Muslim Heretics Conference

Is Islam Compatible With Freedom?

If the data is to be believed: no.

In fact, check out the just released 2008 Freedom House map of Asia and North Africa. Purple is not free, yellow is partly free, and green is free. Of majority Muslim countries, only a couple are free. And that’s arguable.

Indonesia, for instance, is considered “free”, but it’s illegal in that country to openly try to convert Muslims. As in: you will go to jail. “Free”. Right. Ditto that in Pakistan, listed as “partly free”.

Mali? I’ve no idea. Either it’s the last best hope for the entire Muslim world, or it’s the exception that proves the rule. I’d love to believe former, but am inclined to believe the latter.

Anyway, the tables are here.

A few years back a friend and I had a back and forth about this. In the end we decided to do a simple regression analysis with “freedom” being the dependent variable (as operationalized by Freedom House) and % of a nation that is Muslim (as reported by the CIA Factbook) as the predictive (independent) variable. The result? The higher the % of Muslims in a country, the less free it is. Even when controlling for things like poverty, the results hold up.

And those most likely to be oppressed in these Muslim countries? Muslims.

Which kinda sucks, doesn’t it? Because, if true, then the best we can hope for in the Muslim world are allies of necessity. But you would be hard pressed to find true partners in spreading freedom.

The only real caveat here is on potentiality. Perhaps, potentially, there is some strain of Islam that could spread like wildfire. Muslims of this new strain could reject sharia, or adopt a new “sharia” which is sharia in name only or something like that. Maybe Mali could start sending missionaries to Saudi Arabia?

The Jawa Report: Is Islam Compatible With Freedom?

Bangladesh is a country rich with human potential, but that potential can only be realised by making poor people’s needs — which Islamists around the world have previously made their own political territory — the new government’s top priority
As fears about the Islamisation of politics in the Muslim world grow, Bangladesh, with the world’s fourth-largest Muslim population (126 million), has moved dramatically in the opposite direction.
Bangladesh is usually heard about only when cyclones and tsunamis ravage its low coastline, but the country’s relatively anonymous international stature belies its strategic importance. Its secular politicians’ ability to defeat the country’s Islamists decisively in the recent parliamentary election may, indeed, have revived the viability of “Muslim democracy” around the world.
The recent landslide victory (with a huge turnout) for the Awami League in Bangladesh’s first election in seven years, after two years of a military-backed caretaker government, has moved the country to the forefront of the battle between secular democrats and Islamists that is now underway across South Asia. The election was a credit to the country’s democratic yearnings — and I say that as the chairman of the European Parliament’s short-term election observation mission to Bangladesh.
The new electoral register was more robust than in many Western countries, with a photo ID picture alongside each elector. The violence that had been widespread in previous Bangladeshi elections was entirely absent, with the security services’ professionalism in policing the elections — and the army’s willingness to return voluntarily to its barracks — playing a key role.
In Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh now has a charismatic leader whose massive electoral mandate augurs well for creating the type of strong, secular government that the country needs. She returned to Bangladesh from exile, which the army had imposed on her. After her return she still had to endure imprisonment and trumped-up murder charges.
Hasina’s enormous popularity as a former prime minister, and her status as one of only two surviving daughters of Bangladesh’s founder, Sheikh Mujib Rahman, always ensured that she would be a leading contender in the election. Her overwhelming triumph has vindicated her belief that ordinary Bangladeshis want a secular and stable future for their country — one that, in contrast to Pakistan, is characterised by warm relations with their giant neighbour, India.
The comprehensive defeat of the Islamist parties that sought to take Bangladesh away from its democratic and secular roots, and which had sought in 1971 to impose Urdu as a national language and suppress Bengali language and culture, is the real story of the election. The vote demonstrated that Bangladesh’s 153 million people have little appetite for bringing Islamism into politics. Bangladesh needs only to look west to India and Pakistan to see the threat posed by Islamist terrorism.
But if Hasina is to succeed in continuing to blunt Islamism, she must address the fundamental problems that have destabilised Bangladeshi society for decades. Chief among these is the poverty endured by the majority of her country’s population.
To some extent, it is surprising that the Islamist parties did not do better, considering their success elsewhere in mobilising the most marginalised and vulnerable in society. If the Awami League is unable to address the country’s systematic poverty and social inequality, Islamism may well yet succeed in rallying the impoverished to its banner. The Jama’at-e Islami, indeed, told me during my stay that they had a 30-year agenda to introduce sharia law into Bangladesh.
The examples of Hamas and Hezbollah provide a salutary reminder of the challenges faced by the new government in Bangladesh. Although these terrorist groups are better known internationally for atrocities against Israel, they have established strong political support by providing organised social services such as schools and clinics for poor people.
Hamas and Hezbollah prospered in this way because the governing authorities were either unable or unwilling to address grassroots poverty. In the case of Hamas, this displacement was due largely to the massive corruption of the Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat, whose cronies pocketed billions of dollars intended to alleviate poverty and suffering in the Gaza Strip.
Given that endemic corruption in Bangladesh is perhaps the primary obstacle to providing essential services for poor people, it is essential that Hasina adopt a tough approach to corruption from the outset. Corruption is also a potential trigger for intervention by the military, a recurring feature of Bangladesh’s history that has consistently impeded the country’s development.
Beyond fighting corruption, Hasina must also ban all foreign donations to political parties, in particular the “Wahhabi gold” that Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states use to fund Islamist parties.
The challenges facing the Awami League are many and varied, but it is not without resources. Bangladesh is in a better position to weather the global financial storm than most Asian countries, because its banks are not over-exposed and its garment industry focuses on the lower end of the market, which, so far, appears to be holding up. But chief among Bangladesh’s opportunities is the chance to show the world that a Muslim-majority country can freely embrace liberal democracy and make it work by confining religion to the private sphere.
With its constitutional majority, the government should ensure this outcome by restoring the 1972 Constitution, which established Bangladesh as a secular democratic state. Bangladesh is a country rich with human potential, but that potential can only be realised by making poor people’s needs — which Islamists around the world have previously made their own political territory — the new government’s top priority. —DTPS
Charles Tannock is UK Conservative Foreign Affairs Spokesman in the European Parliament and led the EU parliamentary delegation of election observers to the recent Bangladesh elections

Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan - view: Reviving Muslim democracy —Charles Tannock

Speaking of the Jews, Razib has an interesting post (following up on this post, from last year) attacking the intellectual seriousness of the term “Judeo-Christian.” Among other things, he argues that in terms of historical beliefs and practices, it makes more sense to talk about a Judeo-Islamic tradition, with Christianity, trinities and all, as the outlier, than it does to lump the Christians and the Jews together.
Given that the term in question evolved, in part, as a characteristically American form of politeness - a way to make a Jewish minority in a largely-Christian society feel welcomed and at home - I don’t think it’s a surprise that it’s somewhat wanting in the intellectual-rigor department. But I think there are two defenses to be made of it. The first is that it’s most often employed in the context of intra-Western debates over secularism, atheism, the culture war, and so forth, rather than in the context of Islam - and in a landscape like the post-Enlightenment West, where traditional religion has often been opposed by secular ideologies of various stripes, Jews and Christians would seem to have enough in common to constitute a Judeo-Christian axis (if you will) that can be reasonably contrasted with worldviews ranging from Comtean positivism to Marxism and National Socialism. (It’s not a coincidence that the term “Judeo-Christian” was initially popularized during decades when the latter two ideologies were ascendant.)
Throw Islam into the mix, obviously, and the term makes less immediate sense. Razib allows that self-consciously modernized faiths like Reform Judaism and liberal Protestantism have more in common with one another than either does with contemporary Islam, but he makes the case that “Rabbinical Judaism, the dominant form of Judaism between 500 to 1800, resembles Islam much more than Christianity,” and that even the Judaizing tendencies in post-Reformation Christianity don’t create a practical affinity with Judaism comparable to the similarities between how Muslims and Jews worship the God of Abraham.
His brief is plausibly argued (though he glosses rather quickly over the implications of the  Maimonidean-Scholastic connection), so let me just offer one possible response: Namely, that you could arguably rest a case for a deeper Judeo-Christian than Judeo-Muslim affinity on how the junior religion relates to the parent faith. Both Christianity and Islam are essentially supersessionist, obviously, but I suspect that the Christian decision to swallow the Hebrew Bible whole into its scripture - and to preserve, rather than elide, Jesus’ own obvious self-understanding as a Jew - ultimately creates deeper grounds for dialogue than does Islam’s insistence that the narrative of the Hebrew scriptures was deliberately corrupted and required correction from Muhammed.
Put another way, Christian tradition seems to have more respect for the essential integrity and God-givenness of pre-Christian Judaism than does Islamic tradition. This makes it difficult to imagine a Muslim version of the sort of rethinking of what, precisely, supersessionism means than we’ve seen from Evangelicals and Catholics in this century - a rethinking that’s been crucial for the development of Judeo-Christian dialogue. And by the same token, there’s no equivalent in the foundational narrative of Islam to the striking Jewishness of Jesus, a quality which would seem to make Jewish engagement with the Gospel narratives - and Christian engagement with that engagement - more plausible and intellectually fruitful in the long run than Jewish engagement with the figure of Muhammed.
Admittedly, though, these suggestion are entirely provisional, and perhaps hopelessly timebound. The potential for fruitful Jewish-Christian dialogue was not readily apparent, to put it mildly, during many periods of Christian history; there were periods when Jewish-Islamic dialogue was in better shape that it is today; and it may be that Muslim-Jewish dialogue in, say the 24th century will look a lot like Christian-Jewish dialogue does at present, the various scriptural tumbling blocks notwithstanding. And if that dialogue is taking place between religious scholars in a peaceful Israel and Palestine, I’ll be delighted to have my theory disproven.

Christian, Muslim, Jew - Ross Douthat

The incoming Obama Administration confronts the problem of how to deal with the criminal (by domestic as well as international law) infliction of torture by elements of the United States government, with authority coming from the very top, and not merely on important terrorists but on random innocent victims.

While the Bush Administration has no doubt made errors in the course of its valiant attempts to protect us all from Islamofascist terrorists, in one respect it has displayed admirable creativity, from which the Obama Administration could benefit: assuming only that the President-elect is sufficiently generous-minded (as he seems to be) to be willing to learn from adversaries.

I refer to the question of the limits of executive power, or rather the unlimitedness of executive power. To call the legal positions taken by the Bush Administration “creative” would be to undervalue them: “breathtakingly audacious” would be more accurate. But those positions, and the actions taken in accordance with them, now stand as precedent, and the President-elect has expressed his admiration for audacity.

Audacity is certainly called for. Our situation today is historically unique. Not only are we (as the Bush Administration and its supporters tirelessly insist) at war with an enemy so nebulous as to guarantee that the war will have no end, but we confront strong evidence of the existence of a Fifth Column, though not the particular Fifth Column the warhawks predicted.

Every step taken since the Bush Administration took power: ignoring the al-Qaeda problem until the 9/11 attacks, covering up the role of the House of Saud in facilitating those attacks, using the aftermath of those attacks for partisan advantage rather than forming a government of national unity, allowing bin Laden’s escape, failing to establish an effective anti-Taliban coalition in Afghanistan, continuing to prop up Pervez Musharraf despite his strong support for the Islamofascist ISI, failing to secure international support for the invasion of Iraq, invading Iraq, failing to prevent looting in Iraq, disbanding the Iraqi army and most of the civil service in the name of de-Ba’athification, supporting Ahmed Chalabi in his power-lust despite his ties to Iran, staffing the CPA with ignorant young wingnuts instead of professionals, allowing the looting of the CPA by contractors and cooking up legal interpretations to protect them from criminal liability, engaging in torture, failing to cover up the fact that they were engaging in torture — Need I go on? — has tended to weaken this country, and the West, in this existential struggle.

