Inside Hizb ut-Tahrir
The shadowy Islamic organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir claims to be non-violent, but it is still dangerous. That's the contention of Shiraz Maher, a journalist who was a member for two years.
In this film for More4, he returns to Leeds to mee the people he knew at that time. He discovers how Omar Sharif, the British man who attempted a suicide bomb attack in Tel Aviv three years ago, attended Hizb ut-Tahrir meetings.
Those meetings, he hears, helped to push Sharif towards the radical path. He interviews a man who knew Sharif in his Leeds days, who says: “Hizb ut-Tahrir portray Islam as a particular political ideology, and they use the Koran and the teachings of the Prophet to further that aim.
“The whole mindframe of Omar Sharif [took] an ideological backbone from Hizb ut-Tahrir. His vision of an Islamic state, his anti-west sentiments, all that came from their conditioning.
“So if he how goes on nine years later to act out an act of violence, who is to blame?”
Tony Blair has said he wants to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir, and Mr Maher agrees that they are dangerous. “They are non-violent at present, but they are a threat waiting to materialise.”
Comments