The Islamist Manifesto

Note: the following post was based on text taken from the Hizb ut-Tahrir website on August 10th, 2006. The link given here was good at that time, but the site seems to have been taken down since. The full text is available here.

Consider the following piece of text:

What is manifested in these political actions is culturing the Proletariat with the Socialist culture in order to melt her with Socialism and to cleanse it of the corrupt creeds, false thoughts and erroneous concepts including the influence of Capitalist thoughts and opinions.

What is also manifested in these political actions is an intellectual and political struggle. The manifestation of an intellectual struggle is through the struggle against the thoughts and systems of Capitalism. It is also manifested in the struggle against false thoughts, corrupt creeds and erroneous concepts by demonstrating their corruption, showing their error and presenting clearly the verdict of Socialism concerning them.

From a pamphlet by Lenin, maybe? A polemic from Trotsky? Or maybe just a quote from a Soviet high school textbook circa 1935, written by a party hack?

Well, no. The words in red have been changed from the original. Here’s the real text:

What is manifested in these political actions is culturing the Ummah with the Islamic culture in order to melt her with Islam and to cleanse her of the corrupt creeds, false thoughts and erroneous concepts including the influence of Kufr thoughts and opinions.

What is also manifested in these political actions is an intellectual and political struggle. The manifestation of an intellectual struggle is through the struggle against the thoughts and systems of Kufr. It is also manifested in the struggle against false thoughts, corrupt creeds and erroneous concepts by demonstrating their corruption, showing their error and presenting clearly the verdict of Islam concerning them.

It’s part of the mission statement from the official Hizb ut-Tahrir website.

Hizb ut-Tahrir means “Party of Liberation” in Arabic. The party was founded by Sheikh Taqiuddin al-Nabhani, a judge from Jerusalem, in 1953. Its stated purpose is to purify Islam, re-establish the Caliphate, and spread the Faith throughout the world.

Hizb ut-Tahrir (HuT) has been associated with various terrorist activities, and as a result was banned in many countries. Britain, with its long tradition of permissiveness and civil liberties, was one of the holdouts. The public spokesmen for HuT in Britain stoutly disavowed terrorism, and so it continued to tolerated in the UK until 2005.

At that time Prime Minister Tony Blair, in a speech outlining HM government’s new actions against terrorism in the wake of the 7/7 bombings, announced that HuT would be “proscribed”.

But it didn’t really work out that way. In the suffocating politically correct fug that is modern British politics, no such ban could be maintained. According to the Independent, the British government “backed off after warnings from police, intelligence chiefs and civil liberties groups that a ban could backfire by forcing a non-violent group underground.”

Rather than address the hermeneutics of Hizb ut-Tahrir’s non-violence, I’d like to examine the group based on its own words.

From the example given above, you can see the uncanny resemblance between HuT’s rhetoric and Marxist-Leninist doctrine. Their manifesto continues in the same vein for more than 3,500 eyelid-drooping words. Here’s another sample:

The work of Hizb ut-Tahrir is to carry the Islamic da’wah in order to change the situation of the corrupt society so that it is transformed into an Islamic society. It aims to do this by firstly changing the society’s existing thoughts to Islamic thoughts so that such thoughts become the public opinion among the people, who are then driven to implement and act upon them. Secondly the Party works to change the emotions in the society until they become Islamic emotions that accept only that which pleases Allah (swt) and rebel against and detest anything which angers Allah (swt). Finally, the Party works to change the relationships in the society until they become Islamic relationships which proceed in accordance with the laws and solutions of Islam. These actions which the Party performs are political actions, since they relate to the affairs of the people in accordance with the Shari’ah rules and solutions, and politics in Islam is looking after the affairs of the people, either in opinion or in execution or both, according to the laws and solutions of Islam.

What is manifested in these political actions is culturing the Ummah with the Islamic culture in order to melt her with Islam and to cleanse her of the corrupt creeds, false thoughts and erroneous concepts including the influence of Kufr thoughts and opinions.

As with the Communists, the Party is always capitalized. There is only one Allah, and only one Prophet, so there must be only one Party, as well. All others are counter-revolutionary un-Islamic.

Then there is the predilection for listing choices in rhetorically satisfying groups of three. For example:

• The First Stage: The stage of culturing to produce people who believe in the idea and the method of the Party, so that they form the Party group.
  
• The Second Stage: The stage of interaction with the Ummah, to let the Ummah embrace and carry Islam, so that the Ummah takes it up as its issue, and thus works to establish it in the affairs of life.
  
• The Third Stage: The stage of establishing government, implementing Islam generally and comprehensively, and carrying it as a message to the world.

These Three Stages of Islamic Dominance correspond roughly to the Three Stages of Communism:

• The First Stage: The Communist Party acts as a vanguard in raising the revolutionary consciousness of the proletariat.
  
