Shortly before midnight on May 12, armed men attacked a traffic police post, killing four on duty officers and seizing submachine guns, grenades and pistols from the post's weapons depot. The assailants then moved on and attacked a military base, shot five servicemen and acquired more weaponry. Duly armed, the insurgents in a fifteen-vehicle convoy then moved on the Andijan prison, where between 600 and 2,000 inmates were held. Attacking the facility, the gunmen distributed weapons and liberated nearly a third of the inmates, including the 23 defendants. The militants then moved to downtown Andijan, attacking the buildings of the National Security Council and the regional administration and police department. Repulsed at the two law enforcement sites, the gunmen commandeered the administrative building and took about 20 hostages, and before dawn began calling their relatives to bring women and children to the site to form human shields around the building. The stage was set for an inevitable showdown."
According to Forum 18, most of those who had gathered in Andijan's main square (scene of the subsequent massacre) were employees of the 23 businessmen: "According to eye-witnesses, Akramia members who had acquired weapons did not prevent free movement out of the square by those gathered there, but their attitude to the hostages did not meet international standards for the treatment of prisoners of war. Forum 18 learnt that several hostages received severe beatings. The hostages had wire tied round their necks and were placed at the perimeter of the square as human shields. Therefore the first to die from the shots fired by Uzbek government forces were the hostages."
The raids upon the Kyrgyz/Uzbek/Tajik border stations that took place on May 12, 2006 where guns were seized, appeared to be marking the anniversary of the raids that preceded the Andijan massacre. A week after the 2005 massacre in Andijan, an Uzbek farmer named Bakhtior Rakhimov (pictured) led an uprising in the Uzbek division of Kara-Suu. He claimed he wanted to see an end to the rule of Islam Karimov, and the establishment of Islamic values in local government. Rakhimov may have hoped to see a downfall of Karimov, who has ruled Uzbekistan since 1991, but his uprising was crushed, and he was arrested.
The IMU first came to prominence in February 1999, after a series of bombings in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan. It is generally accepted that these acts were committed by IMU, though the Uzbek authorities had claimed that Hizb ut-Tahrir were behind the blasts. On July 30, 2004, a series of bomb attacks took place at the US and Israeli embassies. 85 individuals, including 16 women, were arrested, and state prosecutors claimed that all suspects had been trained as suicide bombers. These attacks were assumed by some specialists to be the work of IMU, but Uzbekistan's president, Islam Karimov, insisted that they were the work of Hizb ut-Tahrir.
Even though Uzbekist