“Faheem Younus is the Baltimore president of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA and a senior fellow at the Hoffberger Center for Professional Ethics at the University of Baltimore.” Here he offers a reassuring piece, starting off with a petty and gratuitous little slap at Pamela Geller and me, claiming that Boko Haram, that is, the Congregation of the People of the Sunnah for Dawah and Jihad, is misunderstanding Islam and misinterpreting the Qur’an. He says categorically that “nothing in Islam, today or 1,400 years ago, justifies the abduction of any human being, let alone innocent girls rejects “kidnapping young girls and threatening to sell them into sexual slavery.” He offers one verse to support this idea: “And when the girl-child buried alive is questioned about, for what crime was she killed?” (81:9-10). To this he adds a hadith that depicts Muhammad saying: “If a daughter is born to a person and he brings her up, gives her a good education and trains her in the arts of life, I shall myself stand between him and hell-fire.”
Neither of these passages, unfortunately, are precisely on point. Boko Haram is not burying these girls alive. And the statement attributed to Muhammad only insists that girls be educated. Boko Haram, however, is not against all education, but only Western education that is not Qur’an-based.
Younus decries “the common thread of ignorance and hatred between Boko Haram and Islamophobes. Both know zilch about the true Islamic teachings.” Yet there are some core Islamic teachings that he doesn’t mention. He doesn’t discuss the verses that Muslims like Abubakar Shekau point to in order to justify kidnapping young girls and selling them into sexual slavery — even to offer a mitigating explanation of them:
If you fear that you will not act justly towards the orphans, marry such women as seem good to you, two, three, four; but if you fear you will not be equitable, then only one, or what your right hands own; so it is likelier you will not be partial. (Qur’an 4:3)
And:
And also prohibited to you are all married women except those your right hands possess. (Qur’an 4:24)
See also 33:50-52 and 70:29-30. The mainstream Muslim commentary Tafsir al-Jalalayn explains that 4:3 tells Muslims to “marry only one, or, restrict yourself to what your right hands own, of slavegirls, since these do not have the same rights as wives.” The twentieth-century Qur’an commentator Maulana Bulandshahri explains the wisdom of this practice, and longs for the good old days:
During Jihad (religion war), many men and women become war captives. The Amirul Mu’minin [leader of the believers, or caliph — an office now vacant] has the choice of distributing them amongst the Mujahidin [warriors of jihad], in which event they will become the property of these Mujahidin. This enslavement is the penalty for disbelief (kufr).
He goes on to explain that this is not ancient history:
None of the injunctions pertaining to slavery have been abrogated in the Shari’ah. The reason that the Muslims of today do not have slaves is because they do not engage in Jihad (religion war). Their wars are fought by the instruction of the disbelievers (kuffar) and are halted by the same felons. The Muslim [sic] have been shackled by such treaties of the disbelievers (kuffar) whereby they cannot enslave anyone in the event of a war. Muslims have been denied a great boon whereby every home could have had a slave. May Allah grant the Muslims the ability to escape the tentacles of the enemy, remain steadfast upon the Din (religion) and engage in Jihad (religion war) according to the injunctions of Shari’ah. Amen!
This is by no means an eccentric or unorthodox view in Islam. The Egyptian Sheikh Abu-Ishaq al-Huwayni declared in May 2011 that “we are in the era of jihad,” and that as they waged jihad warfare against infidels, Muslims would take slaves. He clarified what he meant in a subsequent interview:
…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” [Qur’an 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.
Right around the same time, on May 25, 2011, a female Kuwaiti activist and 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.”
Not only does Faheem Younus not mention the Qur’an verses used to justify this practice, even to offer an alternative understanding of them, but also he doesn’t acknowledge of the existence of Muslims like these authorities who believe that sex slavery is justified, even to explain how they’re wrong. Consequently, it must be concluded that, like so many other Muslim spokesman, he wants to give the appearance of moderation without the substance of reform. If Abubakar Shekau read his piece, he would immediately see the glaring omission, and realize that Younus is writing not to offer a genuine Islamic alternative to Shekau’s view, much less to refute that view, but to lull Infidels into continuing complacency regarding jihad and Sharia.
