AARON PATRICK: Hizb ut-Tahrir, a group that preaches hate, asks Australians for tolerance

Hizb ut-Tahrir knew what was coming. But the Islamist group’s defence demonstrated, presumably inadvertently, why it is regarded as one of the primary threats to Australian social cohesion.

On Monday morning, a few hours before Anthony Albanese announced the introduction of a law next week to ban it, the Palestinian-based advocate of an Islamic caliphate pleaded in an open letter for tolerance from Australians.

“This is the slippery slope we are now facing,” the group said. “Despite one’s views on Islam and Muslims. Despite one’s views on Hizb ut-Tahrir. Despite one’s position on Palestine. Do any of us want a government deciding who can and cannot speak based on who they like or dislike?”

Although many Australians are likely to have heard about Hizb ut-Tahrir in passing – its extreme adherence to Islam is periodically covered in the media – not many may realise that its radicalisation of young men and women around the world has led it to be legally banished across most of the Middle East and parts of Europe.

Even Indonesia, the largest Muslim nation, decided Hizb ut-Tahrir was too dangerous to allow to continue proselytizing in the name of Allah.

‘Mass hysteria’

Monday’s written defence from the group, which summed up a one-hour video discussion with spokesman Wassim Doureihi posted on the weekend, will not assuage Jews and others who allege Hizb ut-Tahrir stokes anti-Semitism.

Mr Doureihi’s central argument is that Israel and “Zionists” are using the Bondi massacre to rehabilitate Israel’s reputation following the devastating war in the Gaza Strip.

Mr Doureihi did not use the word Israel, which he referred to as “the Zionist entity in Palestine” – a similar phrase used by the Iranian ayatollahs who openly call for the destruction of Israel.

The Bondi Beach massacre created “mass hysteria” and “significant paranoia,” he said. As for the perception Australia’s worst terrorist attack was inspired by ISIS, Mr Doureihi said “there no evidence to point to that apart from the flag” of the terror group displayed on the Akrams’ car before they began shooting on December 14.

“Australia is well adept at inflicting carnage and violence on other countries but not for it be reciprocated and inflicted on this country,” Mr Doureihi said in the interview. “There is now a concerted effort to demonise Islam and Muslims. Anti-Semitism is rooted in the Western world, not the Muslim world.”

Below the threshold

Hizb ut-Tahrir has been waging a rhetorical war against Israel since the group’s formation in 1953. In Australia, where politicians have complained for over a decade about its inflammatory language, it took 25 deaths to create a political consensus that Hizb ut-Tahrir stokes anti-Jewish hatred and deserves banning.

As the government presented the timetable for the new law, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, a long-time critic of Hizb ut-Tahrir, said the organisation operated just below the legal threshold for the incitement of violence.

“This bill will lower that threshold,” he said. “We have had enough of organisations that hate Australia playing games with Australian law.”

The Combating Anti-Semitism Hate and Extremism bill will allow the Government to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir and the National Socialist Network, a neo-Nazi group that staged an anti-Jewish demonstration outside the NSW Parliament on November 8.

The Government expects the law, which parliament will be asked to pass next Tuesday, to be challenged in the High Court. Although the constitution does not guarantee freedom of speech, the court has interpreted the founding document to create an implicit right to engage in political communication.

The Opposition’s opposition

Whether advocacy of destruction of “the Zionist project” – Israel – is legally protected speech won’t be known until the court rules, a process that could take years.

But the law represents a shift against extremist Muslims who demonstrate hostility towards Western culture and Jews, who say they are collectively targeted under the label “Zionist”, a term for those who support the creation of Israel in its current location.

The law will also give the Home Affairs Minister greater power to reject immigrants or visitors perceived to be racist or likely to foment social discord.

Even though it will almost certainly vote for the law, the Opposition complained it combines a mechanism to ban extremist groups with a scheme to buy newly outlawed guns.

“We are deeply sceptical of the Prime Minister’s decision to introduce a single bill that will attempt to cover multiple complex and unrelated policy areas, for example issues of speech are clearly separate from the ownership and management of firearms,” Liberal leader Sussan Ley said. “This is a political decision, aimed at fostering division – not creating unity.”

‘Factories of hate’

In NSW, the Government said on Monday councils would be given extra powers to shut down prayer rooms used by extremist groups, which Premier Chris Minns called “factories of hate”.

One of the accused Bondi shooters, Naveed Akram, was associated with the now infamous Al Madina Dawah Centre around 2019 in the Western Sydney suburb of Bankstown.

Whether the measures will drive extremists underground, or lead the movement to die out, is unclear.

Three weeks before the Bondi massacre, Hizb ut-Tahrir held a conference at a wedding function centre in Bankstown. A photograph published by the Daily Telegraph showed hundreds of men listening to speeches, which condemned the West and called for Sharia law.

Meanwhile, most writers signed up to speak at next month’s Adelaide Writers Festival had withdrawn, according to left-wing lawyer Josh Bornstein. “Maybe an abridged version can go ahead,” he wrote on social media. “With Tony Abbott, Greg Sheridan, Bob Carr & Blanche D’Alpuget?”

The boycott was triggered by the organisers’ decision to cancel a speaker’s invitation to Arab academic Randa Abdel-Fattah, whose support for the war against Israel is similar to Hizb ut-Tahrir’s.