Indonesia: 100.000 people push for Global Caliphate (+)

[This is a translation of the post I wrote for the Spanish blog. I consider this summit as very important for Spain, not only for the secretive activity and recruitement of HuT but also because of its increasing presence in Spain, specially in Catalonia. My comments, in green].

 

Yes, of course, this is the new CIA conspiration in its search for a global power.

 

Well, no, CIA, MI6, James Bond or CNI have nothing to do with it. The responsible for the mega-demonstration in Indonesia asking for the Global Caliphate is the Islamist party Hizb ut Tahrir, that translated to English means the “party of Liberation” (of course, by the Global Caliphate. I don’t know you, but for me this would be no liberation, except if we consider liberation by submission to the Caliphate, something is more related to some sort of sexual relations than of an ordinary social organization) .

 

BBC (more accurate than normally, there are some points to be made of it, though):

 

The dull roars of a football match, the twanging music of a youth group concert – from a distance it is not always easy to tell an Islamic conference from a holiday crowd.

Inside Jakarta’s Gelora Bung Karno stadium the clues get easier. There are about 100,000 people inside, and everyone is in Islamic dress.

The women’s section – by far the largest – is a pitter-patter of ice-cream colours. On their parasols, one word is printed over and over again: Khilafah, caliphate.

This is the reason why people have come here. To show their support for a single, unified, Islamic state.

They have been invited by the international Islamist group, Hizb ut-Tahrir. Not everyone believed they would fill the stadium, but Hizb ut-Tahrir is good at bringing in supporters – and keeping them.

Milling around outside the stadium we found 24-year-old Akbar.

He was not a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, but he said: “This conference is not just for one group. In my opinion, if you support there being sharia law in Indonesia, you’ve got to be here.”

[…] this was a conference that would like to overturn Indonesia’s democratically elected government and install an Islamic state – so where does he stand on that?

“I think democracy is OK,” he said. “But it’s not enough. I think democracy in Indonesia should be supported by religious, ethical and moral values.”

“Because this is a country where the majority of its citizens are religious people. So maybe not liberal democracy, but uncommon democracy; based on religious values – I say religious values, not necessarily Islamic values.” [of course, that’s why he is at a conference that is asking for the Islamic caliphate. There are other things too: if someone does not believe in God -the reason is none of my business-, that one has no rights? And of course, I would like that he would explain how they were going to make compatible the Islamic values with the ones which belong to other religions…, because they would not be considered as inferiors or misguided, true?].

There was a lot of speculation before this conference began about what kinds of messages would be reflected here.

Hizb ut-Tahrir says it is not an extremist organisation: it does not have a paramilitary wing, and has never been charged with violence.

But its hardline agenda and rhetoric, and its secretive recruitment process, have won it many opponents.[I ask myself why an organization that says it is pacific has a secret recruitment for its followers. Just imagine that for the Football Club of your city or for the Knitting School you would have to pass a secret recruitment. It is at least surprising].

Kholid has been a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Indonesia for six years. He joined at college and says the teachings of the party have changed the way he views the West. [And then, now, he is asking for the Caliphate…].

“It comes as a matter of course,” he told me. “I’ve come to believe that Muslims have the right to defend themselves when attacked, but we’re not allowed to be aggressive against Westerners if they’re not attacking us. [Now, define attack. A woman without hijab or in swimming suit or bikini is an attack? A drunk person after a week-end party? There are fundamentalist Muslims which consider those things as an attack].

“The method used in Hizb ut-Tahrir is a change in thought patterns. We call it ‘thought revolution’. When someone is given Islamic teaching – given the brilliant thinking of Islam – then they’ll naturally undergo a thought revolution, and will see what is good and what is bad.” [As easy as that: you just learn the Koram and you will never have any doubt.

You know, I do not like theology very much -St.Thomas of Aquinas, after his first vission, tried to burn the Summa Theologica, because he said it was shit after what he had seen. It is conserved thanks to one of his collaborators-. But there are things that are astounding:

Genesis
Chapter 3

1

Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the animals that the LORD God had made. The serpent asked the woman, “Did God really tell you not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?”

2

The woman answered the serpent: “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden;

3

it is only about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden that God said, ‘You shall not eat it or even touch it, lest you die.'”

4

But the serpent said to the woman: “You certainly will not die!

5

¹ No, God knows well that the moment you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods who know what is good and what is bad.”

There is an anecdote I read some time ago about Spanish Caliph Abderrahman III, which differs very much from what this Indonesian Muslim said. It is said that Abderrahman had a caid -sort of Governor-Judge- who had a lot of knowledge. So Abderrahman said: “I’m going to make you the wealthiest man on Earth, because I’m going to pay you for all your knowledge”. The caid’s face was thoughtful after hearing that and spoke back: “Caliph, do you really want me to be the wealthiest man on Earth”. Abderrahman nodded and the caid went on: “Then pay me for all I do not know, although I doubt there would be things enough in this world for that”.

