Should we ban Hizb ut-Tahrir?

In August 2005, the government of Tony Blair announced a package of laws and other measures as a response to the London bombings by young British Muslims. One of these was the banning of the political organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir. I wrote the following letter to The Guardian newspaper criticising this decision and supporting two Muslim MPs who questioned it, printed on August 9. The next day, a letter in repsonse from Dr Denis MacEoin was published, criticising my letter. This exchange was taken up on a number of websites and blogs; right-wing sites attacked my position and quoted Dr MacEoin approvingly, whereas left-wing and Muslim sites took the opposite stance. Both letters are reprinted here:

I agree with the two Muslim MPs who oppose the banning of Hizb ut-Tahrir (Islamist clerics face treason charges, August 8). As a scholar who has some knowledge of their operations in the UK and abroad, I am convinced their modus operandi is through traditional political campaigning, not violence. Believing that nation states in the Middle East are artificial creations of western powers to divide Muslims and exploit oil resources, they seek social justice through the formation of a single Islamic state that serves the poor rather than corrupt clients of foreign powers. They argue that violence cannot be used to take control of the state, but the state can use the military to defend itself against other states.

As a political geographer and Christian socialist, I believe their historical analysis is correct and their conclusion well-reasoned. I cannot share their vision, for it ultimately maintains the Quranic commitment to just war theory that is as much part of the Middle East's problems as the variants deployed by George Bush and Tony Blair. However, they are not terrorists and parliament must resist this unreasonable attack on freedom of speech.

Dr Nick Megoran,
Cambridge Univesity.

And the response:

As another scholar (in Islamic studies), I would challenge Nick Megoran's almost benign view of Hizb ut-Tahrir (Letters, August 9). It may not encourage immediate violence, but it certainly creates an ideology that must inevitably lead to it. It expressly argues that offensive jihad is a duty for Muslims, it derides democracy as a western evil, rejects interfaith dialogue as a conspiracy against Islam, describes compromise as un-Islamic, advocates an all-or-nothing solution to conflicts, speaks of the inevitably of a clash of civilisations, justifies the execution of apostates, recommends war against Jews, Christians and polytheists until the world is a single Islamic state, and says that "a bloody struggle [will continue] alongside the intellectual struggle". Is it so hard to see how a young radical might move from their extremism to acts of violence?

Dr Denis MacEoin,
Newcastle upon Tyne.