Arab Liberals: Prosecute Clerics Who Promote Murder

http://netwmd.com ^ | 4/13/05

[forty_years]

On October 24, 2004, Arabic websites Middle East Transparent[1] and Elaph[2] posted a petition from Arab liberals to United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan and the Security Council. Written primarily by the Tunisian intellectual Lafif Lakhdar, the petition calls for an international treaty banning the use of religion to incite violence. The Saudi newspaper Arab News reported that, within a week of the petition's posting, over 2,500 Muslim intellectuals from twenty-three countries had signed the petition.[3]

Shakir al-Nabulsi, a Jordanian academic and one of the signatories, noted that "There are individuals in the Muslim world who pose as clerics and issue death sentences against those they disagree with. These individuals give Islam a bad name and foster hatred among civilizations."[4] The petition names several prominent clerics, among them Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian preacher working in Qatar,[5] and cites a number of fatwas as examples. The translation below, edited for grammar only, was posted November 3, 2004, on the Middle East Transparent website.[6]—The Editors.

To the United Nations Security Council and the U.N. Secretary General Requesting the Establishment of an International Tribunal for the Prosecution of Terrorists

… We, the signatories of this letter, a group of Arab and Muslim liberals, would like to draw your attention to an extremely dangerous source of terrorism. This source is the purported religious pronouncements, fatwas, issued by some psychotic [and] dogmatic Muslims encouraging the commission of terrorist acts in the name of and under the banner of Islam.

It is not enough for the Security Council to adopt resolutions "condemning" terrorism. What will be more effective is the establishment of an international tribunal affiliated to the United Nations [which will] prosecute individuals, groups, or entities involved, directly or indirectly, with terrorist activities including, but not limited to [the issuance of] fatwas (religious rulings) … calling upon Muslims to commit terrorist acts.

By these fatwas, all terrorists have died, or will die, fully convinced that they will immediately enter paradise. Of course, we do not exclude other causes for committing terrorist acts, such as the ticking population explosion bomb with its resultant illiteracy, poverty, unemployment, educational backwardness, and reactionary religious teachings. [Above all is the problem that] in almost all Arab countries, there are dictatorships.

But despite the above reasons, certain religious fatwas such as those which clothe terrorist acts with the legitimacy of the sacred tenets of the Muslim faith, remain the pivotal cause of terrorist acts.

We can provide you with exhaustive lists of fatwas which incite terrorist acts, but the following few may suffice:

• When the presiding judge of the Egyptian court asked Sheikh Muhammad al-Ghazali[7] to opine about the murder of Faraj Fuda in 1992,[8] Sheikh al-Ghazali's opinion was, "The killing of Faraj Fuda was in fact the implementation of the [justifiable] punishment against an apostate which the [state] had failed to implement." When the defendant heard Al-Ghazali's opinion he shouted, "Now I will die with a clear conscience [for murdering Mr. Fuda]."

• On February 13, 2002, the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper published a fatwa issued by the Saudi Sheikh Ali bin Khudair al-Khudairi which approved and condoned Al-Qaida's 9/11 terrorist acts in New York and Washington. In his fatwa, the sheikh said, "It is astonishing to mourn the [American] victims as being innocent. Those victims may be classified as infidel Americans which do not deserve being mourned, because each American is either a warrior or, a supporter in money or opinion, of the American government. It is legitimate to kill all of them, be they combatants or non-combatant like the old, the blind, or non-Muslims."

• On February 13, 2002, the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper published another fatwa issued by the Saudi Sheikh Safar al-Hawali in which he described the 9/11 attacks as equivalent to President Clinton's missile attack on Al-Qaida's training camps after the [1998] terrorist attack on the American embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. He went on to condone the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon describing them as centers for money laundering, devil's nests, spying cells, and mafia retreats.

