On the night of July 10, 2010, the anti-democracy organization Hizb ut-Tahrir America canceled its event scheduled for the month of July in suburban Chicago. The next day, on July 11, at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC, Muslim and non-Muslim supporters of the volunteer human rights group Responsible for Equality And Liberty (R.E.A.L.) stood together on a hot July afternoon to publicly challenge Hizb ut-Tahrir America on its views, with R.E.A.L. promoting democracy and human rights and rejecting Hizb ut-Tahrir’s intolerance to religious freedom, rejecting Hizb ut-Tahrir’s anti-democracy views, and rejecting Hizb ut-Tahrir’s promotion of the barbaric act of stoning. Human rights volunteers against stoning challenged Hizb ut-Tahrir’s previous demonstrations where the anti-democracy Hizb ut-Tahrir group promoted stoning on June 22 and on World AIDS Day.
To counter Hizb ut-Tahrir’s statements that its anti-democracy view represented an “Islamic” position, Muslim supporters of R.E.A.L. rejected Hizb ut-Tahrir’s positions. At the Washington DC Lincoln Memorial where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke out in support of racial equality, R.E.A.L. founder Jeffrey Imm read statements from pro-democracy, pro-human rights Islamic groups in the United States, which he called “Muslims in support of democracy and freedom,” including the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD), the American Islamic Congress, the Muslims for Progressive Values (MPV), and others.
Jeffrey Imm also read to those at the Lincoln Memorial the comments by Muslims who were former members of Hizb ut-Tahrir and who have since rejected Hizb ut-Tahrir’s extremist and intolerant views, such as Hadiya Masieh and Ed Husain. On July 4, Muslim woman Hidiya Masieh told the Guardian newspaper that “The 7/7 bombers and the people I knew at HT were two sides of the same coin… HT says it does not believe in violence, but the violence was never condemned….” Ed Husain has written that “Hizb ut-Tahrir calls for an expansionist, violent, totalitarian Islamist state,” and that the “rhetoric of jihad introduced by Hizb ut-Tahrir in my days was the preamble to 7/7 and several other attempted attacks.”
The UK branch of Hizb ut-Tahrir was built up by Omar Bakri Muhammad, who then formed the Al-Muhajiroun that held demonstrations in support of the 9/11 attackers as the “Magnificent 19.” The New Stateman has reported that intelligence sources state that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed spent time with Hizb ut-Tahrir, and that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was “former member of the Jordanian branch of Hizb.” BBC Newsnight has previously reported that Hizb ut-Tahrir’s “website promotes racism and anti-Semitic hatred, calls suicide bombers martyrs, and urges Muslims to kill Jewish people.” The Daily Telegraph has reported that “Omar Shariff, the first UK suicide bomber, who blew himself up in a Tel Aviv bar in 2003, is alleged to have been radicalised by Hizb ut Tahrir.” In 2007, the Daily Telegraph also reported that “Ata Abu-Rishta, the global leader of Hizb ut Tahrir… called for the ‘destruction’ of Hindus living in Kashmir, Russians in Chechnya and Jews in Israel.”
R.E.A.L. has also previously reported on the British Muslims for Secular Democracy (BMSD) which seeks to promote democracy and human rights as an alternative to political groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir that reject such freedoms.
On June 28, 2010, the volunteer human rights group R.E.A.L. first reported that the Oak Brook Marriott had decided not to host the Hizb ut-Tahrir America event this year, and on July 1, 2010 Hizb ut-Tahrir America confirmed this. R.E.A.L. had reached out to the Oak Brook Marriott and others in the Chicago area to inform them of the activities and positions of Hizb ut-Tahrir. At the beginning of July, Hizb ut-Tahrir was still planning to relocate to another facility on July 18 or July 25. However, on July 10, Hizb ut-Tahrir America announced the cancellation of its national conference. In June 2009, Hizb ut-Tahrir America attempted to hold their event at a Chicago-area Islamic school, before the school understood the nature of Hizb ut-Tahrir’s event and the Islamic school refused to host the event.
R.E.A.L. did not seek the Hizb ut-Tahrir America conference to be canceled, but believes that it is our responsibility to speak out and to challenge groups that seek to attack our universal human rights and seek to attack freedom of religion. R.E.A.L believes it is our responsibility to challenge groups that call for the “death penalty” for those who seek religious freedom or call for stoning or violence against other identity groups. R.E.A.L. supports all individuals’ freedom of assembly, and we have offered Hizb ut-Tahrir the opportunity to join our July 11 public event at the Lincoln Memorial, and have extended an offer to Hizb ut-Tahrir America to publicly debate R.E.A.L. on democracy and religious freedom. Hizb ut-Tahrir America did not appear at our July 11 event, and has not replied to our offer of a public debate.
A year ago on July 19, 2009, R.E.A.L. led a pro-democracy, pro freedom demonstration outside the Hizb ut-Tahrir July 2009 convention at the Oak Lawn Hilton in suburban Chicago.
R.E.A.L. reported last July 2009, how Hizb ut-Tahrir America distributed brochures calling for the “death penalty” for those who sought religious freedom. At Hizb ut-Tahrir America’s July 19, 2009 event in Chicago, they distributed a pamphlet (page 62) that supports killing those individuals who leave Islam as guilty of “treason and a political attack on the Khilafah.” The Hizb ut-Tahrir America website promoting this year’s conference in Chicago promotes links to the main Hizb ut-Tahrir website, Khilafah.com, where this pamphlet is still distributed online by Hizb ut-Tahrir, even after the cancellation of its latest U.S. conference.