It is of course possible to explain each of those decisions individually as the product of ideology, corruption, incompetence, or some combination of the three. But surely it strains credulity to imagine that the entire pattern, tending inevitably to the end of strengthening our enemies and weakening our institutions and our alliances, was mere accident. Surely the least hypothesis is that there were, in the Bush Administration and its supporting institutions, one or more Islamofascist moles. The Hansen case reminds us that the best cover for a mole is apparent fanatical hatred of whichever foreign power the mole is working for. So we should seek out our Fifth Column among those who have been loudest in denouncing Islamofascism, and especially among those most insistent on subverting our Constitution to do so.

That points directly at Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Gonzales, Addington, and Yoo. Perhaps they are innocent, but the presumption of innocence is one of those ideas Yoo properly dismissed as “quaint.” Remember, it was precisely the decision to treat terrorism as a law enforcement problem (with responses constrained by the Constitution) that the Bush Administration correctly identified as the key weakness of the Clinton Administration in its response to terrorism.

No, this is a matter of national security, and therefore covered by President-to-be Obama’s inherent and unlimitable powers as Commander-in-Chief in wartime. According to the various doctrines offered by the Bush Administration, he he can order the indefinite detention, and aggressive interrogation, of anyone he deems, his sole and un-reviewable judgment, to be an enemy combatant, including anyone who has given “material support” to terrorism. And as long as those detentions and interrogations occur outside the sovereign territory of the United States — at Gitmo or Bagram, for example — neither the courts nor the Congress has any authority to intervene, or even to inquire: even in cases where the subjects of the detention were known in advance to be innocent of anything but boasting. Indeed, any Congressional inquiry at all into any action by the President or his aides — even frankly criminal activity such as the obstruction of justice — is barred by the doctrine of Executive Privilege, as asserted by the Bush Administration.

The President-elect should, therefore, as his first official act — indeed, perhaps as part of his Inaugural Address — order the immediate detention of George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales, Donald Rumsfeld, John Yoo, David Addington, and perhaps a few others, at a secret location outside the sovereign U.S., for the purposes of extracting from them evidence of the plot and the identities of the other participants, who can in turn be detained and interrogated to see what they have to say for themselves.

Since most bullies are also cowards, I suspect that the years of maltreatment the Bush Administration inflicted on innocent Afghani peasants to get them to make false confessions will not be necessary to get Bush and his cronies to confess. A month of hypothermia, sleep deprivation, and stress positions, or a few minutes on the waterboard, should suffice. Their confessions will retrospectively justify the interrogations. And of course they cannot be given the right to counsel, since their lawyers would necessarily learn about the interrogation techniques, which are Top Secret Codeword material as intelligence sources and methods, despite the fact that everyone in the world knows what they are. (The techniques are not original: all of them were copied from the Inquisition, the Gestapo, and the KGB.)

Now perhaps some future court might decide that these methods, as applied to people whose status generally makes them “non-torturable,” actually exceeded the President’s powers, even in wartime. But not only would that decision be wrong on its face — since those powers have no limits — but even bringing the case would be wrong. As all our Wise Men agree, no senior official should ever be held legally accountable for actions in the name of national security, no matter how horrible those actions might be.

So now is the moment for the President-elect to confute his critics, and demonstrate that he has the toughness needed to deal with the Islamofascist threat, no matter who its agents may be.

Mark Kleiman: Torture: A modest proposal

Syrian Jihadist Scholar Abu Basir Al-Tartusi: Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi is an Apostate

