Muslims debate ‘clash of civilisations’
About 8,500 people gathered in London on Sunday to debate the role of Muslims in the West since the declaration of the “war on terror”.
Muslims have been asked to make a choice. Either they accept capitalism and its colonialist world view or be labelled the terrorist
Hizb ut-Tahrir pre-conference statement
The conference organiser - the Muslim political party Hizb ut-Tahrir - claimed it was the largest meeting of Muslims since the attacks in the US of 11 September last year.
The group called the conference Beyond September 11: Role of Muslims in the West, and said it would address the clash between Islam and the West.
Speakers from both Islamic and secular countries around the world also debated a possible attack on Iraq.
Other Muslim organisations, however, declined to attend the gathering at the London Arena in Docklands and accused Hizb ut-Tahrir of undemocratic and isolationist tendencies.
Dr Imran Waheed, a UK doctor and representative of Hizb ut-Tahrir, said while the West preached tolerance, in practise it sought to suffocate Islam.
“When the West calls for integration it is asking Muslims to abandon Muslim values and adopt Western values,” Dr Waheed told Sky News.
‘No regime change’
“Integration means adopting Western secular values in lieu of Islamic values - values which are from a foreign and different ideology to Islam.”
Dr Waheed later explained why his organisation does not support an attack on Iraq or the US ambition of “regime change”:
"Are people happy to send their children off to a far-off country to increase the dividends of far-off multinationals?
"Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and many of our members have been tortured in his jails for opposing him.
“But we don’t want an Iraqi version of [Afghan leader] Hamid Karzai, a subservient and loyal puppet who will facilitate the harvesting of America’s interests from the region, including the vast oil reserves of the Middle East.”
‘Undemocratic’
But Inayat Bungalawala - of the Muslim Council of Britain - said Dr Waheed’s organisation was itself intolerant and isolationist.
“It is important for us to participate in all levels of democracy in the United Kingdom and we believe in participation and integration,” he said.
‘Mainstream’
Dr Waheed insists his party - founded in Jerusalem in 1953 by the scholar Taqiuddin an-Nabhani - is part of the Muslim mainstream.
On its website, Hizb ut-Tahrir says it would like to see the creation of a new caliphate - a state ruled by a Khaleefah or successor to Islamic Prophet Muhammad - under Sharia law.
But Hizb ut-Tahrir considers violence and armed struggle to be a violation of Islamic law.
Last month 26 of its members, including three Britons, were charged in Egypt with belonging to an illegal organization, four months after they were arrested.
Dr Waheed alleges that they have been tortured.
http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30100-12122419,00.html
Muslims Met In London
Thousands of Muslims met at a London ice-hockey arena on Sunday.
Radical Muslim speakers drew the crowd, denouncing the West at what organisers called the largest Islamic gathering in Britain since the September 11 attacks.
The fiery rhetoric, delivered to a crowd of some 9,000 mainly young people, at the Docklands Arena, showed the deepening rift in Britain’s two-million strong Muslim community over whether Muslims should accept mainstream culture or reject Western values.
Moderate Islamic groups say radicals make up a tiny proportion of their community and accuse the media of giving too much attention to firebrands.
Strong denunciations
But the audience at Sunday’s conference was receptive to strong denunciations of the West.
“We are here today to delineate a path for Muslims to follow in the decadent West, where the perilous trap of integration must be avoided,” said conference organiser Imran Waheed, a spokesman for small Muslim political party Hizb ut-Tahrir.
Labelled terrorists
“Since September 11 we have been told to choose between accepting capitalism or being labelled terrorists, but our third way is to maintain our Islamic identity,” he said.
But he added that he would not tell British Muslims to rise up if Britain joined a possible attack on Iraq, as some radical clerics have done in recent weeks.
Issam Amireh, a Palestinian cleric, said: “They want Muslims to integrate and to accept democracy, which is a one-way ticket to hell fire.”