Radical Islamic Conference in London

[TheMercenary]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/06/wo...=1&oref=slogin

The conference was dedicated to the return of the Khilafah, or caliphate, the organization of Muslim power that held sway for centuries after the death of the Prophet Muhammad.

Titled Khilafah: The Need and the Method, it was held at the Alexandra Palace, a 19th-century entertainment complex in grand gardens in northern London, and drew a largely professional audience — IT managers, bankers, teachers. For hours, speakers assailed the British government for linking the group to terrorism, and for too often treating Muslims as terrorism suspects, and drummed at the theme of the need for Muslim rule.

“There is no Islam as a way of life without a Khilafah,” said Kamal Abuzahra, an Islamic academic of Bangladeshi origin, earning a roar of approval and calls of “Allahu Akbar.”

Hizb ut-Tahrir, founded in the early 1950s by a Palestinian judge dissatisfied with the Muslim Brotherhood, has existed in Britain for a number of years and remains legal in other Western countries, including the United States. But it is banned in a number of Muslim countries, particularly those — including Egypt, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia — that feel vulnerable to its calls for the overthrow of their governments.

The group was banned by the German Interior Ministry in 2003 for “spreading hate and violence,” under a chapter in Germany’s Constitution that is often used to clamp down on anti-Semitism. Hizb ut-Tahrir is appealing the ban.