BY SHIRAZ MAHER

Hizb ut Tahrir, the radical Islamist group committed to creating a global Caliphate (by force if necessary) recently held a conference in Birmingham.

When support for the group reached its high water mark around 2002/03 the group used to attract between 7000-9000 people to its annual conferences.

At last week's event they claimed ‘thousands' attended. My friend Yossairan, who blogs at the Spittoon, decided to call the Bethel Convention Centre where the HT event was held and discovered that just 800 people attended - of that, most were party loyalists. This kind of bare faced lying is typical of their increasing desperation.

In the last few years there has been a massive pushback against groups like Hizb ut Tahrir (in part by whistleblowers like myself) that has utterly decimated their standing within the Muslim community.

We can only hope this decline is terminal.