You ask: "Pakistan is cracking down on the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir. So why is it allowed to operate freely in the United States and Britain?"

Answer: Umm...because we have something called freedom of speech, which you seem to despise. Believe it or not, but advocating the establishment of a caliphate or advocating resistance to occupation is not illegal. In fact, specifically advocating and armed struggle against the US government is also not illegal. Amazing isn't it!? Controversial speech is the only speech that is ever truly in need of protection, because it's the only type of speech that comes under threat from the government and private citizens.

It sounds a lot like the Israeli Shas party. Except the Shas party is actually in the government. Perhaps that is a party which their government should be clamping own on, instead of promoting their ministers.

I think all far-right theologians of all faiths can go to heck in a handbasket. The world has no need of them, and they are merely more likely to encourage tensions and communal violence between faiths. But instead of violently banning them, we should make ourselves all aware of their dangerous views and how they are really quite similar to one another.

The Pakistani army wants to preserve itself. That is all they care about, and even with their insanely poor judgment, they'll do what they believe is necessary.

Here is where we in the west see one of the most deleterious effects of our oil dependence - our inability to speak plainly on a fundamental issue. Why is it that Obama has never made the following statement?

"Governance by secular democracy in the United States is permanent. Any effort to change that will be seen as a direct challenge to the US Constitution and a direct threat to our nation. Only a complete overthrow of the Constitution and the complete conquest of the US military will bring religious law to the US, and it is the duty of every American citizen to see that this does not happen."

The reason is that this will will piss off the Saudis, and we need their oil.

Why did we not make this statement during the Iranian post-election uprising in '09?

"The Iranian people are demanding something that is a fundamental right of all people - true democracy. They know that the so-called democracy they now have is a sham, since it leaves the Supreme Leader above the will of the people. They are oppressed, and they know it."

The reason is that this will piss off the Saudis, and we need their oil.

Why have we not made the following statement regarding the Arab Spring?

"The United States stands with all people who wish to cast off the yoke of tyranny in their native lands, but only insofar as they wish to replace that tyranny with true democracy. Groups wishing to replace one form of dictatorship with another will find no help from the west."

The reason is that this will piss off the Saudis, and we need their oil.

Until the the Arab Spring demonstrated once and for all that there is indeed a desire for democracy in the Arab world, and the will to fight for it, the choices for the US have been either bad (dictatorial governments) or worse (religiously dictatorial governments). But as I said, things have changed.

What do you think the US should do now? (And please don't mention Israel - it's completely irrelevant to the discussion of a global Caliphate).

At the end of this I attach an article re David Cameron the British PM. But basically we would need revised legislation to ban them as you can not simply ban political parties in the UK. Just so you know there have been almost annual reviews of their status but they always just scrape through...

They are a very difficult lot who have disrupted lots of council meetings and corporate events in London especially but do not of espouse in your face violence (in public anyway). There have been numerous TV exposes of them and even our NUS (student unions) want then expelled. However ultimately we are a very liberal country and if we allow the BNP (equivalent of your white supremacists)..... bit difficult to ban you know who.

The article below by the way is now out of date as it looks like the Conservatives have justhad legal advice that any ban could be overturned at judicial review (June 2011)

May 2011 London, (The Muslim News):

Prime Minister David Cameron confirmed Wednesday that he would still like to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir more than almost four years since calling for the group to be proscribed under Britain's terrorism laws.

“We have got to target groups that actually promote extremism and not just violent extremism. I would like to see action taken against Hizb ut-Tahrir and that review is under way,” Cameron told MPs.

But The Muslim News has learnt that the ban is likely to be included when the Government announces its review of the Prevent Violent Extremism (PVE) programme later this month.

A Government spokeswoman told The Muslim News that the Prime Minister “has been working hard” to “ban extremist groups, not necessarily violent like Hizb ut-Tahrir” and that this will be included in the forthcoming review of the counter terrorism measures.

In January 2010, Islam4UK and al-Muhajiroun became the first non-violent Muslim groups to be banned when they were proscribed by the former Labour Government for the “glorification” of terrorism.

