Iraqi Canadian launches anti-terrorism petition

An Arab Canadian has helped launch a petition calling on the United Nations to prosecute Muslim clerics who incite terrorism through fatwas.

Jawad Hashim of Vancouver, formerly Iraq’s minister of planning, together with Lafif Lakhdar, a Tunisian intellectual, and Dr. Shakir al-Nabulsi, a Jordanian writer, posted the petition on the liberal Muslim website Middle East Transparent and are calling on fellow Muslims to sign it.

As examples, the petition lists a fatwa approving Al Qaeda’s Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a fatwa permitting the killing of Muslim intellectuals as apostates, a fatwa approving the killing of Jews while still in the womb and a fatwa approving the killing of any Israeli citizen.

“By these fatwas,” the petition argues, “terrorists have died, or will die, fully convinced that they will immediately enter Paradise.”

Here in Canada, when University of Waterloo professor Mohamed Elmasry justified terrorism against Israelis on the Michael Coren Show recently, he echoed the fatwa approving the killing of any Israeli citizen.

“There are no civilians in Israel,” wrote Muslim intellectual Rashid al-Ghannoushi in his fatwa authorizing terrorism. “The population – males, females and children – are army reserve soldiers.”

“[The] total population of Israel is part of the army,” said Elmasry, and therefore, from age 18 on, any Israeli, male or female, is a legitimate target, “even if they have civilian clothes.”

The originators of the petition are anxious to make it a strictly Muslim affair for now. “If we get support from non-Muslims,” said Hashim, “they’ll say we’re lackeys of the U.S. – you know what these fanatics are like. I got an e-mail the other day calling us lackeys of the Masonic movement in the Middle East.”

Pierre Akel, the publisher of Middle East Transparent, said the idea was to start with a Muslim petition, “and then go on to ask Jews and Christians to join for a new joint appeal.”

To date, more than 4,000 Muslims have signed the petition. “Our target is to collect 10,000,” said Hashim.

“On Oct. 8 this year, the Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1566, which established a working group to find more effective procedures to bring terrorists – and their associates – to justice,” Hashim said. “This is precisely what our letter proposes.”

Websites around the world have reproduced the petition. It’s also been published in many newspapers in Iraq and in one in Kuwait, although “no other newspaper in the Arab world published it,” said Hashim.

In Canada, Hashim wrote to Prime Minister Paul Martin proposing that Canada host a gathering of Arab and Muslim intellectuals to promote the aims of the petition. He hasn’t yet heard back from the prime minister and isn’t hopeful.

However, Rahim Yaffer, a Conservative MP and a Muslim, is enthusiastic about the petition. “I think it’s a very positive initiative,” he said. “It should be encouraged. Many Muslims are very disturbed about how Islam is being used by a tiny minority as a tool for terrorism.”

Yaffer said he’d prefer an initiative that’s not just coming from Muslims, but from “all people to say, ‘let’s come together on this.’”

He said he would bring the petition up with Muslim and Arab leaders in Canada to see if there is interest in taking on this initiative and would present it to the Conservative caucus, as well. “I see some potential to bring attention to this initiative through bringing it up in the House [of Commons],” he added.

Yasmin Ratansi and Wajid Khan, the two other Muslim MPs, who are both Liberals, did not respond to requests for comment on the petition.

The petition was written by Lakhdar, a leading figure for modernization and secularization in the Arab world. Lakhdar had previously called for the outlawing of terrorist fatwas in a scathing article published in Al-Hayat, a London-based but Saudi-owned Arabic daily.

Lakhdar has also fought Holocaust denial in the Arab world, condemned the Palestinian embrace of terrorism and urged religious tolerance and emancipation for Arab women. Al-Hayat fired him.

Last year, he started Middle East Transparent with his friend Akel. “The idea,” said Akel, “was to prove that Arab liberals can have an independent voice – i.e., independent from Saudi money and from any link to any Arab regime.

“I guess we have succeeded. We have 2,000 to 3,000 visitors per day. However, I have been personally financing the website for the last 11 months and might not be able to continue.”

Titled “Letter from liberal Arabs and Muslims,” the petition’s language is blunt. It refers to “fatwas issued by some psychotic… dogmatic Muslims encouraging the commission of terrorist acts in the name of and under the banner of Islam.”

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Brave man...he'd better have some pretty solid protection. Muslim imams do not like to be questioned by anyone...let alone other Muslims.

"...used by a tiny minority as a tool for terrorism.”

Well, that "tiny minority" seems to be pretty popular in the middle east, and there always seems to be a good deal of support from media reports as well. Where is the "majority" when this "tiny minority" is dancing in celebration of the killing of thousands of innocents (in the case of the Trade Center aftermath) or a successful suicide bombing in Israel? Where is this "majority" when American and Isreali Flags and puppets of our leaders are being burned in ephigy? Where is this "majority" when Islamic Jihadists are cutting the heads off civilians and innocents in the streets of Iraq? I would like to see this "majority" the next time CNN or ABC shows a news report. I would like to see them making some statement towards this supposed "tiny minority". They want ten thousand signatures. I bet they could get a million if the petition were for the extermination of Freedom and Democracy in either the Middle East or the U.S.A.

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