• The fatwa issued by Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi permitting the killing of Jewish fetuses, on the logic that when Jews grow up they might join the Israeli army. On July 3, 2004, he issued another fatwa (published in Al-Ahram al-Arabi) permitting the killing … of Muslim intellectuals, claiming that Islam justifies the killing of such apostates. Furthermore, on September 3, 2004, Al-Qaradawi issued a fatwa to kill all American civilians working in Iraq.

• The fatwa issued by Rashid al-Ghannushi[9] according to which he permits killing all civilians in Israel, because "there are no civilians in Israel. The population—males, females, and children—are the army reserve soldiers, and thus can be killed."

As it is difficult, if not impossible, to prosecute these extremists in their native Arab or Islamic countries, they continue to issue and publish their fatwas inciting acts of terror under the false umbrella of Islam. As the fatwas issued by the extremist Muslim clerics encourage the commission of terrorist acts to provoke a state of terror and, due to the importance of combating terrorism … we, the signatories of this letter, respectfully submit to your excellencies and to the working group constituted pursuant to Article IX of Resolution 1566[10] (that you should) create an international tribunal to prosecute all terrorists, whether individuals, groups, or entities, including individuals who incite terrorism through the issuance of fatwas in the name of religion.

Sincerely yours,

Lafif Lakhdar, Shakir al-Nabulsi, Jawad Hashim

[1] Middle East Transparent, Oct 24, 2004.
[2] Elaph, Oct 24, 2004.
[3] Arab News, Oct. 30, 2004.
[4] Ibid.
[5] "The Qaradawi Fatwas," Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2004, pp.78-80.
[6] "Letter from Liberal Arabs and Muslims," at http://www.metransparent.com/texts/arab_liberals_appeal_to_un_for_int_court_against_terror_fatwas_english.htm.
[7] A prominent Muslim Brotherhood leader.—Eds.
[8] Faraj Fuda was a secular Egyptian intellectual murdered in 1992. See, Gibreel Gibreel, "The Ulema: Middle Eastern Power Brokers," Middle East Quarterly, Fall 2001, pp. 15-23.—Eds.
[9] A prominent Tunisian Islamist.—Eds.
[10] Adopted Oct. 8, 2004, U.N. Security Council, New York, N.Y. Article IX reads: "[The Security Council] Decides to establish a working group consisting of all members of the Security Council to consider and submit recommendations to the Council on practical measures to be imposed upon individuals, groups or entities involved in or associated with terrorist activities, other than those designated by the Al-Qaida/Taliban Sanctions Committee, including more effective procedures considered to be appropriate for bringing them to justice through prosecution or extradition, freezing of their financial assets, preventing their movement through the territories of Member States, preventing supply to them of all types of arms and related material, and on the procedures for implementing these measures." —Eds.

http://netwmd.com/articles/article970.html

[FierceKulak]

Unless there is a definition for who is innocent and who is not, any cleric who preaches that war is acceptable under any conditions could be prosecuted.
I am certain that this would be used to prosecute pastors who preach against abortion. Even if they condemn vigilanteism and urge people to try to have abortion outlawed they are trying to get the state to use force against abortionist.
Needless to say, Samuel Rutherford would have been in big trouble.

[conservlib]

I have been calling for such a motion from all civilized states to outlaw usage of religion as an incitement for hate and violence. I was expecting the US to lead such a move in the UN, but it is much better coming from Muslim people. Now we cannot let these intellectuals get grilled by the fanatics in their home lands. We must provide support and encouragement so that it will become very UNCOOL to preach hate in the name of god.

[conservlib]

This is paranoia. We have one billion people foaming at the mouth wanting to kill us, and you are worrying about this abortion crap. I swear some right wing Jesus freak fanatics are just as bad as the Muslim fanatics. Give it a rest dude. The only thing I tell the crazy abortion obsessed people like you is DO NOT HAVCE AN ABORTION, and ask your daughter not to have one. If Christian people follow their conscious and stop getting abortion, the whole despicable practice will vanish.

