by Madeleine Gruen @ counterterrorismblog.org

Since its July 19th Khilafah conference in Chicago, “The Fall of Capitalism and Rise of Islam,” Hizb ut-Tahrir America (HTA) has attempted to gain control of public discourse through press releases and online events. After the much-publicized conference, HTA was forced to go on the defensive in order to deflect accusations about ties to militancy and terrorism. It had been HTA’s hope that the conference would cause the media to act as its Trojan Horse by circulating the concept of a Khilafah to a wide American audience.

HTA held an online press conference from its base in Chicago last night. Questions were answered by Mohammed Malkawi, who has been HTA’s spokesman to the media since the group's public launch in June. (Malkawi was introduced to the virtual audience by his pseudonym, “Abu Talha”).

This "dialogue" occurred on PalTalk and was announced at the khalifahconference2009.com website. As far as I know this is a first for the Tahrir, though HuT spinoff al-Muhajiroun has made aggressive use of PalTalk for some years now.