Didn’t everyone agree he was not Muslim? My FrontPage column:
According to Reuters, “the United States has given the remains of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi a burial at sea and afforded him religious rites according to Islamic custom after he was killed in a U.S. commando raid in Syria on Saturday.” This information came from “three officials,” all of whom “spoke on condition of anonymity,” but there is no reason to doubt it. There is ample reason, however, to wonder why it was done, since virtually everyone of influence in both parties have agreed that the Islamic State has nothing whatsoever to do with Islam.
Establishment Republican strategist Karl Rove said it on Fox News Monday: the Islamic State (ISIS) has “hijacked a great religion” and “stand in opposition to the vast majority of Muslims around the world.” Rove added that “they want to pervert a great religion.”
Rove was simply parroting the conventional wisdom. All through the Obama administration, the main concern of the President and his underlings was not to counter the Islamic State’s advance, but to deny that it had anything to do with Islam. On August 20, 2014, speaking a day after the Islamic State beheaded American journalist James Foley, Obama declared that “ISIL [his preferred acronym for the Islamic State] speaks for no religion. Their victims are overwhelmingly Muslim, and no faith teaches people to massacre innocents. No just god would stand for what they did yesterday and what they do every single day. ISIL has no ideology of any value to human beings. Their ideology is bankrupt. They may claim out of expediency that they are at war with the United States or the West, but the fact is they terrorize their neighbors and offer them nothing but an endless slavery to their empty vision and the collapse of any definition of civilized behavior.”
This became administration policy: “ISIL does not operate in the name of any religion,” said Obama State Department spokesperson Marie Harf not long after that. “The president has been very clear about that, and the more we can underscore that, the better.”
Hillary Clinton summed up the guiding philosophy here when she tweeted during her 2016 presidential campaign: “Let’s be clear: Islam is not our adversary. Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.” Not just ISIS, but all Muslims. And current Democrat front-runner has insisted that “ISIS has nothing to do with Islam.”
These confident assertions are bipartisan, and that isn’t just restricted to Rove. On September 17, 2001, President George W. Bush appeared at the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C., in the company of several prominent Muslim leaders, and said: “These acts of violence against innocents violate the fundamental tenets of the Islamic faith. And it’s important for my fellow Americans to understand that….The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That’s not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don’t represent peace. They represent evil and war.”
The idea that the Islamic State is not Islamic and that Islamic jihadists are twisting and hijacking Islam is the standard and dominant perspective in the State Department, which was probably responsible for the decision to give al-Baghdadi Islamic burial rites. So why was this decision made? If the Islamic State has nothing whatsoever to do with Islam, then al-Baghdadi was not a Muslim at all.
But if the State Department realizes that al-Baghdadi was indeed a Muslim, as this decision to bury him with Islamic rites indicates, then everything Bush, Obama, and a host of others have told us all these years is false. And indeed it is. The UK’s Daily Mail reported Monday that Mohammed Ali Sajet, “one of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s closest confidants” who “is related to Baghdadi via marriage and has been an ISIS member since 2015, described al-Baghdadi’s hideout this way: “He was in an 8-meter-long underground tunnel with a width of 5 to 6 meters. It had a library, religious books and the Quran and things of sort.”
What? The man had a library full of the Qur’an and other Islamic books in his hideout? Didn’t he know that ISIS had nothing whatsoever to do with Islam?
The State Department needs to get its story straight. Either al-Baghdadi was not a Muslim, but a “hijacker” of Islam, in which case he should not have been buried with Islamic rites, or he was indeed a Muslim, in which case the counterintelligence analysts who have been dismissed, marginalized, and reviled as “bigots” for noting Islam’s connection to terrorism should be brought in from the cold. But the latter possibility is only likely to happen if there is a sea change in the Department, and realism introduced where today fantasy holds sway. That change is not on the horizon.
Mike says
They should have poured gas on him and fried his body…
mortimer says
No, Mike, you are extremely foolish. Everyone deserves a decent burial since we are all human, no matter how misguided or sinful.
CogitoErgoSum says
Yes, everyone deserves a decent burial. Putting Baghdadi’s pieces in a box and then dropping it into the ocean seems pretty decent to me. As far as commending his soul to God for judgment, I would have let those watching who wanted to do that do so silently. To be clear though, I would not in any way have given him an Islamic burial with whatever rites and rituals that involves.
