Natasha Walters seems to rather like Hizb ut Tahrir. Yes, she says the right things about its banning (free speech does actually mean free you see) but this strikes me as a little odd:
But the organisation
has other faces too. I first met a couple of articulate women from Hizb
ut-Tahrir over a year ago. Among their views on the political system
the party would like to see instituted in Muslim states, they talked of
its promise of a more equal society focused on distribution rather than
production. "There is an alternative to capitalism," said Ruksana
Rahman. Another spokeswoman, Dr Nazreen Nawaz, told me: "The Islamic
economic system would provide an answer to poverty."
As
I talked to these women I realised that what they were saying echoed in
certain ways what young people in the 1930s would have said about why
they had turned to communism. These women were impatient about the
powerlessness of their people; although those people were not the
international working class but the international Muslim community.
They believed that human society was perfectible, even if it was to be
perfected not by following the precepts of Marx but those of Muhammad,
and even if the endpoint – the Caliphate – was the dictatorship not of
the proletariat but of the faithful.
Absurd
as such idealism might seem to many people in Britain, it is surely not
beyond the bounds of our imagination to see why it has become
attractive even to some educated and articulate people. Many young
people in 1930s Britain and America found themselves observing the
inertia of an unjust society and decided that the only way forward was
through fidelity to a utopian dream. By joining an international
movement they found a sense of solidarity and purpose that many held on
to even when the ideals were tarnished beyond repair.
The Islamic economic system would reduce poverty? Quite barking….it’s worked so well elsewhere eh? The idea of the zakat is fine, the tithe to the poor. The idea that the alleviation of poverty, that charity itself, is a personal obligation, not one that can be delegated to the State or seized by it, is one I have a great deal of sympathy for.
But the abolition of interest? Sorry, money has a time value and it’s an essential part of an efficiently running (ie wealthy) economy.
But then this is The Guardian. Anything that isn’t capitalism must be worthwhile, eh?
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