“Don’t Blame Islam for Boko Haram,” by Faheem Younus, Huffington Post, May 9, 2014:
When the news broke that over 200 girls had been abducted by Boko Haram, I was prepared for some Islamophobic rhetoric from the Spencer/Gellar [sic] ilk. What I was not expecting were Pulitzer prize winners like Leonard Pitts, even for once, falling for the sensational “extremist Islam is scared of little girls” narrative.
It’s not Islam but savage bearded men who are scared of little girls. Inserting “Islam” into the equation is a distraction; it augments the agenda of Boko Haram, who are craving religious legitimacy. Deny them that.
I am a father of two girls. What anguish the parents of over 200 abducted girls must be experiencing is beyond me. I cannot comprehend why the world is not acting swiftly to unite 276 innocent girls with their families, or why a “coalition of the willing” is not removing the localized tumor of Boko Haram before it metastasizes into a pan-African cancer.
What I do comprehend, however, is the common thread of ignorance and hatred between Boko Haram and Islamophobes. Both know zilch about the true Islamic teachings; their ignorance is directly proportional to the number of words they utter. Both hold blanket hatred for the other: Boko Haram hates all Western ideas (hence their name, which translates roughly to “Western education is a sin”), and Islamophobes like Pat Robertson compare Islam to Nazism. And both resort to a “buy one, get one” sales strategy: Buy into this narrative of ignorance or hatred and you get to use or bash Islam — depending upon your location — for free.
Don’t give me the “Boko Haram associate themselves with Islam, so what’s wrong with us doing the same?” argument. Can’t we see the wrong in legitimizing the words of a few hundred thugs over the beliefs of a billion-plus Muslims? Why didn’t we malign the faith of over a billion Christians because of Joseph Kony calling himself a “devout Christian”? Remember that Kony, the leader of the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army, also abducted thousands of children in Africa?
What Biblical verses does Kony invoke to justify violence? Why, none. In fact, the Lord’s Resistance Army, as beloved as it is of Leftists and Islamic apologists, is a client of the Islamic jihadists in Sudan, and has no support from churches of any kind, no basis in Christian tradition, and no international presence.
Anyway, Boko Haram does associate itself with Islam, and so what’s wrong with us doing the same? Nothing. To do so is simply accurate reporting. If Muslims who abhor Boko Haram’s actions believe that doing so maligns their faith, their best response would be to work for Islamic reform — for a new understanding of the Islamic texts and teachings that Boko Haram uses to justify their actions, not to whine about “Islamophobia” and pretend those teachings don’t exist.
That nothing in Islam, today or 1,400 years ago, justifies the abduction of any human being, let alone innocent girls, is a fact I have explained ad nauseam. Man, at times, I feel exhausted.
Exhausted of educating the masses about the medieval Arabian practice of burying girls alive and how Islam, not Boko Haram, abolished and memorialized it with these Quranic words: “And when the girl-child buried alive is questioned about, for what crime was she killed?” (81:9-10).
Exhausted of repeating what Prophet Muhammad taught his companions: “If a daughter is born to a person and he brings her up, gives her a good education and trains her in the arts of life, I shall myself stand between him and hell-fire.”
Exhausted of disclosing what Fatima-al-Fihri, a Muslim woman, accomplished in 859 A.D. by establishing the University of Karueein in Fez, Morocco. (Hint: It’s listed in the Guinness Book of World Records.)
But I am proud of my Muslim daughter, who is taking four AP exams as a sophomore in high school and aiming for the pinnacle of the so-called “sinful” Western education. Translate this, “Boko Haram”!
Some ask, “How do you tell the story without mentioning Islam?”
