Indy Media Watch

One thing Indymedia has always been good at is footage and photos of demonstrations. UK Indymedia is hosting Sights and sounds from stop-the-war demo, London, 24 Sep.

Including this:



The article's author writes:

One organisation I hadn’t come across before was Hizb ut-Tahrir, which describes itself as “a global Islamic political party working against western imperialists and their proxies in the form of Arab and Muslim dictators”. It is already defined as “terrorist” in many of the Arab and Muslim countries run by western-supported dictators, and Tony Blair recently announced that he planned to proscribe the party in the UK.

From chatting to one of their activists for a while, and from reading their leaflet, they don’t sound like a terrorist organisation to me, any more than the SWP are. Their idea of a “Caliphate” across the whole Muslim world, governed according to true Islamic law (not the perverted versions of the Taleban or the Saudi Wahabis) sounds to me much more agreeable than the current arrangement, although my anarchic tendencies aren’t too happy with the need for a “Caliph” to rule the whole thing.

A comment responds:

From the "Draft Constitution by Hizb ut-Tahrir" from their website:

"Those who are guilty of apostasy (murtadd) from Islam are to be executed according to the rule of apostasy, provided they have by themselves renounced Islam. If they are born as non-Muslims, i.e., if they are the sons of apostates, then they are treated as non-Muslims"

"Muslims are entitled to establish political parties to question the rulers and to access the positions of ruling through the Ummah on condition that the parties are based on the ‘Aqeedah of Islam and their adopted rules are aHkaam shar’iyyah; the establishment of such a party does not require a license by the State. Any party not established on the basis of Islam is prohibited."

"Sovereignty belongs to the divine law (shara’) and not to the people."

"Segregation of the sexes is fundamental, they should not meet together except for a need that the shar’ allows or for a purpose the shar’ allows men and women to meet for, such as trading or pilgrimage (Hajj)."

"Women are not allowed to take charge of ruling, thus women cannot hold the positions of Khaleefah mu’aawin, waali, ‘aamil nor to practice any actions of ruling. She is not allowed to be a chief judge, a judge in maHkaamat ul-MuDHalim nor ameer of Jihad."

Lovely. If they don't sound any worse than the Socialist Workers Party as he claimed, I expect that says plenty about that organization as well...

After that, they all kept dancing to Samba music until they'd made their point...