Breaking News: Hizb ut-Tahrir Sydney Conference Shut Down

Via Little Green Footballs, news that the Bankstown City Council has shut down the Khalifah Conference. The information can be found at the organisation's website:

Sydney, Australia - The decision taken today by Bankstown City Council to cancel the venue for the up-coming Khilafah Conference displays the hollowness of the ‘free speech’ rhetoric.

Without proper explanation or consultation, the council has unilaterally withdrawn the availability of the Bankstown Town Hall as the venue for the Khilafah Conference to be held on the 27th January 2007.

Wassim Doureihi, spokesperson for Hizb ut-Tahrir Australia, says: “The decision taken today by Bankstown City Council speaks volumes of the empty rhetoric surrounding the supposed noble epitomes of western liberal democracy.”

The key message is in the last sentence.

Islamists use whatever tools modern free societies are available in their quest to establish a non-western non-liberal non-democratic Caliphate. These tools include freedom of speech, freedom to gather and protest, freedom to vote and freedom of expression in the media (both traditional and new).

And none of it is original: even their fascist and anti-Semitic streaks are rehashed philosophies of 19th and 20th century Europeans.

If they were to succeed, then there would be no more democracy. Fear would replace freedom. We don't have to imagine what it would be like: we have seen some of the most recent Islamist governments in power. These were Taliban in Afghanistan and the Islamist Courts Union in Somalia.

Only one remains today: Hamas in Gaza.