Indonesia disbands pan-Islamist Hizbut Tahrir group

By Ainur Rohmah

TUBAN, Indonesia (AA) - Indonesia on Wednesday banned Hizbut Tahrir, a pan-Islamist group that wants to establish a global caliphate, alleging that it threatened the state’s pluralist ideology.

Freddy Haris, director-general of the Ministry of Law and Human Rights, told reporters that the decision to ban the organization was taken because it violated the Pancasila -- the five principles that form the foundation of a the Indonesian state.

“Although the organization listed Pancasila as an ideology in their organizational rules, many of their activities contradict it and the soul of the Indonesian state,” he said, according to news website detik.com.

The ban followed a presidential decree last week that gave the government powers to disband organizations it considers radical.

The new decree allows the government to hand down life sentences to members of such organizations without taking them to court.

At the end of last year, some organizations held demonstrations, demanding punishment for the Christian governor of the capital Jakarta on charges of blasphemy. In May, the court sentenced him to two years in prison.

According to the government, Hizbut Tahrir was one of several groups behind the protests that undermined Indonesia's reputation abroad for practicing a moderate form of Islam.

It accused the organization, which calls for the implementation of sharia law, of creating conflict in the world’s most populous Muslim country.

Rokhmat Labib, chairman of Hizbut Tahrir’s executive committee, told Anadolu Agency that the government did not send it a notification letter before imposing the ban.

“This dissolution indicates that this is a dictatorial regime,” Labib said.

Hizbut Tahrir, which claims it has a non-violent ideology, is allowed to preach in the U.K. but is banned in several Muslim countries including Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Founded by Palestinian Taqiuddin al-Nabhani al-Filastyni in 1953, it wants to bring an alternative order to democracy and capitalism through an Islamic caliphate.