Martin says
No funeral or even burial necessary for the jihadists :
Funerals and honours for dead soldiers are a Western matter and attitude —-
In Islam things work otherwise — the angels take care of the dead mujahideens
————————————————————————————–
Question – Should the funeral prayer be offered for Muslims who are slain in battles against the kuffaar?
The majority of scholars said that the funeral prayer should not be offered for him.
[…]because the purpose behind the funeral prayer is to intercede for the deceased. But the martyr receives expiation for everything (so he has no need of intercession)
[…]It is not prescribed to offer the funeral prayer for the martyrs who die in battle, or to wash them
[…]No one among the people – neither the imam nor anyone else – should offer the funeral prayer for the shaheed
[…]Some of the scholars were of the view that it is permissible to offer the funeral prayer for the shaheed – but it is not obligatory.
https://islamqa.info/en/answers/14012/should-the-funeral-prayer-be-offered-for-the-shaheed-when-he-is-killed
Blurb1000 says
What is wrong with sun drying? The Dogs would be happy. Me too.
gravenimage says
Mortimer wrote:
No, Mike, you are extremely foolish. Everyone deserves a decent burial since we are all human, no matter how misguided or sinful.
…………………
Does that include giving Jihadists Islamic burials? Should Nazis have been given Fascist sendoffs?
Blurb1000 says
Mortimer are in a lalala situation or he is sarcastic.
gravenimage says
He is not being sarcastic, Blurb. Mortimer has become enraged before when people here do not treat Jihadists with what he considers enough respect.
Martin says
Should the shaheed be washed and shrouded?
Question – If a mujaahid who is fighting for the sake of Allah dies, should we wash him and shroud him, or bury him in his clothes?
If the shaheed dies in battle, he should not be washed and shrouded.
[…]they should not be washed, so that the traces of their martyrdom will be left on them,
https://islamqa.info/en/answers/13762/should-the-shaheed-be-washed-and-shrouded
Mario Alexis Portella says
That bastard wasn’t even human! They should have left his remaining body parts for the vultures. I doubt, however, they would’ve found him appetizing.
mortimer says
ISLAM’S LEADING AUTHORITY SAID CALIPH AL-BAGHDADI WAS A PRACTICING MUSLIM.
During an open discussion at Cairo University held on December 2, Dr. Ahmed al-Tayeb, the Sheikh and Grand Imam of Al Azhar — and thus Egypt’s foremost authority on all things Islamic — was again asked why Al Azhar refuses to issue a formal statement denouncing the Islamic State of lapsing into a state of kufr, that is, of becoming un-Islamic, “infidel.”
In response, Tayeb said that the only way Al Azhar could do this is if a Muslim formally rejected the fundamental principles of Islam, such as the shahada—that there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger—and Islamic scriptures.
He then rhetorically asked what would be the situation (according to Sharia) of a Muslim who accepts the fundamentals of Islam but who also commits great sins, such as drinking alcohol: would they be denounced as “infidels”
Al Azhar is quick to denounce secular Muslims who critique Islamic heritage as “infidels” and “blasphemers.”
Tayeb then quoted Koran 5:33: “Indeed, the penalty for those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and strive upon earth [to cause] corruption is none but that they be killed or crucified or that their hands and feet be cut off from opposite sides or that they be exiled from the land. That is for them a disgrace in this world; and for them in the Hereafter is a great punishment.”
However, Tayib concluded by saying, “Al Azhar cannot accuse any [Muslim] of being a kafir [infidel], as long as he believes in Allah and the Last Day—even if he commits every atrocity,” adding: “I cannot denounce ISIS as un-Islamic, but I can say that they cause corruption on earth. ISIS believes that those [Muslims] who commit the great sins are kafirs and can be killed. Thus if I denounce them of being un-Islamic, I fall into the same [trap] I am now condemning.”
As critics point out, however, Al Azhar is often quick to denounce as “infidels”—or at least “blasphemers”—those secular Muslims who merely critique portions of the Islamic heritage. Yet here is the Islamic world’s most prestigious university refusing to denounce ISIS as un-Islamic–even as most Western politicians, at their head U.S. President Obama, insist that ISIS “is not Islamic.”
