The standard of journalism at the Sunday Telegraph publication has stooped to such a new low, it is a wonder that it still considered a newspaper at all. Last week it published an article that relied entirely upon suspicion and vague language desperately trying to insinuate a link between Hizb ut-Tahrir and an alleged participant in the horrific murders in Sri Lanka the week before, where there is, in fact, no link at all.

A Telegraph journalist contacted Hizb ut-Tahrir in Britain prior to publication asking whether a man called Abdul Lathief Jameel Mohamed had links to Hizb ut-Tahrir, to which we replied with the following statement:

Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain does not know Abdul Lathief Jameel Mohamed. He has no affiliation with the party.

Needless to say, we abhor the senseless killing of citizens in any country by any person, group or military. The Islamic Shari’ah does not give justification for such acts as in Sri Lanka last week. Our call is for people to recognise the dangerous world that the colonialism of capitalist countries has created. We believe that all of the world should consider the Islamic Caliphate established on the way of Prophethood as a genuine alternative to the capitalist hegemony that brings misery to so many today. However, we state that those who wish to use violence against civilians to establish such a state are not following the Prophetic method, and are severely misguided.

The journalist then appeared desperate to support his allegation, asking the ludicrous question “can you be certain that he did not even attend a talk by members of Hizb ut-Tahrir as a member of the audience?”.

Are politicians who attend cocktail parties at the Russian embassy to all be considered as Russian spies? Is everyone who eats a vegan diet being radicalised as a future animal rights terrorist?

If any unknown person attends any talk by Hizb ut-Tahrir they will hear the thoughts and ideas published in our many books, which do not encourage criminal attacks on civilians at all, but instead call upon Muslims to engage in real political work to bring an end to colonial hegemony of the secular capitalist elite who are ruining life for almost everyone on the planet.

In the absence of any news at all, the whole article relied upon unsubstantiated allegations and reporting of bare-faced lies, such as the entirely false claim that BBC Newsnight had found Hizb ut-Tahrir activists at Kingston University in 2003 “calling suicide bombers martyrs and urging Muslims to kill Jewish people.” Not only did the BBC report not even allege that, but such statements have not been issued by Hizb ut-Tahrir in all of its 66-year history. Not even in occupied Palestine where the Muslims suffer daily abuse by the Zionist State will you find Hizb ut-Tahrir calling the people there to attack civilians.

A Times journalist contacted Hizb ut-Tahrir in Britain for our response to the Telegraph article. Our reply included:

I hope that your article will also be about the awful standard of journalism employed in the Sunday Telegraph article. How can mere speculation, suspicion, and conjecture become a serious piece of news, if the intention is not to deliberately slander Hizb ut-Tahrir? Not only that, but this so-called “conveyor belt theory” has no credibility, no academic basis, and is entirely ludicrous. To suggest that Hizb ut-Tahrir’s opposition to colonialism and oppression, and its call for the establishment of the Khilafah on the way of the Prophethood is in some way linked to “radicalising individuals to commit violent crimes”, who have merely come into contact with such an idea, is entirely baseless, let alone those who spend years studying the party’s non-violent and political method. This is well known to the Telegraph who still have on their website a report about the fallacy of such a conveyor belt theory.

Yahya Nisbet,
Media representative of Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain,
1st May 2019