ISLAMIC LIBERATION PARTY (ILP)

Organization (Hizb al-Tahrir al-Islami, in Arabic) created in November 1952 in Jerusalem by Shaykh Taqi al-Din al-Nabhani (1909–1979), who broke with the Muslim Brotherhood because of its links with the Jordanian Hashemite government. Nabhani was an Islamic court judge in Jerusalem and a former associate of the mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husayni.

The ILP advocated the establishment of a new caliphate in the Islamic world, opposing both pan-Arabism and nationalist ideas of the left. Because of its opposition to the Hashemite regime, it was soon banned in Jordan, and Nabhani fled to Lebanon in 1953. ILP members were implicated in a number of coup attempts in Jordan (1969), Egypt (1974), and Tunisia (1985). The general ideas of the ILP were adopted by Shaykh Asad Bayud Tamimi, one of the founders of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. In June 1993, several members of the ILP were questioned by the Jordanian police, accused of having attempted to assassinate King Hussein. In August 1994, the ILP sponsored an Islamic conference in London attended by representatives of HAMAS, the Algerian Armed Islamic Group, and Hizbullah. Today the Islamic Liberation Party exists in Britain, where it is legal—its British branch was founded in 1986 by Shaykh Omar Bakri Muhammad—and illegally in a number of Arab and non-Arab Islamic countries; most of its members are now said to be Central Asian. In 2003 it was banned in Russia, where the government accused it of association with Islamic fighters in Chechnya, and it has been accused of terrorist activities in Uzbekistan, although there is no evidence that it has ever been involved in violence or terrorism. In 2004 a group of twenty-six Islamists, including five Britons, were jailed for attempting to revive the party in Egypt.

SEE ALSO Hizbullah;Husayni, Hajj Amin al-;Hussein ibn Talal;Muslim Brotherhood;Palestinian Islamic Jihad.