“By learning from other Pulitzer prize-winning journalists,” I respond.
Last week The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristoff [sic] wrote, “The attack in Nigeria is part of a global backlash against girls’ education by extremists. The Pakistani Taliban shot Malala Yousafzai in the head at age 15 because she advocated for girls’ education. Extremists threw acid in the faces of girls walking to school in Afghanistan. And in Nigeria, militants destroyed 50 schools last year alone.” He refused to take the Islam or Islamist bait four times in one paragraph, yet he told the story. Bravo.
When my daughter returned from school today, she described how one of her Jewish classmates lamented the obvious practice of specifying the “Muslimness” of an extremist act in the headlines. See how apparent it has become?
So end this sensationalism, please. Let’s bring the filthy thugs of Boko Haram to justice, yesterday. And let’s stop elevating their status by linking them to Islam in our headlines from tomorrow.
weavo2 says
“Don’t Blame Islam for Boko Haram,” That is like saying don’t blame the Islamic folks for 911.
The left has many parrots who are paraded as experts on Islam.
Thank God for folks like Robert and Pamela along with the growing force of many who raise the banner of the truth concerning Islam.
The Huffington post article says Faheem Younus is a senior fellow at the Hoffberger Center for Professional Ethics at the University of Baltimore. Perhaps he should have had some of his senior fellows review his propaganda piece of an article before publishing. Course, his fellow ‘fellows’ would no doubt be ardent leftists also.
Jay Boo says
When the “parrot parade” begins it is an ominous sign that a Islamo-fiction Tsunami of BS is about to flood in.
When the Tsunami rolls in — better learn to surf.
Wax the surfboards
William says
“Don’t Blame Islam for Boko Haram,” is like saying “Don’t blame the toothache on the cavity.” Yes sir! There is no causal relationship there whatsoever. There is also no brain there. This fellow is telling us that Islam and Boko Haram only happen to go together and is related to each other in the same way as my clock striking six o’clock and me sneezing (due to allergy to pollen in the air.) A proper functioning human being would require the suspension of rationality in order to make such an observation. Maybe that is what this Mohammedan expects of his audience. If that be the case, those who participate in the farce deserve to be subjugated by Mohammedans.
Meally mouth says
LOL It’s kinda like saying don’t blame smoking cigarettes for 40 years for the fact that you have lung cancer!
Don’t blame the 12 margaritas you had for the fact that your car is now wrapped around a telephone pole.
Don’t blame the fact you called your boss a doucebag for you’re being unemployed!
Don’t blame eating 20 donuts everyday for the fact you’re morbidly obese!
Muslims obviously haven’t heard of the concept of cause and effect. It’s more ‘effect and blame somebody else’!
Myxlplik says
I wonder what would happen if a major media outlet told the actual truth about the Quranic & Hadithic justifications most Muslims view as Gods law supreme over mans law on the subject of sex slaves, which Boko Haram is using to justify their absuctions?
What would happen if they told the truth for once?
Jay Boo says
Every leftist would hold a Qur’an bonfire.
Jaladhi says
Muslims always lie about their religion by hiding the ugly truths in Quran. Muslims worldwide do that and unfortunately so do the Western journalists who forget that their primary duty of telling the truth no matter how unpalatable it is to Muslims. Ever since the kidnapping of these poor helpless girls everybody(Muslims and their apologists) are continuously talking about these “extremists” in Nigeria, never mentioning who they really are – Muslims. They think describing them as extremists will do to make it a normal regular kidnapping case. The fact is in Pakistan, Egypt, and many other Muslim countries kidnapping of non-Muslim girls(Hindus, Christians, Copts, Sikhs ..) is a daily occurrence and the World doesn’t even blink. Now suddenly a very large numbe rof girls is involved and people are at least talking about it.
