A call to proscribe Hizb ut-Tahrir
The report in the Daily Telegraph on the vile hate speech from Hizb ut-Tahrir’s leader Ismail al-Wahwah mirrors a report in J-Wire published in September last year at another rally in Sydney.
In that speech, he said: “… the very knife with which you cut Palestine is a criminal, infidel, hypocritical knife, and it will be turned against you and will cut your bodies and behead you. This knife will sever your heads from your bodies, just like you severed East Jerusalem from West Jerusalem.”
The Daily Telegraph reports that in May this year, the group held a rally at which speakers said “destroy the Jews” and Wahwah himself said: “Allah willing soon, you will see the end of this illegal evil occupier in Palestine.”
In its submission to the Federal Parliamentary Inquiry into matters relating to extremist movements and radicalism in Australia in February this year, The Executive Council of Australian Jewry stated that: “HT seeks to establish an Islamic Caliphate in all Muslim majority countries, and eventually globally, and to constitute it under strict Islamic religious law. The Caliphate would be a theocracy. The will of the people would be subordinated to the will of the caliph. Non-Muslim subjects would be required to pay additional taxes, would have inferior rights to Muslims and in many instances would be subject to Islamic religious law. Men and women would be segregated except for the purposes of commerce and religious pilgrimages.
HT rejects the concepts of equal rights, democracy, personal freedom, human rights and the rule of secular law, international and domestic. Its rhetoric has frequently been antisemitic, homophobic, and anti-Western. Although the group publicly has claimed that it does not seek to achieve its goals through violent means, group leaders have consistently sought to foster a sense of grievance among impressionable young Muslim men in particular. Individuals affiliated with the group have been linked to violent acts in multiple countries, and HT disingenuously has both distanced itself from and sought to provide a degree of justification for, their actions. HT has been banned in at least 13 countries, but not in Australia.
HT Australia rejects the legitimacy of Australia’s current secular democratic constitutional order in favour of a Muslim caliphate.
Its leader, Ismail] al-Wahwah readily conflates a hatred for Israel with a hatred for Jews, and his rhetoric promotes an eliminationist attitude toward both. His words also carry an unmistakable threat that Jews anywhere who manifest support for Israel’s right to exist in peace and security are to be considered legitimate targets for violence.
Forms of Islamist extremism which stop short of terrorism can be just as insidious and as destructive of social cohesion as forms of far-right extremism and white supremacism which stop short of terrorism, and for essentially the same reasons. Both forms of extremism are dedicated to the replacement of Australia’s democracy, freedoms and rights by a totalitarian order enforced by brutal repression. Both use hate speech, hate-fuelled behaviour and associated thuggery and menace to promote their dystopian vision of society. Both seek to set Australian against Australian on the basis of ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual preference, gender identity or disability. Both carry within them a clear propensity for violence, and an intimidatory menace towards any sources of opposition they encounter, including from law enforcement officials.
Federal, State and Territory laws proscribing incitement of violence or serious vilification on the basis of race or religion have failed to deal adequately with the advocacy of violence, falling short of advocacy of terrorism, by such groups. We have recommended that advocacy of violence (as distinct from urging or incitement of violence) on the basis of race, religion and certain other attributes also be proscribed.
Wentworh Liberal MP Dave Sharma tweeted: “Hizb ut-Tahrir should take their hateful message elsewhere. It has no place in Australia. Hizb ut-Tahrir is listed as a terrorist organisation in many countries around the world, and you can see why.We should do the same in Australia.
We know these views are a minority within the community, but this hatred needs to be condemned and addressed without hesitation.
Since 2018 it has been illegal to incite or threaten violence against anyone on the grounds of race, religion, sexual orientation or HIV status.
No-one in the Australian community should be the subject of incitement to violence. This vile behaviour needs to be called out as antisemitic and hateful.”
Last year’s speech by al-Wahwah was originally broadcast on al-Jazeera’s Facebook in 2019 and he published it last year on YouTube. It was referred by The New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies to the NSW Attorney-General for possible prosecution. The report has been sent by police to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions for approval to commence legal proceedings.
Darren Bark added: “The risk of extremist views was moanifested in London last week when a sole attacker murdered MP David Amess.”
People like this are allowed to go unchecked by our media, but when a person peacefully protests against the vaccine mandate or lockdowns, they are treated like terrorists and enemies of the people.
These advocates of religious hatred and violence are treated with kid gloves by the media and the police, but if a peace-loving family man or a young pregnant woman begins to speak out against some trends in our society and government, because they think we have a democracy and freedom, he or she get a visit from the police and are arrested for incitement.
People like Wahwah and devoted (I don’t say militant or extreme, just devoted) Muslims like him are against democracy, but it is already being undermined for them by others.
If it wasn’t for homophobia or their stand on the status of women, or their anti-Semitism, would anyone here care anymore?