Here’s the original LA Times story–note that Rotella’s caveats DO appear there, and were cut out of the Globe article you quoted from.

14 terrorism suspects held

I’ve heard back from the LA Times article’s author, and he says his sources were some Italian intelligence officers. In his message to me, he says this:

As you point out, if HT were involved in a network sending fighters to Iraq, that would be a significant shift. But as the story also pointed out, some of the Italian investigators have their doubts about the strength of the evidence that the HT group in Reggio Emilia were directly involved. It appears they had some contacts with the network, which is not unusual as you know. Previous cases in Britain and elsewhere show that HT members sometimes associate with violent jihadists and that former HT members join violent groups. But I am not sure this Italian case amounts to the smoking gun of a HT-terror link that many experts have been looking for in recent years. We will see what the investigation brings.

The version of the article you quoted from, which appeared in the Boston Globe, doesn’t contain the caveats the author has in his email to me–not sure why that happened. Nonetheless it looks like the HT link to the Italy arrests is not yet proven, and may be a case of association but not membership directed by a violent leadership.

So, I remain available for convincing, but I am not yet convinced that HT is involved in violence. This is all not to say that I support HT’s goals, which I clearly don’t, but that there’s no public evidence that they’re waging war against the West.

I’m willing to go along with you, assuming we see something to corroborate this article. Let’s keep an eye out.

In the meantime I sent an email to the author of that article, Sebastian Rotella, LA Times Paris bureau chief, which is yet unanswered. I asked him whether he got the Hizb ut Tahrir connection from another news outlet or from his own source. Until he answers me, I’m assuming he’s getting it from this kind of source. If you read the Italian press, they make it seem like a) Hizb ut Tahrir and al-Qaeda are closely related (not true) and b) Hizb ut Tahrir claimed responsibility for the London 7/7 attacks (not true).

So, if Mr. Rotella was reading Italian papers, and didn’t check any deeper with his own sources, his article doesn’t do anything except to repeat a mistake.

MADRID – Police around Europe arrested at least 14 suspected Islamic extremists yesterday in an operation targeting an Italy-based network that allegedly trained and dispatched suicide bombers from Europe to battle zones in Iraq and Afghanistan, authorities said….

…Nonetheless, the two-year probe by the Carabinieri reiterated the front-line role of extremists in Europe’s North African diaspora in providing fighters to Al Qaeda’s offshoot in Iraq and, increasingly, to the Pakistani-Afghan region where foreign jihadis battle alongside the resurgent Taliban. And the case shows the connections between the Iraqi and South Asian combat zones, investigators said.

“Today, everybody wants to go to Afghanistan,” said a senior Italian anti-terror official who, like many officials involved with investigating sensitive terrorism cases, requested anonymity. “In this case, the route was to cross Iraq and go through Iran to Afghanistan. But the most interesting thing is the proof of previous training in Italy. It was mostly theoretical. They showed them how to make a little bomb, how to get to the jihad zone, what to do when you arrive.”

Italian investigators coordinated with American counterparts, providing intelligence that enabled US troops in Iraq to capture some of the recruits who arrived from Italy, the anti-terror official said.

The case has another interesting and enigmatic aspect. The suspects in Reggio Emilia belong to Hizb ut Tahrir, a disciplined and structured fundamentalist group with roots in the Middle East and a strong presence in Northern Europe and Central Asia.

Despite its radical calls for establishment of a worldwide Islamic caliphate and virulent anti-Semitic rhetoric, Hizb ut Tahrir insists it is nonviolent.

URL: http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2007/11/07/police_target_italy_based_terror_network/

No, I don’t see why the opinions of two individuals “indicates” that your argument holds any water.

And read Shiraz Maher’s story closely. It says that he, Shiraz, was given the job by HT to recruit Bilal, a fellow student at Cambridge:

Like myself, Bilal didn’t have any non-Muslim friends and the circle of Muslims he chose to socialise with was small and selective. But he certainly trusted and respected us [Hizb ut-Tahrir]. I think this was because he recognised we shared the same ultimate vision as him for Iraq and the wider Muslim world. We only differed over our choice of method.

Bilal was not a member of HT.

And as Josh has pointed out, you’re changing your terms mid-argument. At first you say that Hizb ut-Tahrir belongs in the same sentence with al-Qaeda, Saddam, et alia. I challenge you on that, and you say that unless Hizb ut-Tahrir “issues a fatwa” (not sure they do that sort of thing in the first place, but maybe I’m wrong) against al-Qaeda, or they publicly cooperate in the unmasking of agents of radical Islam (such publicity, though, would ruin any undercover investigations), then they are still suspect and worthy of banning and banishment.

Now you are claiming that all you originally meant was that “Islamic ideology [is] a cause of Islamist terror.” No one had ever made the claim that ideology doesn’t play a role in terrorism on this post’s thread, and it would be idiotic to make a claim like that. For instance, some kind of ideology acted as a cause, among other causes, when members of a radical (Christian) militia blew up a federal building in Oklahoma.

To be clear: HT hasn’t committed any terrorist attacks.

And so it was through my involvement with Hizb ut-Tahrir and its ideology of extremist political Islam that I came to befriend Bilal, the alleged would-be bomber. That’s why I believe it’s wrong to distinguish between “extremism” and “violent extremism” as the government has been doing in recent months. The two are inextricably intertwined.

Here’s the URL: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article2042408.ece

Further, that democratic political leaders such as David Cameron’s call for the banning of Hizb ut-Tahrir in a democracy, as well as Islamists such as Shiraz Maher, indicates that it is legitimate to see Islamist ideology as a cause of Islamist terror.

Your first example: just because David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party, thinks HT should be banned in the UK doesn’t mean that they have had or do have any intention to use violence. In fact they haven’t, and they keep repeating that they won’t. Again, if they do, I’ll admit I was wrong.

Your second example: simply because Shiraz Maher went to school with the Glasgow bombers (as did everyone else at Cambridge University, when he knew them) does not mean that HT committed the bombings. In fact no one has ever presented any evidence to that end. Shiraz Maher himself never makes such a connection (so far as I have found in a cursory google) and he was in a position to know. The fact that he wrote an article about a posting on “an Islamist website” praising violence doesn’t say that it was on an HT website, and it wasn’t.

You need to make some finer distinctions. Sharpen those analytical blades and then come back. But, I thank you for raising some issues that I hadn’t heard about before–I don’t follow news closely enough from the UK apparently, and I find it sad that there’s a serious debate about silencing a still-legitimate political organization. Possibly that’s why there’s a tiny, intensely angry slice of Muslims there while in the US Muslims by and large still believe in the country they live in.

An Islamist website recently uploaded a video in English titled ‘advice to Muslims in Britain,’ in which an al-Qa’eda affiliate praises the 7/7 attacks and calls on British Muslims to carry out more suicide attacks.

Criminalising those engaged in spreading that kind of message underscores the seriousness of the problem which, left unchallenged, will continue to grow.

Fear that the law might be used to curb legitimate debate or dissent is unfounded.

Shiraz Maher is a former member of the radical group Hizb ut-Tahrir, and knew some of the men accused of the Glasgow car bomb attacks. He now works as a writer and broadcaster.