We still don’t know if all these kidnapped girls were Christians, Muslims or of both faiths. I get the impression from TV reports that they were mostly Christians, though some of them may be Muslims. However, a # hashtag campaign is not going to bring them back. For all we know the girls may have been whisked away from Nigeria. The Nigerian government is totally at fault as they have not dealt with this group strongly enough. Boko Haram is just as deadly as al Qaeda and needs to be eliminated.
As long as the world doesn’t tell the truth about these kidnappers and the abducted girls, nothing will be accomplished!!
Jay Boo says
Hollywood and Hillary and the BBC are all running for cover right behind the Obamas.
After months of ignoring Boko Haram they have been caught out in the open by a swell of social media. Now they are acting indignant trying to get out in front of the message to claim credit as if they were just as shocked as anyone else.
But they won’t mention Islam and their own culpability so they try to lay all the blame on others.
jihad3tracker says
The schoolgirl kidnapping may finally be EVIDENCE ABOUT ISLAM THAT WILL NOT GO AWAY — for “all religions are equally worth of respect” dreamers.
Even Nathan Lean — the 2-leg sea urchin middle school thug who threatened Robert Spencer — has not posted any thing on his site about Boko Haram.
Recently I asked CAIR’s Nihad Awad and Corey Sailor to see if Lean did something to physically harm himself because of depression — as a seditionist enemy of America.
They ( Awad and Sailor ) have not responded, and “Honest” Ibrahim Hooper is busy with taqiyya — finding new paths for Dem & Repub fools.
Don’t you understand how urgent it is to prop up Muslims who cannot endure the pathology of Muhammad ?? Tell Nathan Lean to put up ANYTHING new on his internet resource which shows he breathes….
Middle-school clown Reza Aslan also seems to be totally gone … No posts for weeks, and those writings seemed to be composed when drunk.
Listen up : get every one of your team on a conference call. Revise strategy. Accept the fact that Boko Haram’s enthusiasm for female adolescents majorly f*cked up Islam’s illusions that Westerners are supposed to believe.
Then report back here…
Jay Boo says
The schoolgirl kidnapping may finally be EVIDENCE ABOUT ISLAM THAT WILL NOT GO AWAY — for “all religions are equally worth of respect” dreamers.
===========
FALSE CONFIDENCE There is no time to rest.
There is a wall of deception still in the MSM.
They should direct their indignation at Islam but true to form they deflect and point all the blame at Nigerian government’s incompetence or supposedly home-grown self-radicalized extremists.
If the Nigerian government did a Saddam Hussain style purge of Islamist traitors (ISLAM FUNDED Boko Haram) in the military the Obama admin would have a fit.
Speak no Evil says
Don’t count on it. The media, the public, and most people in the strata of mis-information have a short memory.
I thought BESLAN – where all those Russian school kids were taken hostage with many killed in the initial surge, and where dozens of young girls were raped in the name of Allah, and finally 300+ killed in the shoot out would leave a permanent etch in people’s memory banks about what Islam is. It never even gets mentioned anymore. We just keep hearing about how Muslims are victimized, demonized and oppressed because they are ‘brown people’ and that they must NEVER, NEVER be offended. We suffer one Islamic attack after another with momentary shock and disbelief, and then return to business as usual of Islamopandering as it is quickly forgotten.
dumbledoresarmy says
More people will have woken up.
I know someone, personally, who woke up to what Islam was, as a result of Beslan.
She is now a staunch member of the Resistance.
I have no doubt that she is not the *only* one who “woke up” because of Beslan. She’s just the one that *I* happen to know about.
The trigger seems to be different for each person.
Myself, I suspect that *this* particular outrage, for some reason, may be triggering a response in more people, all at once, than other previous atrocities have done. Ours not to reason why; our job is to strike while the iron is hot and *use* the Teaching Moment for all it’s worth.
Mr Spencer, in his commentary introducing the mohammedan’s piece of blatant “spin”, has handed us some very useful information that we should be copying, printing off, and preparing to *use* with everybody we know who raises the subject of the kidnapped Nigerian girls.