[jolie560]

As long as Islam allows any cleric to guarrantee "free passes" to Paradise by any murderer, this stuff will never end.

Have some financier throw in 25,000 to the family of the murderer, and the field is ripe to recruit many murderers, all in the name of Islam.

It will never end. I have already heard the past 20 years referred to as one of the "GOLDEN Ages of ISLAM".

[Valin]

We have one billion people foaming at the mouth wanting to kill us

Really? Source please.

[FierceKulak]

Fallacy: All abortions are done by Christians.

Ad hominem attack: "crazy abortion obsessed people like you."

Unsupported allegation: "This is paranoia." If you choose to throw yourself on the good intentions of government be my guest.

I have met 8th graders with much better debate skills than you.

I really don't feel that your post deserves a reasoned response but I have the time to give one.

For your information, I believe that the best method of attack on these radical mullahs would be to militarily engage them as recruiters and propagandists for an enemy on which we are waging war.

This way the taxpayer would be saved the expense of a circus trial from which a firebrand can continue to incite violence. What would be the most favorable result of such a trial? In all likelihood, a firebrand would be sent to life in prison, costing us tens of thousands of dollars and continuing to poison minds.
I'd rather have them wake up with their throats cut or perish in some unfortunate accident. What is the worse that could result from such methods? The terrorists are already attacking American civilians and torturing our soldiers they capture.

[Valin]

Why the Reversion to Islamic Archaism?
Lafif Lakhdar (1981)
http://struggle.ws/issues/war/afghan/pamwt/wt2/lakhdar.html

---

In order to gain a critical understanding of the persistence of Islamic archaism and all its paraphernalia, one must approach it through the logic of its own history, as well as that of the Arabo-Muslim bourgeoisie of the 19th and 20th centuries, which is radically different from the process of European history and from the residual folkloric Christianity of the present-day West.


Islamic integralism - not a Reformation

Let me explain: some orientalists, such as the American Richard Michel, see in the activist Islamic movements a potential for reforming Islam. In other words, a way of rationalising it, thus bringing it closer to western liberalism. Such writers have clearly succumbed to the comic temptation of analogy and to the lazy facility of repetition. For, if one sets up a parallel between the contemporary Islamic Brotherhoods and the European Reformation, one is just making a mockery of concrete history.

Seen historically, the Reformation is an integral part of the making of the modern world, of the birth of nations and their languages from the ruins of the Holy Roman Empire and its celestial counterpart - the Church. This process led, through a long route of development, to the explosion of the third estate - a fact of decisive importance, without parallel in the modern history of Islam - an explosion which brought forth the French Revolution and hence modern nations and classes.

The Islamic movements are located in a completely different historical context. To conflate this context with that of the Reformation is to misunderstand the origins and development of the current movement of Islamic integralism, as well as its historical antecedent - the pan-Islamic movement of the 19th century.

Pan-Islamism took form under the political direction of the Ottoman sultan himself and the ideological direction of al-Afghani and 'Abduh. Its aim was to defend the caliphate (the empire) which was slowly but surely breaking up as a result of the combined thrusts of European economic and ideological penetration, and of the nationalist demands of the Balkan peoples, especially the Serbs and the Bulgars who were struggling for emancipation both from the domination of the Ottoman rulers and from the religious domination of the ecumenical patriarchate who still hankered after the idea of a grand new empire with Greece at its centre. Blinded by their pro-Ottoman prejudices, the believers in pan-Islamism did not realise that times had changed and that the era of modern nation-states had succeeded that of the empires of former times. True to itself, pan-Islamism was keenly opposed to the secular and liberal anti-Ottoman tendency of the Arab Christians - Shibli Shumayyil, the Darwinist, was one of their leading spokesmen - during the last quarter of the 19th century. This latter tendency considered the only answer to European penetration and Ottoman despotism to be the complete adoption of the European model of civilisation as well as the separation of the Arab provinces from the empire and hence the formation of a modern nation.

(snip)