In short, Tayeb’s comments further bolster the argument in Egypt that Al Azhar sees “liberal” Muslims as more dangerous and un-Islamic than ISIS — which should not be surprising considering that many former students have denounced the Muslim world’s most renowned university for teaching and legitimizing all the atrocities that ISIS commits.
(from article by Raymond Ibrahim)
– Raymond Ibrahim is a Judith Friedman Rosen Fellow at the Middle East Forum
Thomas Richard says
“Let the dead bury the dead….”
James Troutman says
The really sad thing is the United States condones and supports a Satanic Death Cult and honors its traditions and customs. Do we observe the burial rites of every Satanic Death Cult equally? If not, why not? And if we believe the true and living God is revealed in the Bible and not any other unholy writings, why are we honoring any cult’s burial rites, especially when they are waging war against us in the name of their god, Satan?
If I may be so bold as to restate James 1:27: pure religion, and undefiled before God, is the relationship we have with one another, not God, and it helps bind us to one another by our protecting the weak and vulnerable among us and expecting nothing in return. How does Islam comport to this instruction? How is Islam a “great religion?” I say again, Satanic Death Cults do not deserve our honor or respect as they are a giant lie leading us into idolatry and the worship of false gods. Wake up America!!! The war against truth started long before we were ever a nation. As for me, I stand with the truth who died, was buried and resurrected the third day so I may live eternally with, in and through him. Truth and life is found in Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone. He is the one and only way! Wake up Karl Rove, George W. Bush, et al!!! Stop perpetuating lies!
Peter says
All Jihadists whose bodies are captured should be cremated, and their ashes should be scattered on pig farms. Then, their lives would have purpose.
mortimer says
The late caliph with a BA, MA and PhD in Islamic Studies allegedly is not a Muslim and has no valid knowledge of Islam. American and Iraqi intelligence analysts said that al-Baghdadi has a doctorate for Islamic studies in Quranic studies from Saddam University in Baghdad. His Islamic reasoning was endorsed by many of Islam’s top scholars. But still, he is not a Muslim, we are to believe. He is a descent of Mohammed’s Quraysh tribe, but he is allegedly not a Muslim.
And Islam has nothing to do with Islam.
The Leftists use the word ‘ISLAM’ to mean whatever THEY want it mean.
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’. ‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’. ‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”
That is formally called the ‘DEFINIST FALLACY’ … namely, to pre-emptively change the meaning of words or to re-frame a question so the opponent is ab initio condemned.
‘Islam’ means ‘the religion of fellow-travellers helping to establish’ international globalist communism'”
FYI says
Their souls are commended to ……al LAH{“The BEST of deceivers” k3:54}
al LAH,the champion deceiver,al LAH khayru-i-makireena: I mean, al LAH the BEST OF DECEIVERS he wouldn’t be deceiving his devout followers would he?
Nah.
al LAH,whose greatest enemy is a MAN with the curious name of MALIK AL AMALAK
{who could that MAN be,this “King of kings”?}{SAHIH MUSLIM vol 5 hadith #5611}
And how can al LAH’s enemy be a MAN?
Shirley not?
shaheed o allah,let me into paradise!
allah what?You are confusing me with YHWH-GOD
shaheed but..but..I thought you were God.
allah “BEST OF DECEIVERS”:geddit?How could I ,a pagan arab god who tells you it is Ok to break God’s Commandments and be rewarded for your evil..be God?
Here,have some Raisins.
shaheed raisins?I thought they were virgins
allah Oh yeah about that “perfect” koran:Ya missed all the mistakes didn’t you?
shoehorn says
FTR, this post appeared in my facebook feed; 1st JW in quite a while. Zuckers slipping up?
gravenimage says
Why was the Islamic State’s caliph al-Baghdadi given Islamic burial rites?
……………………
Damn good question.
MINAS says
His remains should have been fed to pigs.
Telh says
Burial rites? Just code for – they pissed on his remains and the threw them into the ocean.
Angemon says
As with the rest of what he said during his administration, a good rule of thumb is to assume the truth is the opposite…