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Email this citationCIAO DATE: 06/04
Radical Islam in Central Asia: Responding to Hizb ut-Tahrir
June 30, 2003
Abstract
Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami (The Party of Islamic Liberation) stands apart from better known radical Islamist movements by its apparent opposition to the use of violence. But its views are highly radical, advocating the overthrow of governments throughout the Muslim world and their replacement by an Islamic state in the form of a recreated Caliphate. It has grown quickly in Central Asia and been met with a heavy-handed repression that threatens to radicalise members still further and sow the seeds of greater Islamist extremism in the region.
Hizb ut-Tahrir first emerged among Palestinians in Jordan in the early 1950s. It has achieved a small, but highly committed following in a number of Middle Eastern states and has also gained in popularity among Muslims in Western Europe and Indonesia. It began working in Central Asia in the mid-1990s and has developed a committed following inside Uzbekistan, and to a lesser extent in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan. Estimates of its strength vary widely, but a rough figure is probably 15-20,000 throughout Central Asia. Its influence should not be exaggerated -- it has little public support in a region where there is limited appetite for political Islam -- but it has become by far the largest radical Islamist movement in the area.
