Hizb ut Tahrir

An influential British Muslim has told Newsnight that unless action is taken against an extreme Muslim group operating in the United Kingdom then we could soon be experiencing terrorist attacks along the lines of those in Baghdad and Jerusalem.

Hizb Ut Tahrir or HT is an Islamic splinter group, which is banned in many countries around the world. It operates freely in Britain.

But Newsnight has discovered that its website promotes racism and anti-Semitic hatred, calls suicide bombers martyrs, and urges Muslims to kill Jewish people.

In Denmark, HT's spokesman has been found guilty of distributing racist propaganda.

Newsnight's Imran Khan investigated.

IMRAN KHAN:
This is a journey into a side of British Islam rarely seen. An investigation into Hizb Ut Tahrir, one of Britains most shadowy political parties. Its message is attracting more and more young Muslims, and this is worrying Britain's wider Islamic community. The party longs for the return of the Ottoman empire, but it uses the technology of the digital age.

Now, as the party prepares for its biggest conference, Newsnight has uncovered evidence that Hizb Ut Tahrir is pedalling racism in this country and across Europe.

HT PROMOTIONAL VIDEO:
Muslims in this country need to answer some very serious questions. Where does their allegiance lie?

KHAN:
Hizb Ut Tahrir aims to bring about a Muslim state, the Khilafah, through, it says, non violent means. The party has expressed support of suicide bombings in Israel. It denounces Western governments and what it sees as their lackey regimes in the Middle East. And Hizb Ut Tahrir is calling on Muslims in Britain to decide whether their loyalty lies with this country or with God.

HT PROMOTIONAL VIDEO:
I think Muslims in this country need to take a long, hard look at themselves and decide what is their identity. Are they British or are they Muslim? I am a Muslim. Where I live, is irrelevant.

KHAN:
During the making of this programme, Newsnight has spoken to many Muslims who have expressed concerns over the activities of Hizb Ut Tahrir. None of them were willing to appear on camera for fear of criticising another Muslim in public. However, one influential Muslim figure in the country has agreed to speak to us on condition of anonymity.

ANONYMOUS MUSLIM LEADER:
I believe that if Hizb Ut Tahrir are not stopped at this stage, and we continue to let them politicise and pollute the youngsters minds and other gullible people minds, then what will happen in effect is that these terrorism acts and these suicide bombings that we hear going on around in foreign countries, we will actually start seeing these incidents happening outside our doorsteps.

KHAN:
In a rare interview, one former senior member of the group who joined in the early days of its UK activities, explains its appeal.

YAMIN ZAKARIA:
They had a very profound analysis of why the Islamic world is in such an abysmal state, how it declined and most importantly how we can elevate ourselves from this position, and break free. The group was not allied to any political regime, it was not operating on the basis of personal or financial motivation, it didn't have a sectarian approach. So it had a very open approach. As long as you are a Muslim and are committed to its beliefs, and its causes, you are welcome to join the party.

KHAN:
Three of Hizb Ut Tahrir's British members are currently on trial in Egypt for belonging to an outlawed group. Hizb Ut Tahrir is banned in a number of Arab countries.

ZAKARIA:
Well naturally, because the party is trying to remove the existing apparatus, which is existing in nation states and to rebuild the countries along the Islamic model, the Islamic Khilafah, part of the process involves also unification of the lands, so that's why it is banned.

KHAN:
The group is also banned in Germany and Russia. In Britain the group came to prominence in the mid 1990s. They held a large conference in Wembley and demonstrated in Trafalgar Square. The party was well known on University campuses.

In 1994, Newsnight reported on fears over their rising influence and their militant message. Hizb Ut Tahrir was controversial and condemned as openly racist. The National Union of Students described them as 'the single biggest extremist threat in the UK' and tried to ban them from campuses. After fading from view in the late 1990s, today the group is once again visible. And this time, it's apparently respectable.

Recently the group has been organising demonstrations against what they see as the oppression of Muslims in Uzbekistan. Hizb Ut Tahrir has an international focus and structure. Its leadership is based in the Middle East and its connections spread across the region and into Europe. Its international links are worth a closer look.

We went to Denmark, where Hizb Ut Tahrir has come to the attention of the police and the courts because of its anti-Semitic views. In March and April 2002, Hizb Ut Tahrir handed out leaflets in a square in Copenhagen, and at a mosque. The leaflet, which also appeared on the Danish groups internet site, 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".

KAREN-INGER BAST:
According to the Danish penal code, you are not allowed to threaten or to humiliate people with other ethnic backgrounds. And we thought that was exactly what the Hizb Ut Tahrir did towards the Jews.

KHAN:
Last October, Fadi Abdelatif, Hizb Ut Tahrir's spokesman in Denmark, was found guilty of distributing racist propaganda. He had translated the leaflet from Arabic and had access to the groups web site. Abdelatif was given a sixty day suspended sentence.

BAST:
From my point of view, it is one of the worst cases we have had, because of the threats. In this case it was different, because there was this 'kill them wherever you find them'. There was this concrete threat. So I asked the court to make the sixty days not suspended, so that he had to go to jail, but the court did not follow me.

KHAN:
The court rejected Abdelatif's argument that he was merely quoting from the Koran, and the leaflet was an act of free speech. The court also did not accept that the leaflet was, as he argued, aimed solely at the Israeli state and not Jews generally. In particular, the court found that in "linking the quotes from the Koran to the subsequent description of Jews as a people characterised negatively...is an evident statement of a threat against Jews."

The Danish magistrate described Hizb Ut Tahrir as secretive, but the case did expose something of the way the group is organised. The Danish police established that the web site on which the offending material was published was being hosted in the UK. That wasn't relevant to their case so they didn't pursue it any further.

