Global Caliphate Conference Planned for Austria Next Month

“The relentless decline of Capitalism has begun. The time has come to fight against poverty. Time to obliterate the injustices. Time for the correct system.”

So declares a video promoting the global "Caliphate Conference 2012" next month in Austria, suggesting the “correct system” is an international Islamic-based one replacing capitalism, which the video blames for catastrophe, civil war, and never-ending poverty.

Organized by the fundamentalist Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, the conference will take place on March 10th south of Vienna.

Soeren Kern of the Stonegate Institute reports:

The main theme of the event will be "The Caliphate: The State Model of the Future."

The conference is being organized by Hizb ut-Tahrir [Party of Liberation], a pan-Islamic extremist group that seeks to establish a global Islamic state, or caliphate, ruled by Islamic Sharia law.

Hizb ut-Tahrir -- which is banned in many countries, including Germany, but is free to operate in Austria -- is virulently opposed to Western capitalism and democracy and seeks to extend the future caliphate to Europe and the United States.

According to a promotional video (in German) for the conference, "the Islamic Caliphate is the only social and political system that has the right solutions to the political, social and economic problems of humanity."

Here is the video with English subtitles which was posted on the Media Research Center’s website:

Kern writes that a similar conference scheduled for March 4th in Belgium was cancelled after local opposition. The Blaze reported on the caliphate conference in the Netherlands last year, and a similarly-themed conference took place in Chicago in June 2010.

Hizb ut-Tahrir defines its goals as bringing Sharia into all aspects of civil life and restoring the caliphate to its primal position over all other nations. From its website:

Its aim is to resume the Islamic way of life and to convey the Islamic Call to the world. This objective means bringing the Muslims back to living an Islamic way of life in Dar al-Islam (the domain of Islam) and in an Islamic society such that all of life's affairs in society are administered according to the Shari'ah rules, and the viewpoint in it is the Halal (lawful) and the Haram (prohibited) under the shade of the Islamic State, which is the Khilafah (Caliphate) State. The Party, as well, aims at the correct revival of the Islamic Ummah through enlightened thought.

It also strives to bring her back to her previous might and glory such that she wrests the reins of initiative away from other states and nations, and returns to her rightful place as the first state in the world, as she was in the past, when she governs the world according to the laws of Islam.

To get a better sense of the group behind the conference, “leaflets” posted on Hizb ut-Tahrir's website  advocate a violent struggle against Israel over Gaza:

Lifting the siege of Gaza will never happen through condemnation or Hajj to the UN

It can only ever happen through mobilization of the armies that surround the Jewish entity, as a bracelet encircles a wrist

And a call for military action to conquer Al-Quds, Arabic for Jerusalem:

Al-Quds cannot be liberated by resorting to protests and sit-in… it can only be restored by mobilizing armed forces to eliminate the Jewish entity!

Former U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Bolton on the sidelines of last year’s CPAC conference told a Salon reporter:

“There are leaders in that part of the world who do – like Osama bin Laden - talk about the restoration of the caliphate and I am very disturbed by that because that kind of radical ideology I think threatens moderate Muslim and Arabic regimes that are important to American national security interests.”

Kern of the Stonegate Institute suggests that the fact that the conference is taking place openly indicates Hizb ut-Tahrir aims to enhance its recruiting efforts among Europe’s Muslim population.