Regime Loses Its Mind in Addressing the Nearing Success of the Khilafah "Caliphate" Project

Since the arrest of a number of activists of Hizb ut Tahrir by government agencies on 5 December, the government has initiated a campaign of slander against Hizb ut Tahrir, falsely claiming links with militancy. Electronic and print media has prominent regular reports about the arrests.

The regime's slander is ridiculous as Hizb ut Tahrir is now known throughout society, in all of its regions and levels. It is well-known that it undertakes the political and intellectual struggle and calls the people of Nussrah, the sincere within the armed forces, to give the Nussrah for the re-establishment of the Khilafah "Caliphate". Yet, the regime resorts to ridiculous slander as it does not have anything of truth to utter in defense its false and ever weakening position. Moreover, the Western masters of the regime sense the widespread acceptance of the Hizb and the Khilafah "Caliphate" project throughout the Muslim World and are frustrated in their previous attempts of mobilizing the tyrants of the Muslim World to undertake a harsh campaign of abductions, torture and persecution against Hizb ut Tahrir.

Just as the frustrated Quraysh resorted to ridiculous slander when they sensed that Islam was about to be established as a state in the time of RasulAllah (saaw), so the West has mobilized its agents in the Muslim World to slander the Khilafah "Caliphate" project as the return of Islam as a state draws near by the permission of Allah (swt). And just as the tyrannical supremacy of the Quraysh was eradicated by the light of Islam, so shall the return of the Khilafah "Caliphate" end the cruel Western hegemony.

Blasphemy Issue Highlights Absence of Islam as an Authority

On 2 December 2014, a FIR charge sheet was registered against the media personality Junaid Jamshaid for blasphemy. Within days, the issue became a major talking point in the society. There are scholars who have defended him and there are religious people who have condemned him. Now the problem is clear for everyone to see. There is no central religious authority. No one religious authority to whom everyone submits and which everyone holds in high esteem. Hence the division which we see in this and many other cases. Moreover the religious and the temporal (government) authority is separate. So let's assume Junaid Jamshed is guilty, in that case he should be tried by the state's legal process and punished. Let's assume he is not guilty, in that case he should be tried by the state and exonerated through the legal process. The same procedure applies to anyone accused of blasphemy whether Muslim or otherwise. No matter how heinous the crime, whether blasphemy, murder or apostasy, Islam has mandated a legal process for punishment or otherwise.

So we have two missing things. A central religious authority and a state which rules by divine law. In origin these two are one. For in Islam the religious and the temporal (government) authority is one, the Khilafah "Caliphate" State. It is the Khalifah of the Muslims who adopts religious edicts and it is he who executes them. And all of the legal schools of thought in Islam agree on the principle of submitting to the religious opinion of the Imam of the time. So it can be seen that it is about perspective. For some the problem is too much religion. For others, it is too less religion. People will stop taking the law in to their hands, and stop being divided on religious issues if there is an Islamic State. The problem in Pakistan is not religious "extremism", it is a secular state ruling a religious population. The "extremism" comes when the state insists on its "liberalism". Take the "liberalism" out of the state and "extremism" from the population would vanish. Khilafah "Caliphate" for Pakistan and the Muslim World.

US Promises More Blood Money for Continued Spilling of Muslim Blood

At the 23rd meeting of the US-Pakistan Defence Consultative Group, the two countries stressed the need for creating a mechanism for reimbursing Pakistan after the expiry of the Coalition Support Fund. The fund expired this year. "Both delegations affirmed the significance of the Pakistan military's ongoing North Waziristan operation, which the US side affirmed has disrupted militants," said a joint statement issued on 10 December after the meeting.

At what price will the regime earn this American wage? America is buying permission for the existence of the US CIA and private military network on our soil under the guise of co-operation. It this Raymond Davis network which has orchestrated false flag attacks against our civilians and military, which have claimed thousands of Muslim lives. These attacks are used by American officials to claim that the war in the tribal areas is Pakistan's war. And America is buying the use of our armed forces for fighting a war that America itself caused by invading and occupying Afghanistan.

The Khilafah "Caliphate" will end American blood money and will ensure the protection of Pakistan's civilians and armed forces by eradicating all hostile American presence within  Pakistan. It will also mobilize the tribals and armed forces as one hand against the American occupation of Afghanistan, which has plunged the region into insecurity for over thirteen years.

Br Muhammad Nefzi gave a masjid talk before the Grand Mosque in the Tadammun neighborhood titled "The Myth of Democracy" explaining the government exploitations of so-called democracy to control the demands of the people and to lie to them. He invited them to commit to the way of the Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him in establishing the Khilafah "Caliphate" Rashidah.

Saturday 21 Safar 1436 AH corresponding to 13 December 2014 CE

The US Senate Intelligence Committee has released its summary of the much-anticipated report into the CIA interrogation programs established by US spy chiefs after 9/11. The full report, which many senators wanted classified is 6,000 pages long and only a summary of 525 pages has been unclassified. The report took five years to produce and is based on more than 6 million internal agency documents.

