'We Don't Want to Be Accepted': Radical Islamic Group Holds 'Unapologetically Muslim' Conference in Sydney
The radical Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir Australia (HTA) held a conference in Sydney on Sunday, April 28, in which speakers railed against diversity, LGBT rights, and the West, and argued for the implementation of Sharia law.
The four-hour conference concluded with an interview with Wassim Doureihi, the HTA spokesman who made headlines in 2014 for refusing to denounce Islamic State. “We don’t want to be accepted,” Doureihi told the audience. Doureihi outlined his belief in the Hudud, the word for punishments delivered under Sharia law, and said “the West has its boots over [Muslims’] necks.”
“We’ve probably bought into the lie that is tolerance, diversity and multiculturalism,” Doureihi said. “We’re sold the rhetoric of acceptance of diversity, and different people’s and different opinions and different religions but not realizing the reality of what that entails.”
Doureihi also criticised Australia’s three largest parties, saying “all of them support wars against the Muslim world, and all of them are contributing to the Islamophobia in which [Muslims] exist today.”
The conference was held three days after HTA said its leader, Ismail al-Wahwah, had been released from jail in Jordan. Credit: Hizb ut-Tahrir via Storyful
