Hizb ut-Tahrir Event Canceled -- R.E.A.L Challenges
HT at Lincoln Memorial

July 12, 2010

Responsible for Equality And Liberty (R.E.A.L.)

http://www.realcourage.org/2010/07/ht-canceled-and-real-challenge/

On the night of July 10, 2010, the anti-democracy

organization Hizb

ut-Tahrir America canceled its event scheduled for the month of July
in suburban Chicago. The next day, on July 11, at the Lincoln Memorial
in Washington DC, Muslim and non-Muslim supporters of the volunteer
human rights group Responsible for Equality And
Liberty (R.E.A.L.) stood together on a hot July afternoon to
publicly challenge Hizb ut-Tahrir America on its views, with R.E.A.L.
promoting democracy and human rights and rejecting Hizb
ut-Tahrir's intolerance to religious freedom, rejecting Hizb

ut-Tahrir's anti-democracy views, and rejecting Hizb

ut-Tahrir's promotion of the barbaric act of stoning. Human rights
volunteers against stoning challenged Hizb ut-Tahrir's previous
demonstrations where the anti-democracy

Hizb ut-Tahrir group promoted

stoning on June 22 and on

World AIDS Day.

: Responsible for Equality And Liberty (R.E.A.L.)'s
Jeffrey Imm Leads Challenge to Hizb ut-Tahrir -- Hizb ut-Tahrir America
Cancel Chicago Conference

: R.E.A.L.'s Jeffrey Imm on Muslims that Promote
Democracy and Freedom , Rejecting Hizb ut-Tahrir's Views

To
counter Hizb ut-Tahrir's statements that its anti-democracy view
represented an "Islamic" position, Muslim supporters of R.E.A.L.
rejected Hizb ut-Tahrir's positions. At the Washington DC Lincoln
Memorial where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke out in support of
racial equality, R.E.A.L. founder Jeffrey Imm read statements from
pro-democracy, pro-human rights Islamic groups in the United States,
which he called "Muslims

in support of democracy and freedom," including the American Islamic Forum for
Democracy (AIFD), the American
Islamic Congress, the Muslims for Progressive Values (MPV),
and others.

Jeffrey Imm also read to those at the Lincoln Memorial the comments
by Muslims who were former members of Hizb ut-Tahrir and who have since
rejected Hizb ut-Tahrir's extremist and intolerant views, such as Hadiya

Masieh and Ed

Husain. On July 4, Muslim

woman Hidiya Masieh told the Guardian newspaper that "The 7/7
bombers and the people I knew at HT were two sides of the same coin...
HT says it does not believe in violence, but the violence was never
condemned...." Ed

Husain has written that "Hizb ut-Tahrir calls for an expansionist,
violent, totalitarian Islamist state," and that the "rhetoric of jihad
introduced by Hizb ut-Tahrir in my days was the preamble to 7/7 and
several other attempted attacks."

: Muslims

Ed Husain and Hadiya Masieh: Former Hizb ut-Tahrir Members Who Reject
HT's Extremist Views (Ed Husain - Left - Photo: the Independent, Hadiya
Masieh - Right - Photo: the Guardian)

The UK branch
of Hizb ut-Tahrir was built up by Omar Bakri
Muhammad, who then formed the
Al-Muhajiroun that held demonstrations

in support of the 9/11 attackers as the "Magnificent 19." The New
Stateman has reported that
intelligence sources state that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed spent time
with Hizb ut-Tahrir, and that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was "former member of
the Jordanian branch of Hizb."

R.E.A.L. has also previously reported on the
British Muslims for Secular Democracy (BMSD) which seeks to promote
democracy and human rights as an alternative to political groups such as
Hizb ut-Tahrir that reject such freedoms.

: Muslim Tehmina Kazi, BMSD
Director, Promote Secular Democracy and Human Rights

On
June 28,
2010, the volunteer human rights group R.E.A.L.
first reported that the Oak Brook Marriott had decided not to host
the Hizb ut-Tahrir America event this year, and on
July 1, 2010 Hizb ut-Tahrir America confirmed this. R.E.A.L. had

reached out to the Oak Brook Marriott and others in the Chicago
area to inform them of the activities and positions of Hizb ut-Tahrir.
At the beginning of July, Hizb ut-Tahrir was still planning to relocate
to another facility on July 18 or July 25. However, on

July 10, Hizb ut-Tahrir America announced the cancellation of its
national conference. In June 2009, Hizb ut-Tahrir America attempted
to hold their event at a Chicago-area

Islamic school, before the school understood the nature of Hizb
ut-Tahrir's event and the Islamic school refused to host the event.