The summary report effectively exposes the CIA and lays blame completely on the spy agency for torturing detainees (not prisoners) in order to gain cooperation. It confirms the agency carried out a program with contractors in secret prisons across the globe in the years after 9/11. It also confirms the horrific and brutal details of torture techniques used by the agency. These included detainees being deprived of sleep for over a hundred hours, including a case where detainee Abu Zubaydah was confined to a coffin-sized box for a total of 266 hours. He was kept in an even smaller box for 29 hours. Techniques such as Waterboarding and rectal hydration were routinely used to break down detainees. Most of these detainees have never been put on trial or been found guilty of any crime.

Whilst much of the world has reacted in shock and horror and as details continue to emerge of some of the most brutal torture imaginable, it is important this is this all placed into context and to not get affected by the political posturing. Former CIA heads and intelligence officers are already attempting to rebut the report and provide answers and justifications for what they did. Much of the blame is being labelled squarely on the CIA and it is likely the classified elements of the report would implicate many others, countries and officials.

The context of these torture programs was the climate after the 9/11 attacks. On the evening of September 11 2001, President George W Bush laid out unequivocally the position of the US and the ideological nature of the attack, he said, "Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. America was targeted for attack because we're the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world." Then on the 2006 anniversary of 9/11, Bush confirmed once again the struggle the US was engaged in: "...we are engaged in a global war against an enemy that threatens all civilized nations. And today the civilized world stands together to defend our freedom." Much of the US public was in shock as the Twin Towers collapsed and the enemy and those that harboured them needed to be pursued to the ends of the world, by any means necessary. The fear and panic was the justification for expanding torture (termed advanced interrogation measures), US administration officials believed the brutal methods were necessary to understand the threat against the US, even though it is a widely regarded fact that torture does not produce reliable intelligence. In fact the Senate report makes it clear that, the torture programme produced negligible results and the means of the programme were not justified by its paltry results.

In 2010 George W Bush, speaking with NBC News reiterated that "using those techniques saved lives. My job was to protect America." Former Vice President Dick Cheney laid out what really happened. "What I keep hearing out there is they portray this as a rogue operation and the agency was way out of bounds and then they lied about it. I think that's all a bunch of hooey. The program was authorized. The agency did not want to proceed without authorization, and it was also reviewed legally by the Justice Department before they undertook the program." Cheney also said the conclusion that the CIA misled the White House about its interrogation techniques "is just a crock." The Senate report blames the CIA for everything and even paints the picture that the Senate was misled, the report even states the CIA was much harsher than it represented to policymakers. But the reality is America's global programme of rendition, secret prisons, black prisons, was authorised and justified at the highest levels.

In 2004, the revelations of prisoner abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq at the hands of U.S. military personnel garnered widespread coverage by domestic and international media. Images of military police harassing and violating prisoners were circulated, sparking significant controversy over whether the U.S. government employed torture against its enemy combatants, a stark violation of human rights for many as well as an infringement of the Geneva Conventions. Though the media focused on the actions of the military police, rather than interrogators, the revelations quickly led to further inquiries and deep scrutiny over the interrogation practices conducted at the prison and across the intelligence community.

In hindsight the 2004 revelations of prisoner abuse at the Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq at the hands of the US military was just the tip of the iceberg.

There are three key arguments US officials have used for the last decade to justify the torture programme, which the Senate report exposed.

Actionable Intelligence - This is any piece of information, by itself or as a factor in analysis that military commanders or policymakers can use in making decisions. As the US was in a global war of terror interrogating actionable intelligence from detainees would stop other pending attacks. The Senate report exposed this and concluded: "none of 20 cases of counterterrorism "successes" attributed to the techniques led to unique or otherwise unavailable intelligence."

Ticking Time Bomb - This was the widely used justification for torture, especially in the case of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, who the US considered the principal architect of 9/11. As the perpetrator of 9/11 he could disclose information on other imminent attacks, if tortured. On the floor of the US Senate on 9 December, Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein said that Senate investigators never found a single instance of it happening. "At no time did the CIA's coercive interrogation techniques lead to the collection of intelligence on an imminent threat that many believe was the justification for the use of these techniques. The Committee never found an example of this hypothetical ticking time bomb scenario." The supposed ‘ticking bomb' scenarios initially used to justify the use of torture, became sustained and routine torture of detainees in the off chance that some useful intelligence may come to light.

Lives Saved - Whether it was senators, administration officials or intelligence agents, they all justified torture on the basis it saved US lives. It said the CIA justified its use of such techniques with "inaccurate claims of their effectiveness," including examples of thwarted plots in Britain such as a plan by 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to hijack planes and attack Heathrow airport and Canary Wharf.The Senate report however highlighted the CIA justified its use of such techniques with inaccurate claims of their effectiveness, including examples of thwarted plots in Britain.

