Allah and the Prophet Are the Only Authorities That Count

We’ve reported previously on Hizb ut-Tahrir, a fundamentalist Islamic organization that aims to purify Islam and return Muslims to their roots. Its mission statement calls for the Khilafah — a caliphate — in the Middle East, and eventually the rest of the world. To accomplish that purpose, adherents of HuT work for the overthrow of the authoritarian regimes that govern most of the Muslim world. They see their current rulers as corrupt, oppressive, un-Islamic, and in violation of the laws of Allah. They intend to replace them with a “rightly-guided” caliph, just as in the early days of Islam.

Their plans for the non-Islamic world are slightly different. The Koran requires Muslims who live in Dar al-Harb (the “House of War”, the non-Muslim world) to adhere to the laws of the infidel until the believers become numerous enough to institute sharia and enforce Allah’s law — in other words, until it is time to take over and incorporate the formerly infidel nations into the Khilafah.

It comes as no surprise that Hizb ut-Tahrir is banned throughout the Middle East, where its political ideology poses an immediate threat to the established order. Western nations are more lenient towards the group, however. This may be because the activists of HuT are careful to be at least ostensibly law-abiding in their activities, thus giving Western authorities scant legal justification for shutting them down. They are particularly active in Britain, Denmark, the United States, and Australia.

Hizb ut-Tahrir held a conference in Australia earlier this month. The video below was adapted by Vlad Tepes from an advance promotion of the “Khilafah conference”. It presents the revolutions of the Arab Spring as a “step on the way to a Caliphate”. Vlad points out that the zealots who made this clip stole the music for their theme song from Christians:


Hizb ut-Tahrir has created a website called Uprisings 2011 to provide more extensive information on the Khilafah. Readers are advised to pay the site a visit and take a long look around to get a feeling for what these guys are up to.

Here are some selected questions and answers from their FAQ page:

2. Is the Khilafah state solely for Muslims?

Islam is a universal message for all of mankind. Many ayah in the Qur’an outline that Islam has come for all of mankind. Non-Muslims who live within the Khilafah territories are citizens and enjoy all the rights of security, opportunity and prosperity like any other citizen. Throughout most of Islamic history Muslims were the minority,

According to Albert Hourani, the English historian, in his book: ‘A History of the Arab Peoples: “At the end of the Umayyad period, less than 10% of the people in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Tunisia and Spain were Muslim. Only on the Arabian peninsula was the proportion of Muslims among the population even higher than this.”

This is a reminder to Muslims that they are destined to rule the kuffar long before they become a majority, maybe even before they reach 10% of the population — that is, at roughly the same proportion as now obtains in France.

3. Are you working to establish the Khilafah in Western states like Australia?

The work for resuming the Islamic way of life and establishing the Khilafah is focused in the Muslim world. This is the natural place for its establishment, as it is the history of the region and part of its heritage. The work outside these territories is focussed towards building the case for Political Islam and defending the Ummah and Islam.

In other words: Despite the answer to question #2, the kuffar may go back to sleep. There’s nothing to worry about until the believers breed and immigrate their way up to that 10% mark — which in much of Western Europe will be within the next five years or so.

#9 is a crucial question:

9. How will a Khilafah state emerge?

A Khilafah state will emerge when a number of key factors converge within a suitable land within the Muslim world. Firstly, when the people wholeheartedly reject the current system/s that oppress them. Secondly, when there is a public opinion for the Islamic Ruling system as the system of government for the people. Thirdly, when those people who hold the balance of power in that society appreciate that the only viable alternative to misery, exploitation and chaos for them is the Islamic Khilafah and a political path independent of Western colonial powers.

Hizb ut-Tahrir sees the recent uprisings in the Middle East as the beginnings of the emergence of the Caliphate. The rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is just a step along that path.

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On another page at its site, Hizb ut-Tahrir explains why democracy has no meaning or relevance to the political affairs of those who truly believe in Islam.

Notice that the phrase “popular consent” holds an entirely different meaning in this context than the one we would expect. When the caliph rules in a “rightly-guided” fashion, applying Islamic law strictly and uniformly, this is necessary and sufficient evidence that popular consent has been upheld:

Accountability without Western Democracy

With western democratic models in ruins the Muslim world must look to achieve accountability without democracy.

The Caliphate is an accountable political system whose head is legitimised only through popular consent. That immediately separates it from the current regimes that litter the Muslim world, which are unrepresentative, unaccountable and inherently fragile and unstable as the recent uprisings demonstrate. With no means of recourse and no channels to express dissent or criticism, peoples’ concerns have progressed from threatening political undercurrents, to rebellion and overthrow. The Caliphate, in striking contrast, engages voices of dissent through the political system by providing extensive channels for accounting all organs of the state.

In spite of the removal of long-time dictators Mubarak of Egypt, Tunisia’s Ben Ali and the potentially imminent bloody downfall of Libya’s Gaddafi, the longest reigning of all modern-day dictators, the ghosts of the ‘authoritarian’ past still haunts the Muslim world.

Authoritarianism within a political system however cannot be levied only at the Muslim world. Robert Michels, a political theorist, has convincingly argued in ‘A sociological study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy,’ that all political systems, including democracies, are under the strong grip of what he termed the Iron Law of Oligarchy. Even so-called very ‘democratic’ and ‘liberal’ states are authoritarian, for example in areas of national security.

So, when discussions of an alternative Islamic political system or authority are raised, proponents of such alternatives face expressions of dismay.

The concept of authority and its position in Islam has to be discussed in the context of Islamic law (Shari’ah).

As far as Muslims are concerned Allah (swt) and the Prophet (saw) are the only authorities that count i.e. they are the authoritative in Islam. The directives of Allah (swt) for the Muslim are contained in the text of the Qur’an and hence to understand the Divine will, it is a matter of interpreting this text.

Despite having uncontested political authority, the Prophet’s decade of state administration was not an iron-fisted approach, but rather consultation (Shura) of a variety of people of Madinah. On technical matters, he would consult those with expertise; he would consult the general public on issues that affected the wider society in which there were no particular restrictions from the Shari’ah. This was in accordance with the instructions of Allah (swt) as mentioned in the Qur’an:

[Arabic Text]

“And do consult them in the matter, and if you decide (on an action/ on an opinion) put your trust in Allah.” (TMQ 3: 159)

This provides the basis for establishing a council of the Ummah to provide consultation and advice to the Caliph.

The above description makes it clear why all those demonstrators in London, Washington, Copenhagen, and Sydney express such public contempt for democracy. Democracy is antithetical to Islam — it bypasses the law of Allah and follows man-made law, which the devout Muslim can only consider a satanic practice.

Hizb ut-Tahrir is clear, lucid, and public in its ideological plans for us. We can never say that we were not warned.


Hat tip: JW.