R.E.A.L. did not seek the Hizb ut-Tahrir America conference to be
canceled, but believes that it is our responsibility to speak out and to
challenge groups that seek to attack our universal human rights and seek

to attack freedom of religion. R.E.A.L believes it is our
responsibility to challenge groups
that call for the "death penalty" for those who seek religious freedom
or call

for stoning or

violence against other identity groups. R.E.A.L. supports all
individuals' freedom of assembly, and we have
offered Hizb ut-Tahrir the opportunity to join our July 11 public event
at the Lincoln Memorial, and have
extended an offer to Hizb ut-Tahrir America to publicly debate R.E.A.L.
on democracy and religious freedom. Hizb ut-Tahrir America did not
appear at our July 11 event, and has not replied to our offer of a
public debate.

A year ago on July 19, 2009, R.E.A.L. led

a pro-democracy, pro freedom demonstration outside the Hizb ut-Tahrir
July 2009 convention at the Oak Lawn Hilton in suburban Chicago.

R.E.A.L. reported
last July 2009, how Hizb ut-Tahrir America distributed brochures
calling for the "death penalty" for those who sought religious
freedom. At Hizb ut-Tahrir America's July 19, 2009 event in Chicago,
they distributed a pamphlet

(page 62) that supports killing those individuals who leave Islam
as guilty of "treason and a political attack on the Khilafah."
The Hizb ut-Tahrir America
website promoting this year's conference in Chicago promotes
links to the main Hizb ut-Tahrir website, Khilafah.com, where this
pamphlet is still distributed online by Hizb ut-Tahrir, even after the
cancellation of its latest U.S. conference.

R.E.A.L.

has reported on Hizb ut-Tahrir's other attacks on religious
freedom, pluralism, democracy, and women's rights. R.E.A.L. has also
reported on the effort by Hizb

ut-Tahrir to protest and demand the closure of the Gereja Kristen
Indonesia (GKI) Taman Yasmin Church church in Indonesia, with hundreds
of Hizb ut-Tahrir protesters seeking to deny freedom of worship to
Christians there.

According to the Bangladesh press, Hizb ut-Tahrir's intolerance has
included death threats against university officials. BD News
24 reported "Hizb ut-Tahrir threatens Dhaka University's vice chancellor
with death," stating
in November 2009 that "The Dhaka University's vice chancellor
received death threats on Sunday from banned Islamist outfit Hizb
ut-Tahrir."

In its manifesto, Hizb ut-Tahrir rejects democracy as because it
"is the rule of people, for the people, by the people" (page 24 -
alternate
link). Hizb ut-Tahrir has called

for Muslims to boycott voting.

On July 4, 2010, in

Australia, Hizb ut-Tahrir members have called for Australian Muslims to
reject democracy as "forbidden" and as "uni-Islamic," and have
called upon Muslim women to reject
women's equality movements. British

Hizb ut-Tahrir leader Buhan Hanif, who

spoke at the July 2009 Hizb ut-Tahrir event in Chicago at the Oak Lawn
Hilton, told Australian Muslims that he

rejected Muslim political involvement that is based on "secular and
erroneous concepts such as democracy and freedom" (see HT video).

: UK Hizb ut-Tahrir Leader
Burhan Hanif Urges Australian Muslims to Reject Democracy -- Spoke at
2009 Chicago Hizb ut-Tahrir America Conference (Photo: YouTube)

On
International Women's Day 2010, Hizb

ut-Tahrir used the day to once again to women's gender equality
movements and to instead demand that women seek to become part of an
Islamic caliphate instead, arguing

that "Women faced the protection of their honour under the
khilafah." At the July 4, 2010 Australia conference, Australian
Hizb ut-Tahrir speaker Reem Allouche stated that women's rights and
equality should not be based on "secular liberalism." Consistently, at
Hizb ut-Tahrir America events in the Chicago area in July

2009 and December

2009, women are given their "place," in the back of the room.

