Imam at Windy City Islamist confab: We'll fight til ‘Islam Becomes Victorious or We Die in the Attempt’ [Excerpts]
Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), the international movement to re-establish an international Islamic state, or Caliphate, kicked off a new campaign to win American recruits [July 19, 2009] afternoon in this Chicago suburb.
Nearly 300 people packed the Grand Ballroom of the Hilton Hotel for its Khalifah Conference on "The Fall of Capitalism and the Rise of Islam" to listen to HT ideologues blame capitalism for World War I and World War II; the U.S. subprime mortgage meltdown; the current violence in Iraq and Afghanistan; world poverty and malnutrition and inner-city drug use.
A speaker identified as Abu Atallah even blamed capitalism for the late singer Michael Jackson's decision "to shed his black skin."
Hizb ut-Tahrir aims to restore the Caliphate that existed during the Ottoman Empire in Turkey. Turkish leader Kemal Ataturk abolished it in 1924 in an effort to create a secular, Europeanized state.
But time and again on Sunday, Hizb ut-Tahrir officials seemed to be playing slippery rhetorical games of their own -- particularly when it came to the behavior of despotic Muslim regimes and terrorists. When a few skeptical audience members pressed speakers over the fact that Islamic governments in Iran and Saudi Arabia are despotic, conference speakers claimed those weren't "authentic" Muslim governments and that the CIA (and by implication, the capitalist U.S. government) was to blame for the problems in those countries. In an interview with WBBM-TV in Chicago, HT deputy spokesman Mohammad Malkawi refused to specifically condemn Al Qaida and the Taliban.
A speaker identified by conference organizers as Imam Jaleel Abdul Adil said that "if they offer us the sun, or the moon, or a nice raise, or a passport, or a house in the suburbs or even a place to pray at the job, on the condition that we stop calling for Islam as a complete way of life -- we should never do that, ever do that -- unless and until Islam becomes victorious or we die in the attempt."
Later, the following dialogue ensued between the imam and a member of the audience over whether Shariah or the Constitution should be the supreme law of the land in the United States:
Audience member: "Would you get rid of the Constitution for Shariah, yes or no?"
Imam: "Over the Muslim world? Yes, it would be gone."
Audience Member: And so if the United States was a Muslim world, the Constitution would be gone?"
Imam: "If the United States was in the Muslim world, the Muslims who are here would be calling and happy to see the Shariah applied, yes we would."
Audience Member: "And the Constitution gone. That's all."
Imam: "Yes, as Muslims they would be long gone."
