Hizb ut-Tahrir, A New Threat?
HT is an ideological group that falls somewhere between political Islamists and militant Islamists, and may also be classified as a kind of a revolutionary Islamist set-up. HT emphatically asserts that the only way to progress, prosperity and development is the implementation of Islam as an ideology in Pakistan, in fact the whole world.In Pakistan, it has an anti-constitutional and anti-democratic outlook and agenda, and its narrative on militant and violent movements and groups in the country remains vague. This vagueness is a major hurdle in assessing the real threat the group can pose. Most analysts tend to watch madressahs and popular mass movements for signs of radicalisation. .... more... http://t.co/eTp4tbL.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~An Other opinion
http://www.newsweekpakistan.com/the-take/242
THE LAST WORD
Back From The Brink
An interview with Maajid Nawaz- Excerpts
John D Mchugh / AFP
British-born Maajid Nawaz co-founded the Quilliam Foundation, a London-based think tank to counter extremism, after his 13-year experience with Hizb-ut-Tahrir, a religio-political organization. Nawaz, who spent four years in Egyptian prison, is also working on several initiatives to promote tolerance in Pakistan. Newsweek Pakistan’s Miranda Husain spoke with him recently. Excerpts:
What about the challenges Pakistan faces?
The biggest issue facing Pakistan today is the lack of a social consensus over the direction people want the country to go in. Should Pakistan, as a society and state, be organized as a military dictatorship, a theocracy or should it head toward a stronger democratic culture that respects the place of Islam in society within the principles of freedom of religion and individual choice? The absence of this consensus is tearing society apart.
It is one of the greatest misdiagnoses of our times to look for Islamism in the uneducated and rural areas of Pakistan. There you may find a lack of tolerance simply borne out of a lack of education. Islamist groups on the other hand were founded and are led by some of the most highly educated people of our times and all began in the urban centers of Muslim majority societies. Those who joined from the madrassahs are merely the aftershock to the urban educated classes having either succumbed to or failed to challenge Islamism for decades in Pakistan.
You have described your Khudi initiative as a youth movement to challenge the extremist narrative. Why the focus on Pakistan and why now?
We refuse to get baited by anti-Islam extremists who wish to blame Islam itself for extremism and the blasphemy laws, or by Islamist extremists who wish to use Islam to justify their own tyranny … We believe that no amount of elections in Pakistan will successfully bring about the level of democracy that we aspire to have because what’s fundamentally missing here is a democratic culture. Everyone fears pressure from the Islamists. No one fears pressure from the democrats because pushing for a democratic culture in Pakistan is not an organized activity.
You set up the Pakistani cell of the Hizb-ut-Tahrir. Does that organization present a danger to Pakistan?
We trained inside Hizb-ut-Tahrir on how to give responses to journalists in a way that didn’t make our cause look very sensationalist so that people from the educated elite would join. But that’s just spin. It’s inaccurate to say [Hizb-ut-Tahrir] is not violent because they are planning to break both Pakistani law and international law and infiltrating the military here and then overthrowing any democratically-elected regime via military coup. And if they need to fire shots, they will do it. The view is that once you take the elite and military together, the rest of society will follow. Here in Lahore, the head of the English department of one the private colleges is a British Pakistani. He hasn’t got a [General Certificate of Secondary Education] to his name. He’s served time in prison in the U.K. on drug-related offenses. He’s an amateur boxer and he’s come to this country on behalf of Hizb-ut-Tahrir to help with their cause. [Note: he might have sought forgiveness of his past and reformed himself? Door of repentance are open (see Qur'an;11:52]
Is the CIA drone program inside Pakistan fanning the flames of extremism?
The reason I’m against the drone attacks is because they can have a heavy level of collateral damage, and they do raise questions about sovereignty. America would never tolerate such [attacks] on their turf. If we’re in this game for the long-term, one of the keys to our success is to win the challenge of ideas. You cannot save a man by killing him. So, if we’re trying to say to people that democratic values and pluralism are the way forward for Pakistan, then we cannot use the principle that the ends justify the means in a way that Al Qaeda does.
How to fight back Extremism.THE arrest of Brig Ali Khan, among others, from the army HQ for suspicion of his affiliation to my old Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) are necessarily about far more ...
“Therefore, do not yield to the unbelievers, and make Jihad (strive) against them with this (Qur'an), a mighty Jihad (Jihad Kabira)” (Qur'an;25:52). “Permission to fight back (Qital) is hereby granted to the . ...
Instead, the US should reassure a thoroughly rattled and hostile Pakistani population, in part by cutting back on drone strikes. The danger is that a future US raid leads to a US-Pakistani fight, or a Pakistani mutiny. ...
“Permission to fight back (Qital) is hereby granted to the ... So what will this mean for the US war in Afghanistan and Pakistan? Certainly Washington has less reason or justification to wage a war in Afghanistan now ...
Related Links:
Also see: Khilafah. Hizb ut-Tahrir (Arabic: حِزْبُ التَحْرِير Ḥizb at-Taḥrīr; English: Party of Liberation) is an international pan-Islamic political ... en.wikipedia.org |
Hizbut Tahrir Website. www.hizbuttahrir.org |
Jul 8, 2011 ... Hizb ut Tahrir the Global Islamic Political Party working for the reestablishment of Khilafah, Caliphate, Islamic state in the Muslim world ... www.hizb.org.uk |