However, Newsnight can reveal that it wasn't only being hosted in the UK, it was actually being run from the UK. Computer records show that the Danish web site shared the same internet address as web sites registered to a mailing address here, at 56 Gloucester Road, London, the British Headquarters of Hizb Ut Tahrir, and that's not all. Newsnight can reveal that the leaflet, which has been successfully prosecuted for racism in Denmark, is on the British group's web site today. The document is in English and has been on the web site since March 2002.

Do you deny that this material is racist?

ZAKARIA:
To me racism means targeting a specific set of people because you have an inherent discrimination against them. That's not what they are doing.

KHAN:
We put it to him that the leaflet encourages violence towards Israelis and the Jewish people.

ZAKARIA:
We don't believe peace at any cost, first of all. Second of all is that, it is not encouraging violence, it is encouraging retaliation, there's a difference. Violence is unprovoked, without reason. That is not what the party is encouraging. What they're saying is that we have the right to retaliate.

KHAN:
One influential figure in the Muslim community criticised the leaflet's quoting of the Koran.

ANONYMOUS MUSLIM FIGURE:
They are wrong. I feel that they are actually distorting the teachings of Islam.

KHAN:
Behind all this is the argument about Islam and its role in the west, and this is pitting believer against believer. In fact, its a very big problem for the religion. A source in this mosque in Croydon told us, and I quote, although "no Muslim would disagree with the need for Islamic Khilafah, Hizb Ut Tahrir's way of going about it is un-islamic". Its a very big problem for the believers here.

Three members of Hizb Ut Tahrir have been elected to the management committee here, although they are in a small minority. We understand that Croydon mosque has become the focus of the parties activities in London after the group were banned from other mosques. The group hold regular meetings here for up to twenty people, which are monitored by the mosque.

ZAKARIA:
The party is exemplified by its members. Its members have a very stable family life, good profession, they are economically productive for the society.

KHAN:
But it is Hizb Ut Tahrir's emphasis on recruiting amongst young people that worries many Muslims. While there is no evidence that the party has ever encouraged its members to get involved in terrorism, their anti-Western philosophy concerns many.

ANONYMOUS MUSLIM FIGURE:
One of their main agendas is to target young people, mainly because sometimes they don't know what is right for them or what is wrong for them.

KHAN:
Newsnight investigated the activities of Hizb Ut Tahrir at one University, Kingston. It has a large population of Muslim students. The university is proud of its record over Hizb Ut Tahrir, saying it threw them out of a Freshers fair several years ago because it expressed racist views. The university says that it has had no knowledge of them since. But Newsnight can reveal Hizb Ut Tahrir has not gone away.

We met one Muslim student from Kingston who was prepared to tell us about how the group operate there. He told us that a man called Rizwan Khaliq, who attends the campus frequently, to recruit for Hizb Ut Tahrir.

And who was it from Hizb Ut Tahrir who was on campus?

ACTORS VOICE:
There was one brother named Rizwan.

KHAN:
And was Rizwan a student at the college?

ACTORS VOICE:
No, he wasn't a student.

KHAN:
And what were his aims?

ACTORS VOICE:
His aim was obviously to recruit more people to his group.

KHAN:
Which is H.T? Hizb Ut Tahrir?

ACTORS VOICE:
Yeah.

KHAN:
And how often is he on the campus?

ACTORS VOICE:
Pretty much everyday I'd say.

KHAN:
We tried to contact Rizwan Khaliq several times for his response. He refused to answer our questions.

What's the relationship between Rizwan Khaliq and the Islamic society?

ACTORS VOICE:
Will tolerate each other, I would say. I mean, Rizwan never puts himself in the way of the Islamic society, so, its sort of like a tolerance.

KHAN:
We asked Osman Abdullah, last years head of Islamic Society, why he did not inform the Union or the University about the activities of Hizb Ut Tahrir. He said 'What could we have done, tell me? You're telling us to go to the kaffir against a muslim, is that what you are saying we should have done?'

Kaffir is Arabic for Infidel. This reluctance to sell out your brother or your sister is allowing groups like Hizb Ut Tahrir to get in a real place in Britain.

ANONYMOUS MUSLIM FIGURE:
The government and the authorities are not doing enough. There have been no attempts to ban their publications. There have been no attempts to question any of their senior officials. I feel that the Muslim communities should liase with the local authorities, with the police, with the special branch officers whenever there is some Hizb Ut Tahrir material distributed outside mosques. They then should immediately contact the police or the local authorities in order to safeguard our community. Because if we do not do this, then we are actually promoting them.

KHAN:
Given the level of fear we found about dealing with Hizb Ut Tahrir, there is a danger that their voice will grow louder as it goes unchallenged.

Kingston University issued the following statement.

Kingston University does not tolerate any illegal activity on campus, including the propagation of racial hatred. Until the Newsnight report we had no knowledge of Rizwan Khaliq's alleged activities. We will examine the allegations made by Newsnight, and consider whether any action needs to be taken by the University.

The Croydon Mosque & Islamic Centre (CMIC) issued the following statement.

CMIC does not seek to provide a platform for any political message. CMIC operates in accordance with its Constitution, and within all statutory limits, for the attainment of its stated objectives that include community development and providing a secure place of worship. Its governance is through vetted processes and controls are in place to stop any abuse of the premises. Furthermore, management duties are largely administrative and conducted within the remit of the Constitution. The Management and Trustees are acutely aware of ensuring the political neutrality of CMIC and the situation regarding any political activity is constantly monitored with appropriate steps taken to minimise any risks to the Centre.

This transcript was produced from the teletext subtitles that are generated live for Newsnight. It has been checked against the programme as broadcast, however Newsnight can accept no responsibility for any factual inaccuracies. We will be happy to correct serious errors.