Syrian jihadist cleric ‘Abd Al-Mun’im Mustafa Halima, better known as Abu Basir Al-Tartusi, has published on his website an essay in which he declares Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi to be an apostate.
Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi is one of the most prominent clerics in the Muslim world. He heads the International Union for Muslim Scholars , has a weekly show called “Sharia and Life” on Al-Jazeera TV, and is close to a number of Arab regimes, especially those of Qatar and Algeria. He has in the past been criticized by Arab liberals, especially over statements regarding the killing of American civilians in Iraq(1) and his support for Hamas suicide bombings.(2) He has been barred from entering the U.S. since 1999;(3) in early 2008 he was also denied an entry visa to the U.K.(4) More recently, his statements warning against Shi’ite proselytizing in Sunni countries have generated controversy.(5)
In Al-Tartusi’s view, though, Al-Qaradhawi is an apostate. This position reflects the gulf that has opened between clerics close to the Muslim Brotherhood, like Al-Qaradhawi, and global jihadists like Al-Tartusi. Al-Tartusi writes that he had previously issued a fatwa declaring Al-Qaradhawi an apostate, but since the fatwa was distributed widely without the accompanying explanation, he had decided to publish an expanded article explaining the reasoning behind his fatwa. He attacks Al-Qaradhawi in particular over the latter’s support for multiparty democracy and for promoting close ties between Muslims and non-Muslims.
Following is a summary of Al-Tartusi’s essay declaring Al-Qaradhawi an apostate:(6)
Al-Qaradhawi Defended the Buddha Statues in Afghanistan
The first reason Al-Tartusi gives for his fatwa is that Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi tried to save the Buddha statues in the Bamyan Valley in Afghanistan from being destroyed by the Taliban. Al-Qaradhawi led a delegation of Muslim scholars to Afghanistan to try to persuade Mullah Omar that since the statues were not objects of worship, the shari’a did not require their destruction, and that destroying them would reflect badly on Islam. The delegation was sponsored by Qatar, Al-Qaradhawi’s country of residence, which at the time also held the rotating presidency of the Organization of the Islamic Conference; the initiative came in response to a request from the Japanese foreign minister. Shortly before the delegation left, Al-Qaradhawi also issued a fatwa against the destruction of the statues.(7)
Al-Tartusi writes: “This man [Yousef Al-Qaradhawi] never travelled to Afghanistan throughout the [various] stages of jihad the country went through, apart from one time, and that was when he wanted to rescue the false god, the greatest of idols that is worshipped instead of Allah, from destruction and obliteration. The blood and body parts of hundreds of thousands of innocent Muslims did not move him, but for the sake of the false god and the idol he was moved, and set out [for Afghanistan]…”
Al-Tartusi argues that the attempt to save the Buddha statues is a clear act of apostasy, since it says in Koran 2:256: “One who repudiates false gods (al-taghut) and believes in Allah has clung to the firmest bond of faith that never breaks…” He then argues that this verse lays out two conditions for faith – repudiation of false gods and belief in Allah – and that Al-Qaradhawi, by defending the Buddha statues, failed to uphold the first condition, and thus became an unbeliever.
The Fatwa Allowing Muslims to Fight in the U.S. Army Is an Act of Apostasy
At the start of the war in Afghanistan in 2001, a Muslim chaplain in the U.S. Armed Forces, Maj. Abdul-Rasheed Muhammad, wrote to Yousef Al-Qaradhawi and other Muslim scholars asking their opinion as to whether enlisted American Muslims may fight other Muslims. In response, Al-Qaradhawi and his four cosignatories wrote that there was nothing wrong with Muslims fighting in the U.S. Armed Forces against those thought to be responsible for terrorism. They explained that Islam forbids killing innocent people, and that Muslims have a responsibility to bring such killers to justice, as stated in Koran 5:2: “Help one another in righteousness and piety, and do not help one another in sin and aggression.” While this is complicated by the fact that in war it is difficult not to kill innocent people as well, this consideration is outweighed by the fact that if Muslim soldiers did not obey orders, their loyalty to the U.S. would be cast into doubt. A Muslim soldier who so desires may ask to be temporarily transferred to a non-combat role, if such a request carries no negative repercussions for himself or other Muslims; otherwise, he is forbidden to make such a request. The general jurisprudential principle behind the fatwa is that while it is forbidden to kill other Muslims, a pressing necessity makes permissible that which is forbidden.(8)
Abu Basir Al-Tartusi characterizes this ruling as “this man’s [Al-Qaradhawi's] infamous fatwa which determines that Muslims in America should enlist to fight in the American Crusader army… against the Muslim mujahideen, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, claiming that this falls under [the verse] ‘help one another in righteousness and piety,’ and saying that in order for their national allegiance not to be called into question, they need to prefer their national allegiance – to the American nation – over their allegiance to Allah, to the faith, and to the fraternity of faith and religion!”
Al-Tartusi takes issue with Al-Qaradhawi’s reasoning in the fatwa on a number of grounds. He argues that since military service in the U.S. and Europe is voluntary, one cannot speak about the Muslim soldier as though he is required to fight and could face repercussions for failing to do so. In addition, he accuses Al-Qaradhawi of accepting the U.S.’s claim that the war was directed against terrorists, when in fact the U.S. is fighting Islam and the Muslims.
Al-Tartusi then presents his view regarding the consequences of the fighting that Al-Qaradhawi supported: the U.S. replaced an Islamic government in Afghanistan with a traitorous puppet state and killed tens of thousands of peaceful Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq. He says that Al-Qaradhawi is “an accomplice to the Crusader invasions and all the crimes they perpetrated in Muslim lands,” and warns him to prepare for the Day of Reckoning. The negative consequences of these wars undermine Al-Qaradhawi’s legal reasoning; He had permitted fighting in the U.S. Armed Forces only out of the principle that necessity permits the forbidden, whereas for Al-Tartusi the damage done to the Muslim world far outweighs such considerations as the soldier’s professional future or the casting of his allegiance to the U.S. into doubt. In addition, the application of the principle of necessity to this question was erroneous from the outset: Not even true compulsion can justify the killing of a fellow Muslim; one is even required to be killed rather than kill another.
He then goes on to explain why he considers Al-Qaradhawi’s fatwa to be not only wrong, but an act of apostasy. First, he writes that permitting a Muslim to be a soldier in an army of “unbelief and idolatry” fighting against Muslims is clear apostasy, as laid out in verses such as Koran 5:51: “Oh believers: do not take the Jews and Christians as friends. They are friends one to another, and those of you who befriend them become of them. Allah does not guide iniquitous people”; and Koran 3:28: “Let not the believers take the infidels as friends instead of the believers; one who does so has no part in Allah.” Al-Qaradhawi is not only guilty of doing this himself, but he has permitted it to others, which is a separate sin known as “permitting that which is forbidden,” and is in itself cause for apostasy.
In addition, Al-Tartusi writes that Al-Qaradhawi has taken the concept of nation as a false idol, by speaking of allegiance to nation and to national laws, and by preferring this allegiance over allegiance to Allah and to Islam. This is apostasy, since it violates the principle of al-wala’ w’al-bara’: exclusive allegiance to Allah and Islam, and repudiation of unbelief and unbelievers.
Making Light of Allah
Al-Tartusi then accuses Al-Qaradhawi of making light of Allah in a Friday sermon. According to Al-Tartusi, Al-Qaradhawi praised elections in Israel as fair, in contrast with elections in some Arab countries, where the ruler receives “99.99″ percent of the vote; Al-Qaradhawi then added “if Allah [Himself] were in the running he wouldn’t receive such a share” of the vote. Al-Tartusi further claims that when this quote was presented to the late senior Saudi cleric Muhammad Ibn Salih Ibn ‘Uthaymin, he said: “… He [Al-Qaradhawi] must repent, he must repent for this; if he doesn’t, he is an apostate, because he has made the created greater than the Creator. He must repent to Allah, and Allah accepts the repentance of his servants. If he doesn’t, the authorities need to behead him.”(9)
