September 19, 2006

Fake Fatwas Against Terrorism

The devil is in the details, or so I have always heard, so when one of Dean Esmay's fillins gave a list of fatwas against terrorism as evidence that Muslims are against terorrorism, I figured Ali had at least bothered to read them. She hasn't.

Of course, her larger point is well taken--sharia is useless. Indeed it is. More than useless I'd call it. How about evil? I do not use the term evil lightly here. I believe any system of law that takes away certain inherent liberties is evil. Right up there at the top of that list would be the right to choose one's own religion. But useless will do for now.

The second point--that fatwas are useless--is also well taken, if not completely wrong. Fatwas are very useful because religious authority is claimed by those who do evil. Bin Laden issued a fatwa against America before 9/11 for the precise reason that he knew that people seek moral justification for their acts.

Last, let's get to these 'fatwas against terroror'.

Since I don't have time to refute all of the fatwas, we'll just start from the top of the first link provided and go down from there.

But before we do, can we agree that condemning 9/11 is not the same as condemning terrorism? One may condemn a particular act of terrorism without condemning terrorist tactics in general.

Also, can we agree that one may condemn terror in general but redefine 'terrorism' in such a way as to make the condemnation meaningless? Such is the case in dozens of reported 'condemnations' by mainstream Muslim leaders who, in their condemnation, qualify their remarks by making sure the reader understands that killing Zionists is not really terrorism.

Last, one may be against 'terrorism', but be guilty of a number of equally great sins. Terror is a tactic. One may be against the tactics used by al Qaeda, but be for the goals of al Qaeda. Okay, so you condemn using airplanes as a missile---do you also condemn stoning women to death for alleging rape?

The list linked to at Dean's World is one that has been widely circulated and popularized by the MAS and CAIR. You can actually find the same list posted in the comments section of several websites.

The entirety of the first 'fatwa against terrorism is no longer available in English on the web. The first signator is Mustafa Mashhur, head of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt at the time of the 9/11 attacks. The official stance of the Muslim Brotherhood is the deportation of Jews of European ancestry out of Palestine. But don't worry, the Muslim Brotherhood wants to remove the Zionist entity peacefully, and ethnically cleanse Palestine with the help of the Europeans who would take the Jews back.

The next signator is Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the head of Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan. Besides condemning the Pope last week, the most notorious action of Jamaat in recent weeks has been its succesful campaign against the Musharraf effort to overturn the Hudood laws. The Hudood laws in Pakistan require four male witnesses to rape. Women who accuse men of raping them without four male witnesses are subject to the death penalty.

Qazi also openly supports Hamas and Hezbollah, both international terrorist organizations.

The most ironical of all the signators (40 we are told, but only 7 are named) is that of the Shiekh Ahmad Yassin, the founder of Hamas. Yes, that Hamas.

So, as evidence that Muslim religious leaders are against terrorism, we are given a fatwa issued by the head of a terrorist organization? Irony. True irony. And not the Alanis Morissette kind either.

Let's move on to the second 'fatwa against terror'. You can read all of it here.

It is not actually a fatwa against terror, but one which allows Muslims to serve in the military. The relevant part is that Muslims are allowed to fight against 'the real' perpertrators of 9/11. You know, the real ones. Wink wink, nudge nudge.

You may know the man behind the fatwa from his website Islam Online. Here is the man often cited as the most influential 'moderate' Muslim in the world:

An influential Sunni Muslim cleric who once condoned attacks on U.S. civilians in Iraq has issued a religious edict saying it is permissible under Islam to kidnap in wartime - but not to kill the hostages.

Let's go to fatwa #3, signed by the highest religious authority in the Sunni Muslim world, Sheikh of Al-Azhar, Muhammad Sayyid Al-Tantawi. This is the same man that routinely describes Jews as "the enemies of Allah, sons of pigs and apes." He's a man who believes that during the Islamic Golden Age, "Jews were forced to wear a shoulder patch with a picture of a monkey and Christians had to wear a patch with a picture of a pig. These images had to be affixed to the doors of their respective homes."

Some Golden Age you got there al Tantawi.

And although al Tantawi has been widely reported as issuing a fatwa against suicide bombing in Israel, he did take backs, saying that those that kill Israeli women and children are martyrs worthy of praise.

Shall I go on? Frankly, I just don't have the time.

The larger point being that even so-called moderate Muslim leaders--the ones which liberal Muslims often go out of their way to cite as examples that Islam is just like any other religion--cannot condemn terrorism without either redefining terror or defending the ends of the terrorists if not their means.

Some religion of peace you got there.

This says nothing on whether Islam is inherently violent, but it goes a long way in understanding why so much violence comes out of the Islamic world today.

When authority figures justify acts of violence as a religious duty, there is no doubt that the faithful will follow.