Rising demands to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir: Australia faces pressure to act

Calls mounted in Australia on Sunday for the Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir to be banned from the country after its operations were highlighted in local media over the weekend.

Zionist Federation of Australia said the revelation of Australian protests and events involving Hizb ut-Tahrir, which is a proscribed organization in the United Kingdom and Germany, required the government to initiate legal measures to ban the group.

“For Hizb ut-Tahrir to have so much as a foothold in Australia is dangerous,” Zionist Federation of Australia President Jeremy Leibler said on Sunday. “But it is frankly reckless that our authorities have let it establish a sophisticated operation.”

Calls for Australian inquiry into Hizb ut-Tahrir

Home Affairs and Cyber Security Shadow Minister Senator James Paterson called for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government to investigate Hizb ut-Tahrir and list it as a terrorist organization.

“Violent extremism has no place in Australia,” he said Sunday on social media.

Hizb ut-Tahrir, which on its website describes itself as an Islamic political party seeking to establish Sharia law and a caliphate in the Muslim world, has been organizing events in Australia. On June 7 it held a lecture with a Gazan man in Lakemba and an Auburn meeting about political strategy for Australian Muslims on May 27.

In November, Tahrirul-Ummah, the Australian chapter of Hizb ut-Tahrir, issued a call to “mobilize the armies to al-Aqsa” to Muslim armies.

“If there were no national borders and international laws imposed by international organizations shackling the Ummah from uniting, it would hardly take 2 weeks for Ummah to march into the blessed land of Palestine and liberate it from the occupation by so-called ‘Israel,’” Tahrirul-Ummah said on Instagram on October 22.

On October 8, the Australian chapter shared Hizb Ut Tahrir Media Office member Khaled Saeed’s praise of the October 7 massacre, in support of Palestinian jihadists and his call for others to join them.

“What are you waiting for when you see these mujahideen, on the land of Palestine, storming Jewish fortresses, crushing their fortifications, and killing and capturing their soldiers, and the hoards of their settlers?!” Saeed said.

“Doesn’t that arouse enthusiasm in you, feelings of pride and dignity, and remove the veil from your eyes that the regimes of exploitation and betrayal have always sought to mislead you with, neutralizing you and keeping you away from the theatre of battle and struggle, the theatre of liberation and victory, the theatre of jihad and martyrdom?”

A Sunday Sydney Morning Herald report alleged that the Stand For Palestine campaign was associated with members of Hizb ut-Tahrir. The group has been promoting involvement in protests and has been associated with the Sydney University encampment and issued on Instagram defenses of Shahada flags often used by jihadists.

Leibler said eight other Australian newspapers had explored how Hizb ut-Tahrir “led national boycotts of Jewish-owned businesses and incited violent protests in Caulfield that required a synagogue to be evacuated; they have infiltrated Australia’s leading university, are glorifying terrorism and distributing extremist material, and are covertly using front organizations to mainstream their extremism with a combined 33,000 followers.”

The UK added Hizb ut-Tahrir to its list of proscribed organizations on January 19 because it has an antisemitic ideology, and besides its celebration of October 7 and praising of Hamas as heroes, it has a “history of praising and celebrating attacks against Israel and attacks against Jews more widely.”

Since 2003, Germany has banned the party, which according to the European Convention on Human Rights was established in Jerusalem in 1953 by Taqiuddin An-Nabhani. The German Federal Interior Ministry decided to ban them and confiscate their assets by assessing that the group rejected peaceful coexistence with Israel and advocated for armed violence against Israel and Jews.