Multiparty Democracy
Abu Basir Al-Tartusi next attacks Al-Qaradhawi’s “support for democracy, in its permissive, infidel meaning,” as Al-Tartusi puts it. He writes that Al-Qaradhawi supports freedom of belief and apostasy; freedom to form infidel and apostate political parties, including atheist Communist parties; and sanctification of majority rule, even if this majority were to choose unbelief and atheism.
Al-Tartusi provides a collection of statements from Al-Qaradhawi’s writings to illustrate these points. (From here through the end of the essay, Al-Tartusi quotes extensively from Al-Qaradhawi without specifying the precise source.)
According to Al-Tartusi, Al-Qaradhawi wrote: “What matters to me regarding any political party in Islamic society or in the Islamic state is two things: … that it respect all religions, and that it not be an extension of a foreign power, like America or Russia; … To say that… when we [the Islamists] assume power, we won’t allow Communists or secularists to form political parties – this is against the same Islamic jurisprudence that we call for and believe in. Some say that the Islamists are the only ones with the right [to rule], and that the others don’t exist; but no, we will allow the others [to be politically active]….” The quote continues to say that if Islamists come into power and implement the shari’a, and then do a bad job governing and are voted out of office, they should hand over rule to those who won the elections. Other quotations express opinions that joining political parties in the West is permitted; that the penalty for apostasy is not for all those who leave Islam, but only for those apostates who stir up civil strife; that assuring [civil] liberties is more important than implementing the shari’a; that democracy is not unbelief; and that a secular regime is to be preferred in countries like India where there is no clear religious majority.
Relations with Non-Muslims
Abu Basir Al-Tartusi accuses Al-Qaradhawi of negating the principle of al-wala’ w’al-bara’ – exclusive allegiance to Allah and Islam, and repudiation of unbelief and unbelievers – by relating too positively to non-Muslims. Here too Al-Tartusi provides a sampling of quotations from Al-Qaradhawi, such as “all of the problems among us [Muslim and Christian Egyptians] are common to us all. We are members of the same homeland and the same nation. I call them ‘our Christian brothers’; some people condemn me for this [and say]: how can I say ‘my Christian brothers’? Koran 49:10 [says] ‘The believers are but a single brotherhood.’ Yes, we are believers, and they are believers, in a different way… The Copts are our brothers, and we have the same rights and duties.” Regarding Jews, Al-Qaradhawi says: “The war between us and the Jews is not because of belief. Some might think that we are fighting the Jews because of their belief, but this is wrong… We are fighting the Jews because of the land they usurped and its people they made homeless.” Al-Qaradhawi also says that there is no reason to use the term ‘infidels’ (kuffar), and that one should say ‘non-Muslims’ instead.(10)
Al-Tartusi considers statements of this kind apostasy, because of verses like Koran 5:51 and 3:28 which forbid befriending non-Muslims, and were already cited above in connection with Al-Qaradhawi’s fatwa about serving in the U.S. military.
“Heretical” Jurisprudence
Al-Tartusi sees the root of the problem with Al-Qaradhawi as being in the latter’s use of a “heretical” jurisprudence which substitutes whim for divine law. “Under the rubric of ‘the jurisprudence of balances,’ which he subjects to his own whim and nothing else, he permits and forbids of his own accord, without rule from Allah; he ratifies heresy and idolatry, and sacrifices the interest of Allah’s unity for the least supposed material interest…” Such a jurisprudence led to rulings like the defense of the Buddha statues, allowing churches to be built in the Arabian Peninsula, and support for apostate rulers. In Al-Tartusi’s view, one can weigh benefits versus drawbacks in jurisprudence, but first one must be able to assess them correctly, and the principle of Allah’s unity must always be placed first and foremost. He also accuses Al-Qaradhawi of raising leniency to an independent principle, whereby he permits mixing of the sexes, women’s singing, the sale of wine and pork in some circumstances, and some interest-bearing transactions, as well as allowing a Muslim wife to remain with her non-Muslim husband.
Al-Tartusi is particularly incensed by an explicit call by Al-Qaradhawi to review older religious texts in light of the modern age, expressed in his essay “Islam Considers Humanity One Single Family”: “[We need] to cleanse our public culture, which we instill in students in the schools, and in the masses through the media, of some of the erroneous concepts found in old books, which carry the imprint of their age and the environment [in which they were written]. We cannot generalize these concepts to all generations, as they ended together with the conditions [that produced them]…[We need] to inaugurate a new moderate culture, based on mutual recognition, not mutual refusal of acknowledgement… based on love, not hatred; based on pluralism, not on isolation; and based on peace, and not on war.”(11)
Al-Qaradhawi Is an Infidel, an Apostate, and a Heretic
Al-Tartusi concludes his essay: “Because of all of the above, and in order to discharge my duty, and in order to advise the Islamic nation [of this matter], I ruled – and I still hold to this ruling – that Yousef Al-Qaradhawi is an infidel, an apostate, and a heretic. All of the laws applying to infidels, apostates, and heretics apply to him, until he repents of the aforementioned beliefs.
“I did not issue this ruling on a whim or out of a desire for revenge, or in the manner of those who are rash and careless. [I did not issue it] before examining the conditions for takfir and the impediments to it. I went back and reexamined myself time and again before issuing this ruling, and I scrutinized these matters, and reexamined them from every side and angle. For a long time I refrained from broaching [the issue of] this man, until no escape route of [lenient] interpretation or [justified] excuse was left…
“I was worried about incurring the sin of suppressing what I have an obligation to make clear regarding this man… [This was necessary] especially since the corrupt media, for whatever ugly aim is in their souls, have created [an aura of] awe for this man among the people, and among some scholars and their students, and this led many of them to refrain from speaking the truth about him…
“‘Abd Al-Mun’im Mustafa Halima, a.k.a. Abu Basir Al-Tartusi
“3 Dhu Al-Qi’da, 1429 / November 1, 2008.”
Endnotes:
(1) See MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 794, “Reactions to Sheikh Al-Qaradhawi’s Fatwa Calling for the Abduction and Killing of American Civilians in Iraq,” October 6, 2004, http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP79404.
(2) See MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 968, “Leading Progressive Qatari Cleric: By Permitting Suicide Operations, Al-Qaradhawi and His Ilk Have Caused a Moral Crisis in Islam,” August 25, 2005, http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP96805.
(3) See MEMRI Special Report No. 30, “Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi in London to Establish ‘The International Council of Muslim Clerics’,” July 8, 2004, http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sr&ID=SR3004; this report also provides a summary of Al-Qaradhawi’s positions on contemporary issues.
(4) www.timesonline.co.uk, February 7, 2008.
(5) See MEMRI Inquiry and Analysis No. 481, “Recent Rise in Sunni-Shi’ite Tension (II): Anti-Shi’ite Statements by Sheikh Al-Qaradhawi,” December 16, 2008, http://www.memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=IA48108.
(6) http://www.abubaseer.bizland.com/articles/read/a%20118.doc.
(7) www.islamonline.net, March 9, 2001.
(8) Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (London), October 8, 2001.
(9) Al-Tartusi does not give a source for this accusation. A number of jihadist websites have posted what is purported to be an audio recording of Ibn ‘Uthaymin’s response to Al-Qaradhawi’s sermon; see, for example, http://www.muslm.net/vb/archive/index.php/t-313456.html.
(10) It may be noted that Al-Qaradhawi is also against calling Jews descendants of apes and pigs; see MEMRI TV Clip No. 1691, “Sheikh Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi, Recently Barred from U.K., Reiterates His Position on Suicide Bombings and Declares: Jews Are Not the Offspring of Apes and Pigs,” February 15-18, 2008, http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1691.htm.
(11) Yousef Al-Qaradhawi, “Islam Considers Humanity One Single Family,” October 18, 2005, http://www.qaradawi.net/site/topics/printArticle.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=4063&version=1&template_id=187&parent_id=18&static=1

