The ongoing violence following the publication of 12 caricatures of the prophet Mohammed in then obscure Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten. in September 2005, should have surprised no one; the seeds of Islamic attacks against Denmark, as a stepping-stone to the Islamist takeover of Europe were planted long before the cartoons were even published.

In April 15, 2005, five months before the cartoons ran, Palestinian preacher and Hizb Ut Tahrir leader Sheikh Issam Amayra called from al Aqasa Mosque in Jerusalem, upon Muslims in Denmark to begin a holy war. His sermon translated from the Arabic by Jonathan Dahoah Halevi, director of Orient research Group in Toronto, Canada.

Amayra’s sermon warned that: “…the three percent of the Muslims in Denmark constitute a threat to the future of the kingdom of Denmark. And that should not be a surprise. After all, the Muslims in Yathrib [the city of Medina, before Mohammed moved there from Mecca] constituted less than three percent of the population there. Yet they managed to change Yathrib into Medina. Thus, it should not be a surprise that our Danish brothers manage to bring Islam to all the homes of the Danes. Allah will grant them the victory in their country in order to raise the Caliphate in Denmark.”

Amayra continued, “Afterwards the citizens of the Caliphate (which will be raised in Denmark) will wage war on Oslo, and after they change that city’s name to Medina [for the Arabian holy city] they will fight their neighboring Scandinavian countries in order to join their lands to the territory of the Caliphate. In the next stage, they will wage a holy war and spread the message of Islam to the rest of Europe, until they reach the original city of Medina. Then they will join both cities under the banner of Islam.”

Amayra, a 56-year-old Palestinian and leader of the Muslim Brotherhood splinter group, Hizb ut Tahrir, has focused his teachings on the revival of the Caliphate worldwide. He was arrested in Hebron in 1990 for preaching against negotiation with Israel and the Oslo Accords. He also participated in a 1994 Hizb ut Tahrir conference in London.

His own curriculum vitae proudly boats of Amayra’s writings and lecture tours spreading Dawa, the Islamic practice of “inviting” non-Muslims to Islam. His talks took him to Kuwait, Jordan, the Palestinian territories, Iraq, Egypt, the United Kingdom and the United States. In 2000, Amayra twice participated in Hizb ut Tahrir meetings in Chicago.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf last August, after the London bombings, warned Britain to act against HT. In a meeting with the British Premier, Musharraf admonished Blair, saying, “There is Hizb Ur-Tahrir and al-Muhajiroun, who operate with full impunity in that [England] area.” Emphasizing the violent nature of the group, Musharraf stated, “They had the audacity of passing an edict against my life and yet they operate with impunity.”

Hizb ut Tahrir is usually described as a political party, and that suits its members just fine. It enables them to operate just like the Palestinian group HAMAS, using the political fa￧ade to mask their terrorism. The HT terrorist activities are usually carried out by its splinter organization, the al-Muhajiroun, which was established in 1995. The al-Muhajioun, like al Qaeda and Hizbollah, describe the USA, the United Kingdom and Israel as “the work of the devil,” and European democracy as “a farce”.

International experts have mentioned Hizb ut-Tahrir and al-Mujahiroun in connection with the recruitment of fighters for the Taliban, as well as membership in the al-Qaeda terrorist networks. Omar Bakri Mohammad, the leader of al-Mujahiroun, who preached in London, also threatened to overthrow the Danish government, as was reported by the Copenhagen Post, on August 9, 2002.

The HT’s goal is to establish a global caliphate and force all non-Muslim states to pay a tax or face war. Its members join al-Qaeda, according to the director of international security and energy programs at the Nixon Centre in Washington, DC, Zeyno Baran. More ominously, HT and al-Mujahiroun call for a jihad against the U.S., its allies, and moderate Muslim states in order to “find and kill the Kufar (non-believers).” These groups, together with the Muslim Brotherhood, were reportedly behind last Fall’s riots in France.

At the same time that riots shook France last Fall, Arhus, Denmark’s second largest city, suffered rioting Muslims, too. That’s when the violent demonstrations began. Denmark has in the last few years become a host country for various Muslim radical groups, the most prominent of which is Hizb ut-Tahir.

Denmark is the home of 180,000 Muslims, who constitute approximately 3 percent of its 5.4 million citizens. Most of these Muslims, including the second generation, adhere to the creed propagated by HT, and refuse to assimilate into Danish society.

The movement first started receiving media attention in Denmark a month after the terrorist attacks of September 11, when more than 1,000 HT members marched against the US and its allies’ military actions against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. According to the Swedish Daily Svenska Dagblade, they also demonstrated against democracy, human rights, gender equality, and other Western threats to what the group considers the true way of Islam.

Considering Islamist public denunciations of the West and calls for the overthrow of Europe and the U.S., it is time for Western leaders to stop myopically focusing on the cartoons and focus more on the Islamists dangerous messages.