The Asian News has reported that Hizb ut-Tahrir, the radical Islamic group, is planning to hold a "rap contests, football tournaments and graffiti sessions" over the summer in order "to help Muslim youths empower themselves".
The paper says that the events will begin on 12 July and will take place "throughout the north west including Rochdale, Bolton, Accrington, Oldham, Manchester, Bradford, Halifax and Leeds."
The events are being held as part of Hizb ut-Tahrir's 'Stand for Islam' campaign which is apparently an attempt to help the group reconnect with younger Muslims and to present the party as being energetically engaged in defending the Muslim community from attack.
The campaign has its own dedicated website (stand4islam.co.uk) which promises competitions to find the best "Islamic graffiti" artist, a rap competition and a football tournament.
The 'Stand for Islam' campaign's motto is "Don't sit and take it". The website goes on to explain that the initiative began in response to "attacks" which "present Islam as a backward, medieval religion", adding that "Muslim youths have been the victims of an intense Islamophobia campaign".
The website promises that 'Stand for Islam' will "give confidence to Muslim youth in Britian in upholding their identity and showing how this is the way to make a positive contribution to society".
Back on Hizb ut-Tahrir's main website, however, there is ample evidence of the kind of ideology that young Muslims who sign up the groups' events will soon be subjected to.
For example, a May 2008 leaflet on 'Women and Sharia', tells readers that "Islam does not believe in securing unlimited individual freedom". Another article on the website, 'Only the return of the Khilafah will silence those who attack Islam', dating from April 2008, promises readers that:
"Only the return of the Khilafah will stop the relentless slander of Islam; for the Khilafah stands not for any throne, material power or personal interest, but for Islam. Violating Islam's sanctities is an act of aggression against Islam for which the Khilafah would mobilise all its strength to respond, such that the enemies of Islam could never think of speaking ill of Islam."
This is unrelated, but I often check up on our friends at the Islamic Shari'a Council via their website, just in case they disclose anything slightly inflammatory.
My interest was piqued today when I noticed this posting:
http://www.islamic-sharia.org/worship/deeming-shariah-islamic-law-as-incompetent-2.html
in their fataawa section on 'ibadah. Particularly noteworthy, in amongst all the other anodyne stuff, was the discussion of the Islamic punishment of lapidation.
How charitable of them to exhort their legal prescriptions online for everyone to see.
Further on, we notice under the subheading (in reply to a question):
Q3) what is the ruling who denies the Sovereignty of Allah as lawgiver and ruling on the concept that Islamic state is alien to Islam?
Denying Allah the right of Lawgiver means he has taken someone else as partners besides Allah who has the right to determine how this individual should conduct his life. The one who does not recognises Allah as his Master to govern him then surely he has found another god to administrate him. He is a clear disbeliever outside the fold of Islam.
Now, this in itself is hardly damning as ALL Muslims must subscribe to God's omnipotence via the creed, but here in black and white, in the context of the juridical opinion on 'shari'a applicability' it positively sanctios Muslim antinomianism.
Hardly the remit of a body purportedly there to resolve principally marital/personal law disputes.
'the Khilafah would mobilise all its strength to respond, such that the enemies of Islam could never think of speaking ill of Islam'
=
'the Reich would mobilise all its strength to respond, such that the enemies of National Socialism could never think of speaking ill of National Socialism'
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'the Red Army would mobilise all its strength to respond, such that the enemies of Marxism could never think of speaking ill of Marxism'
And so on.
Hizb ut-Tahrir are the heirs to Western totalitarianism, and have simply changed the uniforms and the books.