Friday, 26 December 2008

Syrian Jihadist Scholar Abu Basir Al-Tartusi: Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi is an Apostate, 26 December 2008 Friday 9:48

Reformist Blogger Linked to Boston Mosque Controversy “Disappears” in Cairo

Dennis Hale, President of the Boston-based Citizens for Peace and Tolerance (CPT) - an interfaith group of Christians, Muslims and Jews - called on the American State Department and the international community to come to the aid of Reda Abdelarahman Ali, who was abducted by Egyptian authorities from his home in Sharkeya, Egypt last October.

Reda [pictured here] is an Egyptian follower of renowned Muslim reformer, Dr. Ahmed Mansour, who, as a member of CPT in Boston, protested against radical Islamist literature in an area mosque affiliated with the Muslim American Society’s Boston branch, also known as the Islamic Society of Boston.
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Reda, himself an Islamic reformist scholar and blogger, “has not been located since he was abducted in October,” said Hale. His family and international human rights groups fear that he is being tortured and may be executed to cover up the case. Reporters Without Borders has taken up Reda’s case, as has the Institute on Religion and Public Policy. The Egyptian High National Security Court ordered Reda’s release two weeks ago, on the grounds that “arresting people solely on the basis of their religious beliefs is not acceptable.” But Mr. Abdelarahman remains in custody at an undisclosed location, and his family has been denied access to him. His arrest appears to have been demanded by the religious authorities in charge of Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the center of Sunni orthodoxy in the Middle East.

Dr. Mansour, founder of the “Quranists” - an Islamic reform movement which supports democratic reform inside Egypt and advocates a progressive interpretation of Islam - fled to the United States where he established the International Quranic Center (IQC), to articulate a vision of Islam as inclusive and peaceful. In 2004, Dr. Mansour, while a fellow at Harvard’s “Scholars at Risk” program, found Islamist hate literature in a Cambridge mosque and through CPT made the matter public, sparking a controversy which has not ended.
“The Quranists in Egypt may be paying the price for their leader’s struggle against radical Islam in America,” said Hale. “Dr. Mansour’s family members say that during the latest wave of arrests and torture of Quranists, Egyptian interrogators demanded information on Dr. Mansour’s work with Citizens for Peace and Tolerance. After Dr. Mansour went public with his concerns, the Islamic Society of Boston retaliated with a defamation lawsuit against him and his colleagues, which they fought and defeated. His followers in Egypt were not so lucky.”
The Quranists, who see themselves as waging a “war of ideas” against radical Islam have been persecuted since 1985, including three waves of arrest and torture in 1987, 2000, and 2007.
Hale said, “we call on the human rights community in the Boston area to take up Reda’s plight.”

(Source: press release from citizens for peace and tolerance via Rusty)

The Jawa Report: Reformist Blogger Linked to Boston Mosque Controversy “Disappears” in Cairo

Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Afiya Shehrbano
In the last few years, Islam, Islamism and political Islam have become new brands of academic and policy interests in western countries. Well-funded government think tanks in Europe and the US are drawing upon academics as well as representatives from their local Muslim communities in an attempt to dissect, distinguish and sanitize the politics from Islam. Presumably this is a means of dealing with global faith-based violence. It’s a useful political tactic for western governments to appear to be ‘doing something’ other than fearing, arresting or bombing suspect terrorists. It also helps them avoid accusations of being Islamophobic. However, the process of research and offering courses on the subject is an exercise that is sometimes interesting, other times amusing and often disturbing.
In the United Kingdom for example, nearly every university is offering (very expensive) courses that analyse Islam as a practice, or organising conferences that attempt to ‘frame’ Muslims as political communities in and outside of the Muslim world. They are also funding several doctorates in this regard. As scholarship goes, this is a valuable exercise as some of this research attempts to debunk myths and challenge orientalist interpretations of existing literature on Islam and Muslims. However, in their wake, these projects are problematic when they begin to get articulated into policy and become applicable to those of us who actually live in the Muslim world.
One such concern is over the endeavour to study Islam and Muslims with reference to faith-based politics. This suggests that now western academia too refers to our identities first and foremost with reference to religion. This narrow lens on how we accept or resist religion and its expressions leads to divisiveness. Women, for example, become symbols for western audiences representing either the progressive modern potential of a nation in question or, as veiled, regressive, threatening reminders of what the wrong kind of religious politics can potentially lead to. In other words, such an approach suggests there is little space for Muslims to be anything other than a religious category. And increasingly, academics (whether apologists or critics of Islamic politics) are complicit in essentialising Muslims in this process.
Neither are Muslim activists or community leaders innocent in this regard. Researchers at the University of Warwick while studying Muslim communities in the UK, shared the finding that sometimes Muslim women suddenly start observing the hijab so that they may be invited to government think-tanks as ‘authentic’ voices for their communities.
There are any number of scholarly experts of Arab, African and Asian origin involved in explaining, and reinterpreting Islam for the western audience. Within the overlap of such discussions, fringe movements have gathered momentum, such as Islamic Feminism. These scholars are involved in projects that seek feminist reclamation of the religion, including reinterpretations of Islamic texts from a women’s rights perspective. Other Muslim academics look to revive classical debates from Islamic history and advocate the need to resort to pre-modernist legal, social and state structures and relations in order to resolve current crises, which they attribute to modern secularism.
Clearly there is no unanimity on any agreeable model of Islamic politics within this diverse scholarship. However, the government is attempting to counter the Islamophobia they are accused of by promoting ‘progressive’ British Muslim youth or women as role models. This creates new dilemmas. For example, when these ‘ambassadors’ travel to Muslim countries, such as Somalia, to discuss the human rights abuses committed in the name of religion, it reeks of neo-colonial attempts to civilise the savage native.
There are even joint research efforts between western academia and individual experts in Pakistan that attempt to look for alternatives to radical, political Islam as an effort to promote the softer or Sufi side of Islam. All attempts to redefine what is essentially a complex political identity that is in itself a dynamic mixture of the ideological, material and social, are incredibly ambitious. The idea that if only we could neutralise some of the radical groups or reinterpret texts in a progressive way or shut all/certain madressahs or convince the jihadis to struggle for the personal but not the political, are reminiscent of the NGO approach to socio-political development. That is, to circumvent the state and try and fix structural failures by awareness raising, empowering the communities and putting up more schools/shelters/income generation programmes. Commendable projects but not political solutions.
The value of research is not in question here. However, when this research begins to morph into developmental joint ventures between western governments and home institutions, then there is a danger. There is no homogenous understanding internally within Muslim countries of religious or political identity. Muslim feminists in the west face very different identity issues compared to Pakistan. Therefore the strategies that work for them within a broader secular state have very different implications for the women’s movement here. If then we find ourselves facing policy recommendations that uniformly suggest we can correct the wrong kind of political expression of religion and replace it with another kind, we step deeper into the minefield. This will never allow us to sort out an issue that is not simply about the heart, mind or soul.
The contest of political identity has to be fought between and amongst the radical and moderate, the conservative and liberal, the religious and secular. What western academics and Muslim diaspora would do well to understand is that these categories in Pakistan do not have fixed meanings as they may in other cultural contexts. To some extent the growing academic interest in Islam is useful and even helps to reinvent the careers of some fledgling western academics who have jumped on to this bandwagon. But it should not divert from the very real political challenge that requires our own analysis and struggle and often has very little to do with those academic exercises mentioned above.
The writer is a sociologist based in Karachi. She has a background in women’s studies and has authored and edited several books on women’s issues Email: afiyazia@yahoo.com

Branding Islam

ISTANBUL - A new search engine on the Internet was launched recently, but this time it is for Muslims only.

According to the Web site, it uses the database of the well-known search engine Google and is powered by it, but filters search terms in accordance with Islam.

It is stated on the Web site’s “About Us” section that the engine was built on the substructure of Google and anyone could build a similar site. Some terms are not available to search at all, while in the results for searchable terms, results about Islam come first. “The best search for Islam,” the Web site states on its main page, on which the color green, known as Islam’s color is used.

“This is a search engine to filter inconvenient results in search engines,” the Web site states. For example, a search for “alcohol” first lists results about alcohol in Islam. Meanwhile, words like “porn,” or its Turkish version “porno,” and the word “sex,” cannot be searched for using the engine. However, “seks” the Turkish word for “sex” can be searched.

he Web site also states that it has no affiliation with any individual or institution. Meanwhile Google stated that Web sites can use Google custom search to create custom search engines, but cannot abuse the Google brand or it will be disabled. However, the site cannot filter advertisements about terms that are searched, but they have a solution for that, “MüslümanGoogle.com does not profit from advertisements,” the Web site states, adding that all advertising income will be donated to charitable foundations that send aid to Palestine. The site can be reached at www.muslumangoogle.com.

Muslim Google hits the Web

To Fix Islam, Start From the Inside

The best way to fight radicalism is to empower Muslim women worldwide.

Irshad Manji

NEWSWEEK

America’s 44th President will not need any 3 a.m. phone calls to keep him awake. Figuring out how to restore the United States’ moral authority in the Islamic world —while encouraging Muslims to reform themselves—would stop anyone from sleeping soundly.

The solution will require more than success in Iraq or the Palestinian territories. After all, most Muslims live outside the Middle East, and Washington must learn to acknowledge their worth. Doing so demands a foreign-policy rethink. Instead of being driven strictly by counterterrorism, the United States’ approach to Muslims should be complemented by a universal human-rights thrust—a cooperative strategy that recognizes ordinary Muslims, especially women, to be immediate targets of jihadism, as well as indispensable partners in the fight against it.

Such a foreign policy would not only improve the United States’ global image, it would also allow Americans to form smart alliances and make even smarter use of tools like microcredit. And it would intensify the U.S. pursuit of rights-abusing thugs—those who bomb, behead, bury alive or beat up civilians. Not coincidentally, these are often the same criminals who threaten U.S. security. A textbook example is the Iranian government, which makes everyday Muslims its first victims. Last year the regime arrested Zohreh and Azar Kabiri, 20-something mothers, on charges of adultery. The sisters got 99 lashes each before being sentenced to be draped in white sheets, lowered into dirt pits and stoned to death with fist-size rocks.

Islamic law can be brutal; no amount of cultural theorizing erases this fact. But as a faithful, feminist Muslim, I know that seventh-century cruelty is not inevitable in the 21st century. Human interpretations of divinely inspired words are exactly that—human, fallible and subject to reversal. In October, during the United Nations’ annual debate about children’s rights, Iran announced its intention to reduce juvenile executions. Campaigns in more than 80 countries and local activists prodded Tehran to that point. The next step is follow-through, and savvy pressure by the United States and other nations can help. The trick for Washington is to listen and learn: listen to dissidents who seek support, respect those who do not and learn from those with a track record of triumph.