: Anti-Democracy Hizb
ut-Tahrir America December 20, 2009 Meeting at Govt-Managed Facility in
Lombard, Illinois -- Women Segregated and Only Permitted to Sit in the
Back of the Room

On World AIDS Awareness Day, The

Jakarta Globe reported that "Ahead of World AIDS Day on Tuesday,
members of the group Hizbut Tahrir took to the streets in several major
cities, including Jakarta, Solo, Yogyakarta and Makassar in South
Sulawesi. 'We urge everybody to support the application of Shariah in an
Islamic caliphate so that, God willing, all of us will be free from
the threat of HIV/AIDS,' Hizbut Tahrir spokeswoman Febrianti Abassuni
said in a statement." Calling "homosexuals the agents of immorality,"
Hizb ut-Tahrir called for an end to programs providing condoms in
Indonesia.

: World AIDS Day: Hizb ut-Tahrir Demonstrates
Against Homosexuals, Calls for Global Islamic Caliphate (AFP/File/Bay
Ismoyo)

On the

Hizb ut-Tahrir Indonesia web site, Hizb

ut-Tahrir contributors condemned World AIDS awareness day on "every
December 1st as the International AIDS Day was not to eliminate AIDS,
but to preserve and nourish AIDS promiscuity." The Hizb

ut-Tahrir web site also stated that "So in addition to the state
must pay the state AIDS drug research mencarian shall take firm action
against any perpetrator punished adultery with stoning to death for
those who are married and whip a hundred times for the adulterer who had
never married. Also ta'zir law for drug users. In the guarantee people
will think a thousand times to do similar things so that transmission of
HIV / AIDS can be prevented."

: Hizb ut-Tahrir Web Site on World AIDS Day - Calls
for Stoning and Whipping (Hizb ut-Tahrir Indonesia Web Site)

On
June 22, 2010, Hizb ut-Tahrir held another major demonstration calling
for stoning, during its protests against "liberalism" on the Internet. AFP

reported that: "About 1,000 protesters led by radical group Hizbut
Tahrir shouted 'Allahu akbar' (God is greater) and brandished black
flags and banners with slogans such as 'Arrest those who commit
promiscuous sex'...."Hizbut Tahrir spokesman Mohammed Ismail Yusanto
said the Internet was a threat to Islamic values in the world's most
populous Muslim-majority country. He said Islamic or sharia law should
be applied across the archipelago of some 240 million people, including
the stoning to death of adulterers. "

"Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia coordinator Fadilah Karimah, 32, said she
would like to see adulterers buried up to their necks in public places
and pelted with stones until dead. 'Those people who have sex before
marriage should be caned with a stick 100 times in public. Adulterers
should be half-buried and stoned to death,' she told AFP at the rally."

: Anti-Democracy Group Hizb ut-Tahrir Protest in
Indonesia (Photo: AFP)

At the Lincoln Memorial in
Washington DC on July 11, 2010, human rights protesters opposed to
stoning also condemned these repeated calls by Hizb ut-Tahrir in support
of the barbaric practice of stoning. Some of the human

rights protesters had been working together in calling for an end to
the stoning of Iranian woman Sakineh Mohammedi Ashtiani, who was
condemned to stoning by the Islamic Republic of Iran, before

international human rights pressure has impact Iran to consider
changing its verdict. R.E.A.L.'s Jeffrey Imm told of one of a case of stoning of a
13 year old girl in Somalia who had

been raped, that was also convicted for "adultery." The human
rights activists view the barbaric practice of stoning to be inhumane
and a violation of human rights anywhere in the world, and unequivocally
reject stoning and those groups that promote stoning.

Human rights volunteers condemned the demonstrations by Hizb
ut-Tahrir supporting calls for barbaric stoning of individuals.

: Lincoln

Memorial Reflecting Pool: R.E.A.L. and Human Rights Supporters
Challenge Hizb ut-Tahrir and Stoning

=======================

For additional

reports and human rights activism challenging Hizb ut-Tahrir, see http://bit.ly/htwatch

=======================

Responsible for
Equality And Liberty (R.E.A.L.) supports the
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