More deceptions, half-truths, and comforting fictions, this time in a conservative publication, showing yet again that the cluelessness on this issue is bipartisan. Comments interspersed below. “Islamic State struggles to reconcile terrorist tactics, Muslim law,” by Andrea Noble, The Washington Times, October 15, 2014:
The Islamic State is increasingly struggling to justify its sanctioning of slavery, extortion, smuggling and murder against scholars and religious leaders who say the extremist group’s Mafia-style tactics can’t be reconciled with Muslim law….
But to defend its actions and to lure recruits, the group — which has proved savvy in the management of its image and its message — has engaged in heavy-handed attempts to portray its cause as both authentically Muslim and sanctioned by Islamic law. The latest effort came this week in the form of an article in its slickly produced online magazine, Dabiq, that affirmed the group enslaved Yazidi women and children after its siege this summer of Mount Sinjar in Iraq — and then went on to defend the practice.
“One should remember that enslaving the families of the kuffar and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of the Shariah that if one were to deny or mock, he would be denying or mocking the verses of the Qur’an and the narrations of the Prophet,” the article states.
But scholars and religious leaders say the group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, misinterprets the Koran or uses passages outside the proper context to prop up its actions.
Ah, they’re taking the Qur’an out of context! Of course! I have never heard that argument before!
In reality, according to Islamic law, Muslim men can take “captives of the right hand” (Qur’an 4:3, 4:24, 33:50). The Qur’an says: “O Prophet! Lo! We have made lawful unto thee thy wives unto whom thou hast paid their dowries, and those whom thy right hand possesseth of those whom Allah hath given thee as spoils of war” (33:50). 4:3 and 4:24 extend this privilege to Muslim men in general, as does this passage. “Certainly will the believers have succeeded: They who are during their prayer humbly submissive, and they who turn away from ill speech, and they who are observant of zakah, and they who guard their private parts except from their wives or those their right hands possess, for indeed, they will not be blamed” (Qur’an 23:1-6).
The rape of captive women is also sanctioned in Islamic tradition: “Abu Sirma said to Abu Sa’id al Khadri (Allah be pleased with him): O Abu Sa’id, did you hear Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) mentioning al-’azl? He said: Yes, and added: We went out with Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) on the expedition to the Bi’l-Mustaliq and took captive some excellent Arab women; and we desired them, for we were suffering from the absence of our wives, (but at the same time) we also desired ransom for them. So we decided to have sexual intercourse with them but by observing ‘azl (Withdrawing the male sexual organ before emission of semen to avoid conception). But we said: We are doing an act whereas Allah’s Messenger is amongst us; why not ask him? So we asked Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him), and he said: It does not matter if you do not do it, for every soul that is to be born up to the Day of Resurrection will be born.” (Muslim 3371)
These passages have not gone unnoticed. The Egyptian Sheikh Abu-Ishaq al-Huwayni declared in May 2011 that “we are in the era of jihad,” and that meant Muslims would take slaves. In a subsequent interview he elaborated:
Jihad is only between Muslims and infidels. Spoils, slaves, and prisoners are only to be taken in war between Muslims and infidels. Muslims in the past conquered, invaded, and took over countries. This is agreed to by all scholars—there is no disagreement on this from any of them, from the smallest to the largest, on the issue of taking spoils and prisoners. The prisoners and spoils are distributed among the fighters, which includes men, women, children, wealth, and so on.
When a slave market is erected, which is a market in which are sold slaves and sex-slaves, which are called in the Qur’an by the name milk al-yamin, “that which your right hands possess” [Koran 4:24]. This is a verse from the Qur’an which is still in force, and has not been abrogated. The milk al-yamin are the sex-slaves. You go to the market, look at the sex-slave, and buy her. She becomes like your wife, (but) she doesn’t need a (marriage) contract or a divorce like a free woman, nor does she need a wali. All scholars agree on this point—there is no disagreement from any of them. […] When I want a sex slave, I just go to the market and choose the woman I like and purchase her.
Around the same time, on May 25, 2011, a female Kuwaiti politician, Salwa al-Mutairi, also spoke out in favor of the Islamic practice of sexual slavery of non-Muslim women, emphasizing that the practice accorded with Islamic law and the parameters of Islamic morality.
A merchant told me that he would like to have a sex slave. He said he would not be negligent with her, and that Islam permitted this sort of thing. He was speaking the truth. I brought up [this man’s] situation to the muftis in Mecca. I told them that I had a question, since they were men who specialized in what was halal, and what was good, and who loved women. I said, “What is the law of sex slaves?”
The mufti said, “With the law of sex slaves, there must be a Muslim nation at war with a Christian nation, or a nation which is not of the religion, not of the religion of Islam. And there must be prisoners of war.”
“Is this forbidden by Islam?” I asked.
