Well, now we’ve reached the point that is inevitable when you refuse to acknowledge the tight nexus between Islamic ideology and the violence committed by radical Islam. The Sunni fundamentalist group Hizb-ut-Tahrir has come out of the shadows and is having its first official U.S. conference in Chicago.
Like the Muslim Brotherhood, which I discussed in an essay called “Beyond Terrorism” in the April 20 edition of NR, HuT feigns opposition to violence but nevertheless wants the imposition of Islamic law — shariah — by any means necessary. (The point of jihad is not simply to blow stuff up; it is to install shariah, deemed to be the precondition necessary for the universal acceptance of Islam.) HuT is not regarded as a terrorist organization by the United States. How could it be? After all, we only worry about people actively engaged in acts of brutality — anyone who is not bombing a building is a “moderate” no matter what his ends may be.
I got a little flak a couple of weeks ago for observing that Islam and the Left have much in common. It’s worth noting the name of HuT’s conference: “The Fall of Capitalism and the Rise of Islam.”