Fanatics want to convert entire world

Banned in Germany and across the Middle East, Hizb ut-Tahrir, the Party of Liberation, is one of the most controversial - and also the strongest - Islamic groups in Britain today.

Hizb rejects the "corrupt society" of Britain and the West and, as George Galloway learned last night, even the most impeccable anti-war credentials are not enough to win its approval.

Its central belief is for a single Islamic state - a caliphate - which should start by uniting all Muslim countries, then embrace the entire world, including non-Islamic parts.

As Hizb's own website says: "The work of Hizb ut-Tahrir is to ... change the situation of the corrupt society so that it is transformed into an Islamic society."

Hizb "aims to bring back the Islamic guidance for mankind and to lead the Ummah (the Muslim community) into a struggle with Kufr (non-believing), its systems and its thoughts so that Islam encapsulates the world."

Hizb started on this mission in Britain with the Jews: it was accused of anti-semitism in its work in universities and has been banned from many university campuses after noisy campaigns in the Nineties.

It is not just the British election that the group rejects. In its East End heartland, it opposed the recent Brick Lane festival on the ground that it promoted "a culture of drinking alcohol, dancing and free-mixing" between the sexes.

It also advised Shabina Begum, the Luton girl who recently won a High Court ruling that she was entitled to wear a head-to-toe jilbab to school.

Hizb holds frequent conferences and speaker meetings, attracting numbers perhaps higher than any other Muslim group in Britain. Up to 8,000 people attended its last annual conference, although far from all of those were members.

It has a particular appeal for young middle-class Muslims, the same sort of people who so often make up the core of Islamic terror groups.

The actual membership may total less than 1,000. No one has proved a direct link between Hizb and terrorism, but the group's leaflet was found at the family home of Omar Sharif, the British man who launched a failed suicide attack in Tel Aviv.

Hizb's British founder, Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammed, left in 1996 to form an even more radical group, al-muhajiroun (The Emigrants). That organisation believes terrorism is a vital part of Islam, glorified the 9/11 highjackers for "the magnificent 19," and has earned itself a starring role in the tabloids.

The security serbutvices watched it but some described it as an example of "showbiz extremism" rather than a serious threat.

Last October, al muhajiroun announced it was shutting down and uniting with other groups, raising fears that it could be linking up with Hizb. Yesterday, former members of al-muhajiroun stormed the flagship Regent's Park mosque in an antielection protest, echoing the attacks on Mr Galloway and Oona King.

Hizb's British leader, a 28-year-old IT consultant called Jalaluddin Patel, insists the group is not violent and is no threat to the West. But he adds that we in Britain "need to understand what is really an inevitable matter, that Islam is coming back, the Islamic caliphate is going to be implemented in the world very soon".