September 13, 2005
In the wake of the bombings in London, America’s Muslim
community recognised the necessity for a formal religious response to
growing extremism. The result was a "fatwa", or Muslim legal
pronouncement, issued by the Fiqh Council of North America and endorsed by
140 Muslim groups, leaders and institutions. The American fatwa followed a
fatwa issued in March by the Spanish Muslim Council on the first
anniversary of the Madrid train bombings, which declared Osama bin Laden
an apostate and urged other Muslims to denounce the al-Qaeda leader. The
Spanish ruling marked the first time Muslim clerics had denounced
terrorism in religious vocabulary, invoking genuine Islamic instruments,
such as fatwa and apostasy, instead of the qualified, secular and arguably
ineffective condemnations that had been issued in the past.
America’s version has been greeted warmly by the Bush
administration. Speaking 10 days ago at the Islamic Society of North
America, public diplomacy chief, Karen Hughes said, "Those are words the
entire world needs to hear." Unfortunately, while the words contained in
the fatwa are encouraging, the words that were left out are no less
significant. Indeed a close reading of the American fatwa shows that it
falls short of both its Spanish counterpart and a comprehensive
denunciation of terror.
The American fatwa sets out three edicts: first, that all
acts of terrorism targeting civilians are "haram" (forbidden) in Islam;
second, that it is haram for a Muslim to cooperate with any individual or
group that is involved in any act of terrorism or violence; and third,
that it is the civic and religious duty of Muslims to cooperate with law
enforcement authorities to protect the lives of all civilians. All of this
certainly sounds unequivocal – but closer examination reveals inexplicable
reluctance on the part of the fatwa’s authors to confront the main sources
of extremism.
First, the charge of apostasy used in the Spanish fatwa –
a crime punishable by death and damnation – is here replaced with "haram",
a generic category for all things forbidden, such as drinking alcohol or
missing a prayer, with no specific punishment. This replacement raises a
question of proportion: Why do Spanish Muslim leaders apparently view
terrorism as a more serious offence than American Muslim leaders?
Second, the American fatwa, unlike the Spanish ruling,
does not name any specific offender and thus, according to Islamic law, is
considered a non-binding opinion, void of legal status. Additionally, an
abstract no-offender fatwa fails to challenge the heroic stature that bin
Laden and Zarqawi enjoy among many young Muslims in Europe and the Middle
East. The pivotal theological question of whether bin Laden – the arch
symbol of anti-western anger and terror – will be ushered to hell or
paradise thus remains unanswered by the American fatwa.
Third, the fatwa leaves the definition of "terrorism" open
to dangerous interpretations. The prohibition against targeting civilians
does not provide much clarification, because the term "civilian" has
acquired twisted new meanings among potential recruits of al-Qaeda. For
example, the influential Qatari cleric Sheikh Yusuf Al Qaradawi, in a
November 2001 interview with my late son Daniel, stated that Israeli
society has no civilians to speak of, concluding that women and children,
even the unborn, are legitimate targets of suicide bombing. More recently,
Qaradawi has extended this line of logic to civilian workers in Iraq, thus
providing direct religious legitimisation for the atrocities of Zarqawi.
Not surprisingly, in a video recently released by Al Jazeera, the London
bomber Mohammed Siddique Khan managed to stretch Qaradawi’s logic to
justify murdering his own countrymen: "Your democratically elected
governments continue to perpetrate atrocities against my people," he said.
"We will not stop." Considering that Qaradawi is broadly regarded as the
top authority in matters of Koranic interpretation – his bastardised logic
is broadcast unchallenged every week to tens of millions of Al Jazeera
viewers – one would expect the American fatwa to explicitly disavow his
invitation to attack civilians as apostasy, heresy or blasphemy. Yet,
indefensibly, it does not.
Finally, the American fatwa condemns only the physical
perpetrators of terrorist acts and their collaborators, not the preachers
and ideologues who legitimise or encourage those acts. Are not those
religious figures who encourage suicide bombers at least as guilty as
those who strap themselves with explosives? Sadly, the Fiqh Council
declined to use the fatwa to clarify the Islamic status of Sheikh Qaradawi;
nor did it address the managers of Al Jazeera who give him such prominent
voice in the Muslim world.
Contrast this with the Spanish fatwa. Though it did not
mention Qaradawi by name, it did note that "all who declare halal or
allowed what god has declared haram or prohibited, like the killing of
innocent people in terrorist attacks, have become Kafir, Murtad, Mustahlil,
that’s to say an apostate, by trying to make a crime such as the murder of
innocents, halal." In other words, not just terrorists themselves but also
those who encourage or rationalise terrorism are apostates.
Of course, the mere use of fatwas to inveigh against
terrorism is an important first step. But the American fatwa appears to be
the work of a weak-willed leadership that hesitates to directly confront
the ideological basis of al-Qaeda. A fatwa that specifically condemned bin
Laden, that invoked the strongest punishments available under Muslim law,
that clarified the meaning of terrorism and that singled out for
condemnation religious figures who support violence – those would be the
words the entire world needs to hear.