How militant Islamists are infiltrating Britain's top companies

'IoS' investigation: Extremist organisation that Tony Blair wants to ban is active in unexpected places. Shiv Malik reports

The Government is due to publish legislation this week to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir, which is already proscribed in European countries such as Germany and in most of the Middle East. The Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, has undertaken to give the wording of the ban to the Opposition to secure cross-party agreement.

In contrast to other groups that the Government intends to ban, the membership of Hizb ut-Tahrir is mainly middle-class and well-qualified. A significant proportion are university-educated and work in areas such as finance, information technology, health and education.

Recently, the IoS disclosed that The Guardian had employed Dilpazier Aslam, a Hizb member, as a trainee journalist, and articles he wrote after the London bombings did not mention his connection with the group. He lost his job at the paper after refusing to give up his membership.

The IoS has now learned that at least two members of Hizb, which seeks to form a global Islamic state regulated by sharia law, work for the computer giant IBM, and that Reuters, the international news and financial information agency, has at least one member among its employees.

After being informed of this, a Reuters spokesperson said: "We require our journalists to be very sensitive to any activities which might lead to their impartiality being questioned. We of course recognise the right of people to hold their own views.

"We are not aware of any of our employees being members of Hizb ut-Tahrir. If it becomes illegal, then certainly we would review the matter on the 'Do their private actions impact our public reputation?' principle."

An IBM spokesperson said the company was assessing the impact of any new legislation. It would not disclose personnel information "for reasons of data protection".

Sajjad Khan, a prominent member of Hizb who runs classes on the group's ideology and has delivered speeches at the group's congresses, said: "Most of our members are graduates who work and pay taxes. Very few of them are unemployed or rely on state benefits." A finance and IT specialist, he said he had worked for a number of large companies, including Tesco.

Several members of Hizb are medical practitioners, including its spokesman, Dr Imran Waheed, a psychiatrist practising in London. Its women's representative, Nazreen Nawaz, is a qualified doctor who worked in cancer research. Another member is a manager at University College Hospital, London.

The group is also strong in the education sector, where a former member of the executive board lectures in IT in an east London college. The former headmistress of a prominent Islamic primary school in the same area is also a member of Hizb, as is the landlord of the building.

Although Hizb ut-Tahrir insists that it has never supported violence in Britain or the Middle East, security sources accuse it of being among groups which radicalise Muslims to the point where they attract the attention of terrorist recruiters.

A former Hizb ut-Tahrir activist told the IoS that behind closed doors he was encouraged to take up boxing and self-defence classes in order to "prepare for jihad". Although he never accepted full membership, he was associated with the group for nearly a decade, and said two members had told him how they had joined the Territorial Army in order to get "real" military training. After TA rules were changed and it was no longer possible to opt out of military action if asked to take part, this stopped.

The organisation's well-designed www.hizb.org.uk website replaced earlier sites such as www.1924.org, which until the London bombings used to contain material from the 100,000 leaflets and flyers handed out at mosques across Britain every Friday.

Though Hizb denies being anti-Semitic, a leaflet first published in 1999 said: "The Jews ... are a poisoned dagger thrust into the heart of the Islamic Ummah and [sic] evil cancerous gland which spreads deep within the Islamic countries." Until last year the same statement was carried on Hizb's websites.

When Britain's first successful suicide bomber, Asif Hanif, blew himself up in a Tel Aviv bar in April 2003, he killed three others and injured 55. His partner, Omar Sharif, also from Derby, was found dead floating in the sea two weeks later, after his bomb failed to detonate.

The June edition of Khilafah magazine that year said: "This case more than anything has shown that though the Kaffir [unbelievers] wish to seduce the Ummah away from the problems Muslims face with corrupt Western ideas such as nation statehood and the British Muslim identity, it has certainly not deterred these two young men who grew up in Britain."

A discussion on a Hizb website about Western citizenship spoke of killing kaffirs - infidels or non-Muslims. "Their bonds, equality and freedoms are lies and false ... We saw an Immigrant [muhajir] from Quraysh drawing closer to Allah by killing his kaffir relative," it said. This was removed days after the 7 July attacks in London.

Approached for comment, Dr Waheed said the group always espoused non-violence. He denied that the Khilafah article could be interpreted "in any way" as praising violence. He refused to discuss the organisation's membership beyond saying that they were professionals "serving their local communities".

INSIDE HIZB

Hizb ut-Tahrir (Party of Liberation) was founded in 1953 by a Palestinian court clerk, Taqiuddin al-Nabhani. Its aim is to establish the Caliphate, a state based upon and governed by Islamic law.In Britain, the party is headed by Jalaluddin Patel, 28, an Indian IT engineer, and has up to 10,000 members. In 2002 it was outlawed in Germany after allegations of anti-Semitism and last year three British members were sentenced to five years in jail in Egypt.