It is just a new edition of Sócrates’ most famous expression: “I only know I know nothing at all”. And no, that’s not false modesty. It’s the reality, plain and simple. Except God, no one knows everything. Today’s reality is not the same as yesterday’s. The society that existed 50 years ago, has nothing to do to today’s and it’s probable that our great-grandfathers would be lost in the society that would exist in 50 years’ time.

But we are talking about the Koram, a book, that can’t be interpreted -of the 4 schools of Islamic thought, only one of them admits it partially and only a minority supports it-. So it tries to understand today’s reality with a book that cannot be interpreted and that has 1400 years. No doubt it can change your life.

But there is another problem. This people, who say they know everything just as if they had swallow the Matrix pill, normally do not only organise their lifes but they also want to organise everyone else’s life. And we know what happens in the majority of Islamic societies: the infidel is an infra-human being which must be driven to Islamic goodness, to whom they should tell what to do to be saved and if he doesn’t do it (convert yourself or else or, if you’re from the People of the Book, pay the jizya… because I’m defending you….) we all know the alternative].

Hizb ut-Tahrir will not say how many members it has. But those close to the group say membership is extremely difficult to win – often taking several years.

Unlike many other Islamist movements here, Hizb ut-Tahrir seems less interested in a broad mass following than a smaller more committed core of members, many of them drawn from Indonesia’s educated middle classes.

The organisation has only been operating openly in Indonesia for seven years. The conference is one sign that it is doing well.

Does this mean that all Muslims want a Global Caliphate? I really believe that NO -I just make it clear in case some stupid moonbat says the contrary-. The problem here is that the extremists normally push for changes that are not desired in general but out of fear are just considered, specially when a large part of that society are not cultivated people or even illiterate (just take into account the members are selected among the educated middle class, that is, the people who change society and maintain it as it is). If you don’t believe it, just look what Spanish friend-blogger Crispal has written about Riyhad’s Opera.

 

The Saudi authorities, who had felt very near the outing of Persian Sha, driven into exile in feb 1979, got seriously fearful of being outed from throne. And there began a gradual process of Islamization and going back to Wahabism which lasted till the death of Fahd Bin Abdulaziz. A great part of Juhaynam’s claims were met. Cinemas were forbidden (they were normal in Jeddah), the legislation which obliged to segregate men and women in public places was passed, and also the compelling closing of all the shops and places in the praying hour, etc. The cpuntry went from being something similar to other Gulf countries to what is now Arabia.

And everything because A FUNDAMENTALIST man took a mosque with 1.500 followers and even when they lost again the Government. What is most curious about this is that there was no reaction from the people asking Saudi monarchy to stop the process.

As you can see, the BBC reports that HuT supporters are not violent. Well, I wrote some months ago about their presence in Catalonia, which was surging:

 

According to the reports gathered by El Confidencial Digital, the Mossos d’Esquadra are investigating the Sunni Islamist organization named Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami (HuT) –or Party for the Islamic Liberation-. The number of Islamist groups of this kind is rising on the Internet, and using the WWW to gain supporters, that could be even recruited by the radical Islamism.

HuT was born in Jerusalem in 1953 founded by the Palestinian Taqiuddin al-Nabhani. They are supporters of an Islamic macroState or Caliphate formed by all the countries whose citizens are, mostly, Muslims. Its supporters reject Western democracy and pretend as a final goal, that the whole world is converted to Islam. The organization has never condemned explicitly any of the terrorist attacks of a Jihadist origin.

In Spain, this Islamist group began its activity during the period 2004-2005 and, in Feb. 2006, when the Mohammen cartoon crisis was happenning, HuT raises its activity and presence both physical and in Internet.

You can continue reading in the link (it’s translated to English at the bottom of it).

But that’s not all: their presence is also suspected in several Muslim riots, specifically in Paris’ november 2005 and also in other ones in Pakistan and Afghanistan about the alleged desecreation of the Quram. I wrote about it here (in Spanish).

The outbreak initially was spontaneous following the electrocution of two Muslim youth as they were fleeing away from a random identity papers check by the Police. The violence continued to be spontaneous, with no external instigation, for three days.

In the meanwhile, it is reported by reliable sources, the headquarters of the HT in London saw the agitprop potential of the developments in Paris and sent some of their experts, who had participated in instigating the violence earlier this year in Afghanistan over the alleged desecration of the Holy Koran by the US guards at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre in Cuba and in Uzbekistan over the allegedly autocratic ways of the local Government, to Paris to stoke the anger of the youth and exploit it for their purpose. …

With the help of the sleeper cells, which the HT has already established in Paris and other parts of France for some months, they drew up plans for keeping the violence sustained in order to further radicalise and mobilise the youth against the French Government. …

While there is no evidence of its involvement so far in any act of jihadi terrorism anywhere in the world, it has been involved in many instances of political agitation in the streets in some countries and in attempts at subverting the armed forces and the intelligence agencies in Pakistan and other Islamic countries. …

Read it all and then think about what is coming at a Mach 3 speed. And this is the (more clear) reason why they have a “secret recruitment”.