The US Supreme Court has held since at least the 1890s that punishments that involved torture are forbidden under this the Eighth Amendment. The Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution states: "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." The 1984 UN Convention against torture that Western states uphold is explicit. It defines torture as "the intentional infliction of severe pain or suffering whether physical or mental." The US only ratified this law 10 years later in 1994, but reigned back on it after 9/11.

Despite US officials describing 9/11 as a clash of civilisations and the ‘war on terror' as a battle to defend liberty. What we witnessed was the abandonment of the very liberty and values into the dustbin of history which the US was purporting to defend. Values were abandoned when it was found difficult to deal or adapt to the new challenges of the international environment. Whilst many in the West argue that in the interest of national security, certain laws can be suspended and are necessary. The rationale of protecting the nation's security is the perennial argument used by dictators and tyrants through the ages and is used constantly by regimes from North Korea to Zimbabwe to defend their draconian policies. However these regimes don't pretend to be something that they are not and nor do they seek to promote their values abroad. It is the active promotion of secular democracy abroad while simultaneously abandoning it at home that is the brazen hypocrisy.

But the suspension of the presumption of innocence, the right to a fair trial, the right to be aware of the evidence that is being used to imprison you and not being tortured, are not mere footnotes of political life to be altered at will; they are rather supposed to be the bedrock of Western political tradition and history. This violation of its very own values was highlighted by the Senate report, which said the programme, which is now defunct, violated American ideals by torturing suspects.

Barack Obama and the rest of the western world have come out condemning the Bush Government, the CIA and categorically termed the interrogation techniques as torture. They are all trying to wash their hands of this. But the reality is an intricate web of airports around the globe, including at least one in Prestwick, Scotland, were used for the illegal transfer of terror suspects to secret CIA jails in countries outside of US territory and legal protection. Many of America's European allies were deeply involved in the CIA programme. Under President Bush, the CIA used a web of European airports and bases for its extraordinary rendition flights, secretly transferring terror suspects across borders for interrogation. Some European states helped the CIA to carry out kidnappings. Others hosted CIA "black sites" -, torture chambers - on their territory. After 9/11 the CIA reached out to its European allies as it embarked on its detention and extraordinary rendition operation. The aim was to place detainees beyond the reach of law. The active participation of dozens of foreign governments made both the renditions and interrogations possible. According to information compiled by Open Society Foundations, at least 54 governments cooperated with these CIA activities. Twenty-one of those are European, of which 17 were at the time members - or soon to become members - of the European Union. The UK cooperated closely with the CIA on detention and rendition - as documents found in Libya after the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 showed. The use of torture was not just routine, but included the willing participation of much of the west.

It is also extremely difficult to take Obama seriously, whilst he may have brought some of Bush's programmes to an end, he has however maintained Guantanamo Bay and expanded the US Drone programme across the globe. Similar to Bush's justification for torture Obama has justified drone strikes as targeted killings and precision strikes based on sound intel. But this has been exposed as what drone strikes really do is signature strikes not precision strikes. This is when the decision to fire is based not on who the targets are but on whether they are exhibiting suspicious patterns of behavior thought to be "signatures" of terrorists. So what's a signature behavior? "The definition is a male between the ages of 20 and 40," former ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter told the Daily Beast . The New York Times quoted a senior State Department official as saying that when the CIA sees "three guys doing jumping jacks," the agency thinks it is a terrorist training camp. Obama and Bush are in reality two sides of the same coin.

In defence of its values, the US administration, who is tasked with applying the values it is elected for, abandoned them. The justifications for this was accepted by the US public as a necessary evil in light of the 9/11 attacks. Despite this contradicting the US constitution, the US constitution was abandoned - in the name of defending it - a contradiction of epic proportions. In the face of adversity and a people who did not embrace so called universal values of liberty, democracy and justice, these very values were seen as impractical in this post 9/11 environment. The question that arises form this is if this bedrock of western civilisation is impractical, what does this say of other western values. This brings us to the title of this article - America's Soviet moment.

In 1961 the Soviet Union sought coexistence with the US, the world's leading Capitalist state. This was in direct contravention of the Communist creed. Communism eschewed all coexistence with Capitalism. By replacing the destruction of Capitalism with its accommodation, many people became aware of the impracticality of Communism in regulating relations with other states. This effectively became the beginning of the end of Communism and accelerated its demise, with its eventual collapse in 1990. With the US, dealing with those who do not espouse your values has highlighted a weakness in its values. Along with the Ferguson riots and other recent cases of racism within US institutions, US torture of those who were never afforded a trial may very well be America's Soviet moment and the beginning of the end of Capitalism.

Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by

Adnan Khan

The meeting conducted with Mr. Sharif Zayed, Head of Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir in Wilayah Egypt on the events in Egypt and its impact on the reality of the Ummah and its orientation towards the rule of Islam during the upcoming State of Islam, the Khilafah "Caliphate" Rashideh, on the method of the Prophethood.

Muharram 1436 AH - October 2014 CE

- Part I -

Part 2