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Valley of Jihad

With the Hizb ut-Tahrir in Central Asia.

Dec 26, 2005, Vol. 11, No. 15 • By NICHOLAS SCHMIDLE
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Karasuu, Kyrgyzstan

One Friday this fall, I went to a mosque in Karasuu, Kyrgyzstan, to hear a fiery Uzbek imam preach. The imam regularly draws a crowd of several thousand worshippers, and many of them, I was told, belong to Hizb ut-Tahrir, an extremist Islamic group bent on reestablishing the caliphate in Central Asia, and eventually around the world. The group exists in more than 160 countries. It is particularly active around Karasuu. So for several hours, I crouched beside a busy dirt road, drinking chuli, a syrupy juice made from apricots, and chatting with parishioners about Hizb ut-Tahrir as they filed in and out of the mosque.

It's likely that, for most Americans, Hizb ut-Tahrir (the Party of Liberation) is an unfamiliar name. It hasn't bombed any schools or sawed off anyone's head. That's not its style. In more than 50 years of existence, the party has never committed an act of terrorism. In fact, unlike al Qaeda or Hamas or various other jihadist groups, the Hizb uses only nonviolent tactics to pursue its goal of eventually overthrowing the non-Islamic governments around the world and uniting Muslims under one ruler, the caliph. And though it shares many ideas with al Qaeda, the Hizb is keen on keeping its distance. It's tough business, after all, raising the call for jihad without raising the sword.

But is Hizb ut-Tahrir any less dangerous than those groups that have become household names in the United States? Two of the party's founding members went on to become leaders of the militant Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. If violent jihad has a gateway drug, Hizb ut-Tahrir might be it.

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