As leader of the opposition, Cameron raised the issue in July 2007, just a week after Gordon Brown became Prime Minister, when he asked: “We think it [Hizb ut-Tahrir] should be banned – why has this not happened?”

It was raised again at Prime Minister’s Questions in November 2009 during an exchange when Cameron made allegations about two independent Islamic schools which turned out to be untrue. Brown later explained in a letter that any decision to ban the group “must be based on evidence that the group has broken the law" and Hizb ut-Tahrir had not met the tightly defined legal test under the Terrorism Act 2000.

In its election manifesto last year, the Conservatives made the pledge to “ban any organisation which advocate hate or the violent overthrow of our society, such as Hizb-ut-Tahrir." This came after former Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Grayling MP, also said in his speech to the Conservative Party conference in 2009: “I will immediately ban Hiz b’ut Tahrir”.

Pakistan projects sympathetic image as a victim of terror, even as it is, in fact, the creator of terrorism. Pakistan continues to shelter, nurture, support and protect innumerable terrorist outfits on its soil. So Pakistan has invited jihadist violence upon itself.

Nobody forced Pakistani government to facilitate relocation of Osama bin Laden from Sudan to Afghanistan in 1996. Pakistan’s democratic government of Pakistan chose to do so of its own free will.

Nobody forced Pakistani Army and Intelligence to create what ex-CIA official Bruce Reidel called ‘this jihadist Frankenstein’ monster in 1990s. Pakistani Army and Intelligence chose to do so with the full financing provided by Pakistan’s democratic governments at the time.

Following are verbatim quotes from what Gen (rtd) Jack Keane said at a discussion on Afghanistan organized by the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think-tank on June 30, 2011:

1. "The truth is, the ISI aids and abets the sanctuaries in Pakistan that the Afghan (Taliban) operate out of. They provide training for them, they provide resources for them and they provide intelligence for them. From those sanctuaries, every single day Afghan fighters come into Afghanistan and kill and maim us".

2. "There's a direct relationship of ISI's complicity and the deaths of American soldiers and the catastrophic wounding of those soldiers. The chief of staff of the Pakistani military is complicit. He used to be the director of ISI. He put the guy in there who is in charge now and he has full knowledge of what I'm just describing".

3. "This partnership has got to be based on that harsh reality. There are two ammonium nitrate factories in Pakistan. 80 per cent of the explosive devices that are used to kill our soldiers, kill Afghan security forces and kill Afghan people come from Pakistan."

4. "All of what I just said to you, when we confront them with this, they lie to us.

With Pakistani Army headed by General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, who once headed ISI, repeatedly lying to the United States, America‘s Afghan mission was doomed from the very beginning.

U. S. has deliberately deluded itself about Afghan Taliban’s Pakistani connections in fueling and sustaining Afghan insurgency as reported by Matt Waldman in ‘The sun in the sky‘ on 6/13/2010, corroborated by WikiLeaks leaks on 7/25/2010 and then further corroborated by Chris Alexander, Canadian ambassador to Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005 and Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Afghanistan from 2005 until 2009 in his article on 7/30/2010 titled ‘The huge scale of Pakistan‘s complicity‘.

Previous US ambassador Anne Patterson to Pakistan, wrote in a secret review in 2009 that ‘Pakistan's Army and ISI are covertly sponsoring four militant groups - Haqqani‘s HQN, Mullah Omar‘s QST, Al Qaeda and LeT - and will not abandon them for any amount of US money‘, as diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks show.

Ambassador Patterson had NO reason to mislead her own State Department and U. S. government.

Duplicitous Pakistan has U. S. under the barrel of a gun - US can NOT use its aid leverage to force Pakistan to stop supporting terrorist groups who kill US/NATO troops in Afghanistan day in and day out because US needs Pakistan’s help in ferrying supplies to those very US/NATO troops.

American soldiers are dying in Afghanistan because of their own government’s misguided policies. For deliberately ignoring Taliban’s Pakistani connections, US deserves to be duped by Pakistan.