R.E.A.L. has reported on Hizb ut-Tahrir’s other attacks on religious freedom, pluralism, democracy, and women’s rights. R.E.A.L. has also reported on the effort by Hizb ut-Tahrir to protest and demand the closure of the Gereja Kristen Indonesia (GKI) Taman Yasmin Church church in Indonesia, with hundreds of Hizb ut-Tahrir protesters seeking to deny freedom of worship to Christians there.
According to the Bangladesh press, Hizb ut-Tahrir’s intolerance has included death threats against university officials. BD News 24 reported “Hizb ut-Tahrir threatens Dhaka University’s vice chancellor with death,” stating in November 2009 that “The Dhaka University’s vice chancellor received death threats on Sunday from banned Islamist outfit Hizb ut-Tahrir.”
In its manifesto, Hizb ut-Tahrir rejects democracy as because it “is the rule of people, for the people, by the people” (page 24 – alternate link). Hizb ut-Tahrir has called for Muslims to boycott voting.
On July 4, 2010, in Australia, Hizb ut-Tahrir members have called for Australian Muslims to reject democracy as “forbidden” and as “uni-Islamic,” and have called upon Muslim women to reject women’s equality movements. British Hizb ut-Tahrir leader Buhan Hanif, who spoke at the July 2009 Hizb ut-Tahrir event in Chicago at the Oak Lawn Hilton, told Australian Muslims that he rejected Muslim political involvement that is based on “secular and erroneous concepts such as democracy and freedom” (see HT video).
On International Women’s Day 2010, Hizb ut-Tahrir used the day to once again to women’s gender equality movements and to instead demand that women seek to become part of an Islamic caliphate instead, arguing that “Women faced the protection of their honour under the khilafah.” At the July 4, 2010 Australia conference, Australian Hizb ut-Tahrir speaker Reem Allouche stated that women’s rights and equality should not be based on “secular liberalism.” Consistently, at Hizb ut-Tahrir America events in the Chicago area in July 2009 and December 2009, women are given their “place,” in the back of the room.
On World AIDS Awareness Day, The Jakarta Globe reported that “Ahead of World AIDS Day on Tuesday, members of the group Hizbut Tahrir took to the streets in several major cities, including Jakarta, Solo, Yogyakarta and Makassar in South Sulawesi. ‘We urge everybody to support the application of Shariah in an Islamic caliphate so that, God willing, all of us will be free from the threat of HIV/AIDS,’ Hizbut Tahrir spokeswoman Febrianti Abassuni said in a statement.” Calling “homosexuals the agents of immorality,” Hizb ut-Tahrir called for an end to programs providing condoms in Indonesia.
On the Hizb ut-Tahrir Indonesia web site, Hizb ut-Tahrir contributors condemned World AIDS awareness day on “every December 1st as the International AIDS Day was not to eliminate AIDS, but to preserve and nourish AIDS promiscuity.” The Hizb ut-Tahrir web site also stated that “So in addition to the state must pay the state AIDS drug research mencarian shall take firm action against any perpetrator punished adultery with stoning to death for those who are married and whip a hundred times for the adulterer who had never married. Also ta’zir law for drug users. In the guarantee people will think a thousand times to do similar things so that transmission of HIV / AIDS can be prevented.”
On June 22, 2010, Hizb ut-Tahrir held another major demonstration calling for stoning, during its protests against “liberalism” on the Internet. AFP reported that: “About 1,000 protesters led by radical group Hizbut Tahrir shouted ‘Allahu akbar’ (God is greater) and brandished black flags and banners with slogans such as ‘Arrest those who commit promiscuous sex’….”Hizbut Tahrir spokesman Mohammed Ismail Yusanto said the Internet was a threat to Islamic values in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country. He said Islamic or sharia law should be applied across the archipelago of some 240 million people, including the stoning to death of adulterers. ”
“Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia coordinator Fadilah Karimah, 32, said she would like to see adulterers buried up to their necks in public places and pelted with stones until dead. ‘Those people who have sex before marriage should be caned with a stick 100 times in public. Adulterers should be half-buried and stoned to death,’ she told AFP at the rally.”
At the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC on July 11, 2010, human rights protesters opposed to stoning also condemned these repeated calls by Hizb ut-Tahrir in support of the barbaric practice of stoning. Some of the human rights protesters had been working together in calling for an end to the stoning of Iranian woman Sakineh Mohammedi Ashtiani, who was condemned to stoning by the Islamic Republic of Iran, before international human rights pressure has impact Iran to consider changing its verdict. R.E.A.L.’s Jeffrey Imm told of one of a case of stoning of a 13 year old girl in Somalia who had been raped, that was also convicted for “adultery.” The human rights activists view the barbaric practice of stoning to be inhumane and a violation of human rights anywhere in the world, and unequivocally reject stoning and those groups that promote stoning.
Human rights volunteers condemned the demonstrations by Hizb ut-Tahrir supporting calls for barbaric stoning of individuals.
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For additional reports and human rights activism challenging Hizb ut-Tahrir, see http://bit.ly/htwatch
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Responsible for Equality And Liberty (R.E.A.L.) supports the unqualified, universal human rights for all people everywhere, including the rights and dignity for women and people of every identity group. R.E.A.L. support for our universal human rights includes our commitment to freedom of religion, freedom of worship, freedom of conscience, and freedom of expression. We support democracy and democratic values not as “Western values,” but as values that are the right for every human being of every identity group and every religion around the world.
We believe that such support for our universal human rights begins with love for our fellow human beings.
We urge all to Choose Love, Not Hate – Love Wins.
