Since it emerged that the attempted Glasgow and London attacks were carried out by men with links to Hizb ut-Tahrir, a global Islamic movement, calls for the government to ban the group have grown ever louder.
However supporters of a ban have given conflicting – and often less than convincing - reasons for the ban.
Patrick Mercer, the former Conservative spokesman on security, told the BBC's Today programme that a ban was needed because the group “supports terrorism” and claimed that several of its former members are suspected of carrying out terrorist attacks:
“Major terrorist figures like Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi – who have been at the centre of campaigns in Iraq and other places - are people who’ve been at the have been through this organisation,” he said.
Shiraz Maher, himself a former member of HT, meanwhile argued that the group should be banned because they increase ethnic and religious tensions in the UK – which he believes in turn increases the likelihood of future attacks.
“Its culpability in inspiring terrorists cannot be denied. Hizb has consistently raised the temperature of Islamist anger across Britain by issuing inflammatory leaflets aimed to agitate and provoke," he wrote in the New Statesman.
“One leaflet distributed at British mosques urged: "O Muslims! Hizb ut-Tahrir calls upon you to mobilise your forces to help and support it in its work to establish the [caliphate] state, by which you will restore your glory . . . and destroy your enemy . . . the enemies of Allah and His Messenger, namely America, Britain, the Jews and their allies."”
However there is another option for banning HT which does not involve either trying to tenuously link the group’s ideology to major al-Qaeda figures or arguing that the group might threaten social cohesion. Rather, this other option is to examine HT’s ideology and to declare that it's ideas and proscriptions should not be tolerated any more than racism or homophobia are tolerated.
The group’s draft constitution for example says that once an Islamic state is established a discriminatory tax should be paid by all non-Muslims living there:
“Article 140 - Jizyah (head-tax) is collected from the non-Muslims (dhimmis). It is to be taken from the mature men if they are financially capable of paying it. It is not taken from women or children.”
The constitution’s Article 105 adds that only Muslims will be able to vote for the Caliphate’s Shuras or referendums.
“All citizens, Muslim or not, may express their views, but Shoora is a right for the Muslims only.”
Article 102 likewise forbids the creation of non-Muslim or secular political parties:
“Any party not established on the basis of Islam is prohibited.”
The same constitution also effectively bars women from all role in public life:
“Segregation of the sexes is fundamental, they should not meet together except for a need that the sharia allows or for a purpose the sharia’ allows men and women to meet for, such as trading or pilgrimage.”
Moreover, senior Hizb ut-Tahrir leaders say that after the Caliphate is established it will seek to convert the whole world to Islam – using force if necessary. In 2006 ‘Abu Muhammad’, one of the group’s leaders in Jordan explained how this would happen:
"In the beginning, the Caliphate would strengthen itself internally and it wouldn't initiate jihad,” he said.
"But after that we would carry Islam as an intellectual call to all the world. And we will make people bordering the Caliphate believe in Islam. Or if they refuse then we'll ask them to be ruled by Islam."
"And if after all discussions and negotiations they still refuse, then the last resort will be a jihad
to spread the spirit of Islam and the rule of Islam."
There is no doubt that if a similar party in the UK called, for example, for the creation of a global, aggressive, expansionist Christian state which systematically denied full political, legal and social rights to all women and non-Christians, the government would not hesitate to ban it.
So why not ban HT on the same grounds?