So, what they are doing this for? Are they preparing themselves to what is worrying excellent blogger Richard Landes in this post?

 

Over the last few years, small groups’ ability to conduct terrorism has shown radical improvements in productivity—their capacity to inflict economic, physical, and moral damage. These groups, motivated by everything from gang membership to religious extremism, have taken advantage of easy access to our global superinfrastructure, revenues from growing illicit commercial flows, and ubiquitously available new technologies to cross the threshold necessary to become terrible threats. September 11, 2001, marked their arrival at that threshold.

Unfortunately, the improvements in lethality that we have already seen are just the beginning. The arc of productivity growth that lets small groups terrorize at ever-higher levels of death and disruption stretches as far as the eye can see. Eventually, one man may even be able to wield the destructive power that only nation-states possess today. It is a perverse twist of history that this new threat arrives at the same moment that wars between states are receding into the past. Thanks to global interdependence, state-against-state warfare is far less likely than it used to be, and viable only against disconnected or powerless states. But the underlying processes of globalization have made us exceedingly vulnerable to nonstate enemies. The mechanisms of power and control that states once exerted will continue to weaken as global interconnectivity increases. Small groups of terrorists can already attack deep within any state, riding on the highways of interconnectivity, unconcerned about our porous borders and our nation-state militaries. These terrorists’ likeliest point of origin, and their likeliest destination, is the city.

 

Read also his comments.

I was speaking before holidays with a reader, Lancelot, in the Spanish blog. We were discussing about the need to change Armies, which cannot be maintained as they are now. Changes which History has seen before: till the ending of XIXth century, each Army was dressed in a certain colour, which let soldiers not to kill their comrades but the ones in another colour, which were the enemies. But the armoured tanks first and the aviation later, made the enemies very clear even in far distances, so the khaki green was born. I think we are now in a very similar situation.

Why do I include this? They are pushing for a Global Caliphate, the same objective as Bin Laden. Yeah, it’s possible that afterwards they are going to have problems and probably are going to fight to see who is the Governor of the Super-Caliphate. BUT that seems very far away…

But there is even more (original link in Spanish):

 

Ismail Suyanto, HuT’s speaker for Indonesia, insisted in his organization is only seeking a peaceful change in a myriad of countrues and assured that HuT “condemns terrorism, though it depends on what terrorism”.

“We condemn the terrorist attack as Bali ones, which were carried out by radical groups, but we agree with the attacks that are carried in Palestine or Iraq: that is not terrorism, that is the Jihad“, he explained, adding later “Islam lets us take venegeance on the attacks by foreign potencies who occupy our territories“.

But, is Spain a place where a foreign potency occupied their territory?:

 

“Spain should also be inside the Caliphate: it is a country which has been 700 years under an Islamic Government and, in that period, the inhabitants lived with prosperity and the three religions lived peacefully with each other”.

So, there are some things to say here:

 

1. Firstly, Spain broke with the rest of the Muslim world and Spanish Muslims had back then a consideration of being morally relaxed. That was the reason why both almoravids and almohads stormed into the Peninsula killing at will both Muslims and non-Muslims without any distinction. The repression in both times was terrible.
2. Then we have Al-Mansur, the Al-Hakam’s visir, who was a very peaceful and respectful guy who made razzias with which he stormed till Santiago de Compostela and the Pyrinees, killing at will, stealing and robbing and… cutting the breasts of all the mothers who had babies, so both of them would die a terrible death -Something the Janjaweed in Sudan are making today-. Of course, if you can be cruel, why you’re not going to be? But that’s what the Jihad brings. We have also to consider the Jihad is an obligation of every Muslim, except the Quram is interpreted again.
3. Lastly, normally -and very interestedly- this people forgot that: a) not all the Peninsula was subjected throughout all the 700 years to an Islamic Government, b) there was not an Islamic common Government throughout all that period, but what we call the Taifas, little Muslim kingdoms, which normally swore allegiance to the Christian kingdoms of the North, c) from the conquest of -1236- and Seville -Nov 23rd, 1248- by Castillian King Fernando III the Saint, till Granada’s conquest -Jan 2nd, 1492- the presence of the Caliphate in Spain was not very important, as you see nearly 250 years).

More about the summit in Winds of Jihad.

And by the way: take into account they ask for the coming of the Caliphate supposedly only in the countries in which the majority of the population are Muslim. So, is it Spain (and Portugal, because Al-Andalus were the two of us) a Muslim country? Is it going to be a Muslim country? When?

(Yeah, I know, extremelly long… 😛 )

(+) Richard has posted more about it. Extremelly important thing post.