Back in 2004, I noted the disbelief that greets me "when I explain that the Islamist goal is to take over the United States and replace the Constitution with the Koran." Five years later, it's still the case, with most Americans incredulous at such an intention. So, I thank (1) the Hizb ut-Tahrir organization (on which, see Zeyno Baran, Hizb ut-Tahrir: Islam's Political Insurgency) for holding a forthright conference yesterday and (2) Steven Emerson's Investigative Project on Terrorism for attending the event and reporting on it.

IPT begins by setting the scene:

Nearly 300 people packed the Grand Ballroom of the Hilton Hotel [in Oak Lawn, Illinois, near Chicago] for its Khalifah Conference on "The Fall of Capitalism and the Rise of Islam" to listen to listen to HT ideologues blame capitalism for World War I and World War II; the U.S. subprime mortgage meltdown; the current violence in Iraq and Afghanistan; world poverty and malnutrition and inner-city drug use. … Security at the conference was very tight. Oak Lawn police maintained a checkpoint outside the Hilton, and local police and HT's own security people had a substantial presence inside the hotel. In the ballroom where the conference took place, men and women were largely segregated, with men in the front and women in the back.

One speaker, identified as Imam Jaleel Abdul Razek, engaged in the following dialogue with an unidentified member of the audience on the subject of which law should rule in the United States (click here for the video clip):

Audience member: "Would you get rid of the Constitution for Shariah, yes or no?"

Abdul Razek: "Over the Muslim world? Yes, it [the Constitution] would be gone."

Audience Member: And so, if the United States was a Muslim world, the Constitution would be gone?"

Abdul Razek: "If the United States was in the Muslim world, the Muslims who are here would be calling and happy to see the Shariah applied, yes we would."

Audience Member: "And the Constitution gone. That's all."

Abdul Razek: "Yes, as Muslims they would be long gone."

Q.E.D. (July 20, 2009)