Let the record show that human dignity can win. Ahmad Batebi is an Iranian democracy advocate who has faced certain execution more than once over the past decade. A 1999 photo of him—captured in the midst of a bloody protest—circulated worldwide on the cover of a Western magazine. The fallout apparently induced cold feet at the gallows. Batebi’s execution was postponed long enough for him to flee to the United States, where he now lives. Western attention also advanced the recent case of a Saudi woman who was gang-raped, then threatened with jail for “dishonoring” her community. Late last year a media uproar amplified by U.S. broadcasters compelled King Abdullah to take the extraordinary step of pardoning her.

Given these nonviolent victories, why do citizens and governments of the West often bristle at the notion of getting involved? Put bluntly, too many freeze in fear of being deemed racists for taking up “other” people’s business. But as the economy has rudely reminded us, ours is an interdependent age in which the “other” is a mirage. Muslims inhabit the same world as non-Muslims. No wonder a rising number of Islamic scholars—such as Prof. Bassam Tibi of Germany and Abhdullahi Ahmed An-Naim, a Sudanese-American and renowned expert in Sharia—argue that everyone should enjoy the same freedoms of thought, conscience and expression.

This is not to counsel more military invasions to rescue Muslims from each other. Exactly the opposite: Washington’s fixation on counterterrorism reduces Muslims to the status of perceived anti-American conspirators, creating enemies out of those who ought to be Lady Liberty’s fiercest allies. Foremost among them are Muslim women, who have the most to gain from reform within Islam. Ultimately, it is women who will help Muslims help themselves. The new U.S. president can benefit the Islamic world by engaging the entrepreneurial talents of Muslim women.

Enter a tiny miracle known as microcredit.

In this season of financial turmoil, it takes chutzpah, I confess, to propose more lending as the answer to anything. But extending minuscule loans to Muslim villagers has demonstrated its worth time and again, inspiring near-perfect repayment rates that shame today’s industrial banks. Better yet, microcredit has the backing of Islam. Khadija, beloved first wife of the Prophet Muhammad, was a self-made merchant who employed her husband for many years. If Muslim men are serious about emulating the life of Islam’s messenger, they should have no qualms about letting their wives work for themselves. Moreover, according to traditional Islamic teachings, when a woman earns assets, she may spend 100 percent of them as she sees fit. Through microloans, Muslim women can launch community businesses that build profits and, ultimately, change cultures.

I know of a woman in Afghanistan who accepted a $200 microloan, started a candle-making venture, and used some of the returns to pay for reading lessons. She found female-friendly verses in the Qur’an and recited them to her still-illiterate husband. When he realized that these words came from God’s book rather than a secular declaration of human rights, he immediately stopped beating her. Not exactly paradise, but no longer the pit of hell.

Microloans would also equip Muslim women to establish their own schools. That, too, is happening in parts of Kabul, where handwritten signs proclaim, “Educate a boy and you educate only that boy. But educate a girl and you educate her entire family.” A sign aimed at the U.S. president might read: “Remember the multiplier effect of investing in Muslim women.”

To be sure, Washington cannot neglect the Arab states—nor would it by embracing this approach. If anything, the baby boom in today’s Middle East illuminates the urgency of microloans for Muslim women there. About 60 percent of Arabs are now under 20 years old (compared with 29 percent of Americans). In one decade (or just over two U.S. presidential terms), Arab Muslim numbers are projected to increase to 430 million. Plenty of young Arabs have college degrees, yet no prospects for work. The idle often gravitate to radical organizations. Deny this growing generation an opportunity to participate economically, and the chaos could convulse our planet.

Here again, microcredit offers a way forward: Muslim businesswomen can save not only their families and neighborhoods but also people and places beyond. Entrepreneurial mothers create spaces of commerce—and imagination—for their children. The ensuing sense of possibility will stem the globalization of grievance. That is why microcredit for Muslim women would fit seamlessly into a foreign policy that balances counterterrorism with human rights.

In adopting this policy, the new president should ally with other countries, each of which would shave a sliver of its annual security budget and pool the proceeds into a coherent microloan program. Bye-bye to the Coalition of the Willing. Hello, salaam, and possibly shalom to the Alliance of the Interdependent.

Western nations ought to join the alliance, but Muslim countries, particularly the royally rich Gulf states, must also pull their weight. The next U.S. president can whisper into the ears of emirs his respect for the Qu’ran’s message of personal responsibility. Islam’s scripture tells Muslims that “God does not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves.” Translation for Muslim leaders: put your money where your moderation is.

In the same spirit, the president should push for a Muslim country to spearhead this alliance. Turkey—a trusted U.S. ally, a veteran NATO member and a functioning democracy—seems a natural candidate, but its ardent desire to become part of the European Union incites suspicion in the rest of the Islamic world. I thus nominate Indonesia, the biggest Muslim country on earth. Its 17,000 islands bustle with as many believers as the entire Middle East. Unlike most of the Middle East, however, Indonesia is an electoral democracy with a secular Constitution that celebrates “unity in diversity.” It is a nation forged from 300 ethnicities, scores of languages and a history of tolerance among Muslims, Christians, Hindus and animists. Indonesia faces its own extremist threat. But if the United States welcomed Indonesia’s stewardship on behalf of all Muslims, especially before next year’s national elections there, the gesture could go far to ensuring that pluralistic Islam carries the day.

Even with Indonesia at the helm, some will smear the Alliance of the Interdependent as a handmaiden of U.S. imperialism; such a rhetorical cudgel is just too convenient to be abandoned. But the new cooperator in chief can draw strength—and inspiration—from language Martin Luther King Jr. once used when accused by eight Alabama clergymen of being an “outsider.” As the civil-rights icon replied, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial ‘outside agitator’ idea.”

So it must be in our day, when citizenship is that much more global. Islamist radicals do not give a fig for moderate Muslims—whom they term the “near enemy”—or for Westerners, the “far enemy.” We wear the same garment. All the more reason to treat universal human rights as a link between our mutual security interests: the bridge that will return America not just to dry land, but to higher ground.

Manji, creator of the PBS documentary “Faith Without Fear,” is a scholar with the European Foundation for Democracy and the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University.

To Fix Islam, Start From the Inside | Print Article | Newsweek.com