New York, NY – Counter Extremism Project (CEP) Executive Director David Ibsen today released the following statement commending the InterContinental Hotels Group and the Holiday Inn Hotel & Suites for prohibiting Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), a group whose alumni include 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and former al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, to host its annual Khilafah Conference at the company’s location in Carol Stream, Illinois:
“We applaud the Holiday Inn Hotel and its parent company the InterContinental Hotels Group for refusing to accommodate HT – a group known internationally as a breeding ground for other extremist organizations. While every organization certainly has a right to free speech, commercial businesses have no obligation to allow their venues to be used as a way of propagating rhetoric intended to encourage extremism.”
HT is an international Islamist organization that each year holds a “Caliphate [Khilafah] Conference” in the United States. Already banned in more than 10 countries, it is most notorious as the breeding ground or “conveyor belt” for many individuals who have gone on to form or join explicitly violent enterprises, including alumni 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, former al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and al-Muhajiroun founder Omar Bakri Mohammed.
