Press Release
Proposal to Ban Hizb ut Tahrir Rests on Lies and Racist, Islamophobic Tropes

The Australian government’s proposal to ban Hizb ut Tahrir can only be advanced by misrepresenting Hizb ut Tahrir’s positions and hoping decades of racist framings of Muslims in this country will prevent any real scrutiny of the government’s claims.

Hizb ut Tahrir is part of the Muslim community, so through an Islamophobic lens, we must either be dangerous, and therefore neutralised, or we must be unintelligent, and therefore managed.

‘Muslims don’t form opinions, they get radicalised. Muslims don’t express views, they spew hate. Muslims can’t even be trusted to read the news, as grievances inevitably morph into mass casualty events.’ Such is the racism relied upon by the Australian government.

Muslims in this country, of which Hizb ut Tahrir is but one part, stand proud of their unstinting, principled opposition to the genocide in Gaza. In our eyes, occupation will always be wrong. Genocide will always be wrong. Destroying homes over the heads of their inhabitants will always be wrong. Bombing hospitals, schools and food distribution centres will always be wrong. Raping prisoners will always be wrong.

Instead of facing these facts head on, the Australian government has embarked upon a deliberate campaign of misinformation. Who is going to check their claims anyway, right? Who is going to stick their necks out for Muslims anyway, right?

The government claims Hizb ut Tahrir is “like the neo-Nazis” - a bizarre comparison that would leave both us and actual Nazis equally confused. We’re also supposedly behind the violence at a synagogue in Caulfield - a suburb we only learned existed through this very accusation. If we can’t convincingly label Hizb ut Tahrir as violent, then let’s say they encourage violence. If that doesn’t stick, then perhaps they inspire it. Or at the very least, they praise it! Who knows - the point is, we must somehow connect them to violence. And for good measure, let’s throw in the antisemitism card too.

Such is the level of public discourse the Australian government now deems acceptable, amplified by Zionist advocates that are desperate to rehabilitate their image by demonising ours. 

What the government is proposing should be horrifying to all of us. Because Zionist advocates don’t like what we say, the Australian government is preparing to create a specific set of laws to outlaw what we say - which by their own admission, and repeated by successive governments over decades - has always been within our legal right to say.

But they want to now recast legitimate political speech as hate, not because it is hate (whatever that means), but because they hate what we say, and Zionist advocates have a very long list of people they really hate.

Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir
in Australia