“Absolutely not. Sex slaves are not forbidden by Islam. On the contrary, sex slaves are under a different law than the free woman. The free woman must be completely covered except for her face and hands. But the sex slave can be naked from the waist up. She differs a lot from the free woman. While the free woman requires a marriage contract, the sex slave does not—she only needs to be purchased by her husband, and that’s it. Therefore the sex slave is different than the free woman.”
The Islamic State acts on these beliefs, which are Qur’an-based.
Back to the Washington Times article at hand:
“They take what verses they want, and because they don’t like others, they don’t use it,” said Omar Shahin, general secretary for the North American Imam’s Federation. “They are ignorant in their religion.”
The Washington Times doesn’t tell you that Omar Shahin was one of the notorious Flying Imams, who sued US Airways after being removed from a flight for behaving suspiciously. He has doubted Muslims were behind 9/11 and admitted ties to Osama bin Laden.
The group’s citations of the Koran and its claims to be returning to a purer, more original form of Islam have prompted Muslim leaders around the world to condemn its practices and to speak out against its interpretations.
Last month, the Council on American-Islamic Relations led a coalition of 126 Muslim organizations and scholars in sending an open letter to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi that dissected the claims and justifications made by the group and refuted them using passages from the Koran.
“Anytime any group of people is trying to carry out some action, they are going to try to have a justification, whether political or whatever. They know religion is a powerful motivating factor, so they seek to justify their message with it,” CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said. “They are wrong, but that is their strategy.”
It is amazing that even the Washington Times goes to CAIR as if it were a reliable source. While CAIR is quite mainstream these days, this self-styled “civil rights group” was actually named an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case by the Justice Department. CAIR operatives have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups. Several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror. CAIR’s cofounder and longtime Board chairman (Omar Ahmad), as well as its chief spokesman (Ibrahim Hooper), have made Islamic supremacist statements. Its California chapter distributed a poster telling Muslims not to talk to the FBI. CAIR has opposed every anti-terror measure that has ever been proposed or implemented.
Anyway, the letter from 126 Muslim organizations is not actually a statement of moderate Islam, but a cynical piece signed by many Muslim leaders with ties to jihad terror and filled not only with falsehoods and deceptions, as I showed here, and actual endorsements of the ideas of violent jihad against non-Muslims and their subjugation as dhimmis, denied basic rights under Muslim hegemony, and of the principle of the caliphate, as I showed here.
One such misinterpretation that Mr. Shahin points out is the Islamic State’s requirement that taxes or “jizya” be paid by non-Muslims who continue to reside in the areas of Iraq and Syria that the group has overrun — a practice that amounts to extortion. The fact the group is making declarations about what does and does not constitute Islamic law without a consensus of Muslim scholars at large violates a tenet of the religion, Mr. Shahin said.
“A Muslim government in a specific country can ask people to pay specific taxes,” he said. “But who can do it? That is a problem. Not just a specific group can.”
Shahin is being nakedly dishonest, relying on his certainty (not misplaced, to be sure) that Andrea Noble has no idea that this is in the Qur’an: “Fight against those who do not obey Allah and his messenger, and do not forbid what he has forbidden, even if they are of the People of the Book, until they pay the jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued” (9:29). Who can do it? Well the Islamic State styles itself as the new caliphate. If the caliph can’t collect the jizya, no one can. Shahin knows all this, but pretends that this is not Islamic law and that there is no consensus of Islamic scholars about it, even though it is in the Qur’an itself.
…”They have to make these arguments, because otherwise they would lose whatever support they have for what they are doing,” said Mary Habeck, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “They have no other justification for what they are doing. I have seen no scholars support this.”
Seriously, Dr. Habeck? See above.
The fact so many other Muslim groups have denounced the activities of the Islamic State, which shocked the world in June when its leaders declared the establishment of an Islamic caliphate after rolling all but unopposed through a vast section of Iraq, should be evidence enough that the organization has gone far afield in its religious interpretations, Ms. Habeck said.
“They claim to have this underpinning of ideological reasoning for what they are doing,” she said. “It’s pretty tortured reasoning, and the fact this has not been engaged in by other Muslim leaders and groups, I think, shows it is contradictory to how other Muslims define their religion.”
The problem with this is that Muslims from the West have gone to join the Islamic State in record numbers — far more than ever went to join al Qaeda or other jihad groups. This shows the hollowness of these shallow assertions that what the Islamic State says and does is “contradictory to how other Muslims define their religion.” If that is so, why are so many Muslims from the very countries where Muslim leaders have condemned the Islamic State flocking to join it?
It would be refreshing if the Washington Times and other media outlets would address that question. But instead, they seem content to retail Hamas-linked CAIR propaganda designed to lull Americans into complacency.