• The Second Stage: When the workers have been sufficiently indoctrinated, the Communist Party leads the proletariat in a Socialist Revolution.
  
• The Third Stage: The Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

Here’s another three-point group:

• A struggle against the Kufr colonialist states which have domination and influence on the Islamic countries. The challenge against colonialism in all its intellectual, political, economic and military forms, involves exposing its plans, and revealing its conspiracies in order to deliver the Ummah from its control and to liberate it from any effect of its influence.
  
• A struggle against the rulers in the Arab and Muslim countries, by exposing them, taking them to task, acting to change them whenever they denied the rights of the Ummah or neglected to perform their duty towards her, or ignored any of her affairs, and whenever they disagreed with the rules of Islam, and acting also to remove their regimes so as to establish the Islamic rule in its place.
  
• To assume the interests of the Ummah and to adopt its affairs in accordance with the Shari’ah rules.

In the first bullet, Hizb ut-Tahrir starts out with the Marxist cant that is so familiar from post-modern academic scholarship. But then it gets to the important part, and shifts smoothly to the Ummah and the ascendancy of Islam.

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This entire document is a curious blend of modern left-wing claptrap and traditional Islamic doctrine. The rhetoric of Jihad merges so seamlessly with that of Socialism that the two cannot be separated.

But there is no doubt as to the ultimate goal of Hizb ut-Tahrir: the Caliphate must be re-established and enlarged to encompass the entire planet, and the thus the Islamic paradise-on-earth will finally be realized:

[Hizb ut-Tahrir’s] aim is to resume the Islamic way of life and to convey the Islamic da’wah to the world. This objective means bringing the Muslims back to living an Islamic way of life in Dar al-Islam and in an Islamic society such that all of life’s affairs in society are administered according to the Shari’ah rules, and the viewpoint in it is the halal and the haram under the shade of the Islamic State, which is the Khilafah State. That state is the one in which Muslims appoint a Khaleefah and give him the bay’ah to listen and obey on condition that he rules according to the Book of Allah (swt) and the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah (saw) and on condition that he conveys Islam as a message to the world through da’wah and jihad.

The Party, as well, aims at the correct revival of the Ummah through enlightened thought. It also strives to bring her back to her previous might and glory such that she wrests the reins of initiative away from other states and nations, and returns to her rightful place as the first state in the world, as she was in the past, when she governs the world according to the laws of Islam.

It also aims to bring back the Islamic guidance for mankind and to lead the Ummah into a struggle with Kufr, its systems and its thoughts so that Islam encapsulates the world.

The modern revolutionary message is consistently melded with the longing for Islam’s ancient glory, for the days when the heirs of the Prophet held all peoples in subjugation, and every knee was bowed before Allah and his messenger.

Communism was a secular religion, and Islamism is a theocratic revolution.

Just as the Russian Communist Party was chosen to be the leader of the proletariat in the struggle for worldwide revolution, so will there be leaders among the Islamic faithful in the New Caliphate:

The whole world is a suitable location for the Islamic da’wah. But since the people in the Muslim countries have already embraced Islam, it is necessary that the da’wah starts there. The Arab countries are the most suitable location to start carrying the da’wah because these countries, which constitute part of the Muslim world, are inhabited by people who speak the Arabic language, which is the language of the Qur’an and hadith, and is an essential part of Islam and a basic element of the Islamic culture.

This tells us who to say “Yes, Sir!” to when the last obstacle to Islam has been overcome.

A “ceasefire” in Lebanon. An elected government in Iraq. The defeat of the Taliban. Secular governance in Egypt: All these are temporary inconveniences. Islam and Hizb ut-Tahrir take the long-term view:

The fact that the Party does not use material power to defend itself or as a weapon against the rulers is of no relevance to the subject of jihad, because jihad has to continue till the Day of Judgement. So whenever the disbelieving enemies attack an Islamic country it becomes compulsory on its Muslim citizens to repel the enemy.

And we all should know by now what constitutes an “attack” on Islam. The Danes know that printing caricatures of Mohammed is an attack on Islam. The French know that prohibiting the wearing of headscarves by schoolgirls constitutes an a war against Muslims. The British know that failing to endorse a prompt hudna in Lebanon is an insult to Allah.

Hitler was very clear in his writings and speeches about his intentions. Those who paid attention had no doubt about what Arbeit Macht Frei meant in the end.

Lenin was straightforward about the goals of Communism. The world would undergo a Socialist Revolution, and all “bourgeois counter-revolutionaries” would have to be sacrificed. If only we had listened!

Another message is floating on the airwaves right now, here in the 21st century. It is clear and unambiguous. It leaves no doubt about its ends or its means.

Can you hear it?