“Caliphate Now” was the motto of Hizb ut-Tahrir Islamist party in the streets of London during the 1990s, before Omar Bakri broke away from the group and founded al-Muhajiroun, which retained the same motto, around which Muslims from around the world have gathered. This slogan has disappeared from the streets of the British capital, after the “flight” of Omar Bakri and his sudden appearance in Lebanon, where he was imprisoned for one day and then released. Bakri took up residence in Lebanon, leaving behind his “brethren” Abu Qatada and Abu Omar al-Masri in prison. Bakri has still no idea why he was pardoned, even though the three filled British television screens with their boastful appearances, issuing fatwas on excommunication and killing left and right. British television would host them whenever those in charge wanted to show the “true” picture of “correct” Islam. One can recall Omar Bakri, his slogan, and his “brethren” on the occasion of the Hizb ut-Tahrir Islamist party's convening of a conference at the Bristol Hotel in Beirut. The party invited its thinkers from Afghanistan and Pakistan, and all parts of the world, to commemorate the 89th anniversary of the “infidels' abolishing the Caliphate” of the Ottoman Empire, by Kemal Ataturk, who founded the Turkish Republic, which was followed the establishment of Arab republics in the countries that had been subject to the rule of Constantinople. “Caliphate Now” continues as the party's slogan, which was championed by Omar Bakri in London. Like everything in Lebanon, the conference and the occasion turned into a controversy, which brought everyone closer to the abyss of sectarian and religious strife. One element of the controversy is that the party received permission to operate in Lebanon, to confront other religious parties, particularly Hizbullah, during the government of Fouad Siniora. This was when Ahmad Fatfat was the minister of interior, and it came during a period of sectarian conflict in the country, taking place in the streets in 2006. Fatfat's democratic convictions and previous leftist affiliation did not prevent him from authorizing a sectarian party, despite its call for establishing a caliphate “now,” and considering Lebanon a wilaya (province) under the authority of this caliphate. There was also a contradiction because its principles contradict the notion of public freedoms, especially freedom of belief, which is a basis of the Covenant on Human Rights (Lebanese are proud that one of their biggest giants, Charles Malik, helped draft this international document). This is because the party does not allow the rule of non-Muslims over Muslims and believes democracy to be apostasy, not to mention the fact it holds regimes that oppose the re-establishment of the caliphate to be apostates. None of this prevented the Lebanese government from authorizing permission for Hizb ut-Tahrir, which has become an association (the official name of any party in Lebanon), to operate, hold conferences and seminars, and issue publications, not to mention carry out other activities like everyone else. These activities can subject the security of the country and its citizens to danger and they can be ignored, so as not to anger a certain sect and cause it to announce its secession, in a system of cantons. Ahmad al-Qasas, a Hizb ut-Tahrir media official, says the party is different from Hezbollah, which believes in wilayat al-faqih (clerical rule) and “understands Lebanon's special characteristics, and thus has abandoned its religious project in Lebanon, (and this) does not prompt Hizb ut-Tahrir to re-evaluate things because it does not work at the Lebanese level to begin with; it is preparing the ground in Lebanon for the presumed moment of change, in more than one Islamic wilaya.” Preparing the ground? How? Commemorating the occasion of the “infidels' abolishing the caliphate,” the slogan of Hizb ut-Tahrir raised at the Bristol Conference, and “Caliphate Now,” the slogan of Omar Bakri, do not hint that preparing the ground in Lebanon for it to become a wilaya of the caliphate will be non-violent, or fail to prepare everyone for strife and civil war.
