HOWZAT

Members had a duty to “spread their message, not their name”. Ali said: “You definitely can’t have (Jews) as close friends.” A few days later, at a human rights demonstration at the Uzbek embassy in London, Ali introduced the reporter to Thaqib Razaq, 18, an A-level pupil and a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir.

Razaq, from Walthamstow, northeast London, described how he had asked a Hizb ut-Tahrir “sheikh”, a senior member, what would happen if he became a suicide bomber. He said the reply was: “I can strap a bomb to myself and kill as many people as I can. I’m going to die shahid (martyr) and go to jannah (heaven).”

Razaq pointed out, however, that the sheikh had advised him that a more practical way to secure Palestinian freedom might be to establish a caliphate (transnational Islamic state) “to give voice to the Muslims”.

Razaq said: “Stop Islamophobia is set up by us. But we don’t actually push it like that. The moment they link Hizb ut-Tahrir with Stop Islamophobia, they’ll bring the whole campaign down.”

Razaq invited the reporter to the basement of a friend’s restaurant in Walthamstow to begin the initiation. He explained the “party method”, which he said was non-violent but demanded complete dislocation from democracy and British secular values.

“You don’t work with the system,” said Razaq. “Our political work is outside the system in order to create that Islamic change. We want influential people, but when you win them over you win them over to the framework of Islam.”

At Queen Mary, Atif Choudhury, who ran the Stop Islamophobia Campaign at the college’s freshers’ fair, reiterated Hizb ut-Tahrir’s non-violent standpoint but refused to condemn Islamic organisations such as Al-Qaeda that support violence.

Leaflets issued by the campaign at a number of freshers’ fairs listed Hizb ut-Tahrir as one of its supporters, but a Hizb ut-Tahrir spokesman said he had no knowledge of Stop Islamophobia.

Hassan Choudhury, national co-ordinator of Stop Islamophobia, also denied any link with Hizb ut-Tahrir even though Razaq said that he had joined Hizb ut-Tahrir at the same time as him.

Choudhury declined to comment, but he has written for New Civilization, a Hizb ut-Tahrir publication.

Any evidence of Hizb ut-Tahrir’s continuing recruitment on university campuses is likely to cause concern that students may be lured towards violent extremism.

In a 2003 report by the Saban Center, a right-leaning think tank in Washington, Hizb ut-Tahrir, founded in 1952 in east Jerusalem, was described as a “conveyor belt to terrorism”.

The government’s concerns about Hizb ut-Tahrir were set out in August when Blair detailed a 13-point plan to tackle terrorism. “We will proscribe Hizb ut-Tahrir and the successor organisation of Al-Mujahiroun,” he said.

Last week the government released a list of 15 proscribed organisations. It did not include Hizb ut-Tahrir, but a Downing Street spokesman said other suspect groups would be proscribed later: “The prime minister’s position hasn’t changed.”

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