Hizb ut-Tahrir

Hizb ut-Tahrir attacked it's critics recently at a London conference and demonstrated why some are concerned about their message:

“They say, ‘You preach hate,’ ”

“I preach a hatred of the lies of people in this country that send soldiers to Iraq. I preach a hatred of torture.”

So far so good. Most people couldn't be criticised for hating lies and torture but this isn't their only message. They want the caliphate installed in all Muslim countries because:

“There is no Islam as a way of life without a Khilafah,”

The problem is that maybe not everyone wants the bloody Khilafah and indeed it's this that they don't seem to get. One explains their reasoning:

“If you look at the political structure in the Muslim world, it’s a police state,”

“You have the public opinion underground, and then staged public opinion in the media.”
Most people in the Muslim world want Shariah, the code of Islamic law based on the Koran, he said.

“Our feeling is: what gives Western governments the right to impose a set of values on a people who don’t believe in them?”

And similarly what gives fundamentalist Muslims the right to impose a set of values and a political structure on people who may not want them? This attitude underscores why democracy and a secular society are so essential, everyone's free to determine what to believe and how to live, the only annoyance being the constant attempts by the market at molding your "needs". The kind of society they're referring to is so tyrannical and backward that it should send shudders down all our spines, especially women, but no:

Rubina Ahmed, 33, a mother of four who came on a charter bus from Manchester, said, “It’s the in-depthness of the caliphate that I like.”

Go figure. It's a shame that these attitudes have to taint so many Muslims worldwide who want nothing more than peace, and love the freedoms that western society has given them. It's a damn shame that these attitudes will further radicalise the Islamaphobes around the world who love nothing more than speaking in thoughtless generalisations by pronouncing that ALL muslims want us dead.