In my book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and elsewhere I point out how Islamic legal scholars have justified terrorism, and how jihadists use the Qur’an and Sunnah to recruit and motivate terrorists. For this I have been called “Islamophobic,” whatever that means, and many mainstream media outlets on both the Left and the Right will not discuss the book. However, the fact that what I am saying is true is underscored by articles like this one, in which a Kuwaiti Muslim says the same things I have been saying. Will the mainstream media listen to him?
Not that what Al-Nabulsi says is perfect — but it is extremely revealing. From MEMRI, with thanks to Scaramouche:
In an article in the Kuwaiti daily Al-Siyasa, Dr. Shaker Al-Nabulsi, a Jordanian intellectual who resides in the U.S., asks why Islamic religious scholars haven’t issued a fatwa against bin Laden. [1] The following are excerpts:
Terrorism in the Arab World Has Been Encouraged by Islamic Legal Scholars
“The First International Islamic Conference, [that convened] in Amman, Jordan in July 2005, was attended by a large group of Islamic legal scholars and clerics”¦ The conference published a series of routine recommendations whose content has already been put forward at many other such events. The recommendations condemned the blind violence in the name of Islam [that exists] in a number of countries, and called for dialogue and coexistence among the followers of [Islam’s] four schools of law and the various Islamic sects. Ultimately, these recommendations are insufficient. They do not point to the wound and do not heal the patient, because this conference lacks the power to implement the recommendations”¦
“Many of the clerics and the legal scholars who attended the First International Islamic Conference in Amman had themselves published fatwas that incited to murdering civilians, women, children, and the elderly, under the umbrella of ‘religious Jihad.‘ Perhaps the reason for the intensification of terrorism in the Arab world, in the form to which we are witness today, was first and foremost the encouragement it received from Islamic legal scholars, under a mantle of religion that is in most cases false, hijacked, and defective.
If what these legal scholars are teaching is in fact a false, hijacked, and defective form of Islam, it is up to Al-Nabulsi and others of like mind to prove it. So far they have not done so.
If the legal scholars — who have encouraged terrorism by means of these vocal religious fatwas — were acting properly, they would be issuing a fatwa calling to kill bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Al-Zarqawi, and all Al-Qaeda leaders everywhere.
Note that even Al-Nabulsi doesn’t seem to have a problem with the prospect of Muslim clerics calling for people to be killed. Even he takes for granted that Islam mandates the death of apostates.
Is It Right To Condemn The West For Its Aggression Against The East And Not To Condemn The Muslim Who Murders His Muslim Or Non-Muslim Brother?
“The Al-Qaeda leaders have killed thousands of innocent people — Arabs and non-Arabs, children, women, and the elderly — who have nothing to do with the conflict in the Middle East”¦ Is it [really the conflict that] prevents the legal scholars from issuing fatwas condemning these murderers and permitting killing them, and getting rid of their evil? Or is it that those legal scholars think it sufficient to condemn and to cite slogans, about tolerance, love, and cooperation, and other utopian slogans that in reality are not worth the ink used to write them and the considerable funds necessary to convene the festivals of religious exhibitionism that lack decisive resolutions”¦
“Doesn’t the fact that to date not a single fatwa has been issued calling for killing bin Laden and the other Al-Qaeda leaders involved in terrorist operations in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt”¦ prove that many of the legal scholars who claim to be opposed to the waves of terrorism actually embrace these terrorist operations and secretly welcome them?
Note that by specifying Saudi Arabia and Egypt he is objecting primarily to the killing of fellow Muslims, which is prohibited by Qur’an 4:92.
“Isn’t it akin to catastrophe, disintegration, mental annihilation, misguidedness, the absence of human sensibility, religious blindness… for some of the legal scholars to treat terrorism with a double standard, all the while accusing the ‘infidels’ of treating terrorism with a double standard…?
“Terrorism in Doha, for example, is prohibited, and sheikhs demonstrate to denounce and condemn it — while terrorism in Baghdad, Riyadh, Cairo, Sharm Al-Sheikh, Taba, and other places, is [considered] permitted and also restores the desecrated honor of the Islamic nation”¦ Would it be right and fair to condemn the West for its aggression against the East and not to condemn the Muslim who murders his Muslim or non-Muslim brother who committed no crime?
Osama and others would dispute the idea that these non-Muslims they killed had in fact committed no crime. That is what Al-Nabulsi and others should address.