Hizb ut-Tahrir between Radicalism and Nonviolence: A Review of Current Literature

Abstract

The article offers a general overview of several significant contributions to the study of Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami (HT), or the Islamic Party of Liberation, in the past three decades. As one of the oldest but lesser-known Islamist organizations that currently operates in dozens of countries around the globe, HT has often been characterized by observers as having a highly distinct identity which combines a utopian quasi-milleniarist ideology, a unique non-violent strategy and at the same time an extremely radical rhetoric akin to that of the most notorious jihadist groups, like al-Qaida or ISIS. This "explosive" combination has rendered HT a permanent subject of close scrutiny in numerous academic and analytical publications which attempted to disentangle what is "real" in the agenda of the movement from what is strategically used merely as a decoy in specific socio-political contexts. However, as it becomes evident from the available literature, the inherent ambivalence of HT as an Islamist group has defied definite answers to the most pressing questions regarding its true nature and attitudes vis-а-vis violence producing a range of policy responses to its activities. Reviewing the current state of research in this area, the article demonstrates that while in the past twenty years the majority of analysts and scholars have generally agreed that HT cannot be regarded as a terrorist organization per se, nonetheless they, paradoxically, arrived at vastly different assessments of it as a security threat and suggested markedly different strategies for curtailing the spreading of its influence among Muslims in Europe and Central Asia.