Myxlplik says
If anyone from a major media outlet is reading this & wants to stop western deployments in the middle east, the only way to do it is to dispel the Wilsonian myth. Tell the truth & western justification for war in the Islamic world ends tomorrow.
Jay Boo says
They all have blood on their hands
CAIR, the MSM
The enablers
Only when Islam’s shameless face is dragged through the making of its own disgrace will Islam’s apologists act like decent human beings.
MAKE THEM PAY THE PRICE
Only then will they act nice.
richard Sherman says
In 627 Muhammad kidnapped approximately 1000 Jewish women and children. He never allowed them to return to their homes in Medina. ( this mass abduction was after in true sociopathic fashion he PERSONALLY DECAPITATED 600-900 unarmed Jewish men of the Banu Quarayza tribe )…BOKO HARAM is perfectly emulating the SOCIOPATH MUHAMMAD…both in their mass killings and mass abductions.
mortimer says
Faheem Younus obfuscates authentic jihad, but that is the Ahmadi approach to classical Islam.
It is interesting that journalists and EDITORS are so ILLITERATE about this religion that they ask a HERETICAL sect of Islam to speak for orthodox SUNNI MUSLIMS.
These EDITORS are worse than USELESS…they are INACCURATE and should be fired and replaced with people who have a knowledge of Islam…perhaps Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller or Nonie Darwish!
Boston Tea Party says
Let’s see,
* Deny that there are any problems at all with Islam? Check
* Blame “Islamophobes” and claim victim status? Check
* Defend Islamic atrocities by arguing moral equivalence with other religions? Check
* Get in a bit of Jew hatred? Check
Boy, he’s really got all the Muslim bases covered in this piece. This line is particularly revealing:
“When my daughter returned from school today, she described how one of her Jewish classmates lamented the obvious practice of specifying the “Muslimness” of an extremist act in the headlines. See how apparent it has become?”
So he complains when anyone mentions Islam pursuant to atrocities that are specifically committed by Muslims in the name of Islam, yet he himself feels it necessary to point out that this child was Jewish (even though in this case, the child being Jewish had NOTHING to do with the comment being made).
EYESOPEN says
The taqiyya artists will NEVER stop their “spin” and whitewash of all abhorrent things izlamic. I do wish that there were journalists and news organizations that would be honest about the threat to ALL civilization from izlam. But I’m afraid that we shall be waiting a very, very long time for the truth.
Larry S says
I tried reply on Puff Ho to some (possibly well-intentioned) idiot named Rod Griffiths, but I lack an account and am not going through the rigmarole of getting one (which seems to involve giving personally identifying information). But being so enamoured of my own rhetoric, I will console myself with posting my precious prose here:
No, Rod, Dr Younous is “not right”, and I suspect he knows it, and you would too if you had a clue what Islam was all about. Islam has had nearly a 1400 year history of sex slavery, as Younous surely knows, but won’t mention. Ahh, the life of the mind in today’s intellectually and morally bankrupt academe.
Where to start with such twaddle as yours and Younous’. Well one could do worse than Sura 23, which (condensed for the sake of brevity) says that “successful believers” will abstain from sex
Save from their wives or the (slaves) that their right hands possess, for then they are not blameworthy,
Now tell me, how do you think Boko Haram got that crazy idea that Islam permitted sex slaves?
That (fraud of a) Prophet Muhammad both indulged in and encouraged sexual slavery. Boko Harem is merely following the sterling example of this “role model” for all men. In the unlikely event you care to educate yourself on the matter, you could do worse than go here:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/05/baltimore-muslim-leader-islam-doesnt-justify-abduction-doesnt-mention-sex-slavery-passages-of-quran
dumbledoresarmy says
I observe that the original article is open for “Comments” at Huffpo.
So far there are only 8 comments of which only one evinces a glimmering of commonsense.
Do any jihadwatchers have a Commenting account at HuffPo?