Yesterday, with great media fanfare, a group of Islamic damage control experts placated what can sometimes be a worried American public by saying: "Don't worry, infidels, we got ya a fatwa! You can play with it for a little while, and then it's back to naptime." Yes, the Fiqh Council of North America issued a fatwa condemning "terrorism against innocent civilians." Wow, a fatwa! Fatwa... It sounds so exotic, like the names of the men who issued it (more on them later).

Big media, and many everyday Americans are understandably relieved by this, because they have a vague notion that this fatwa business is supposed to be a big deal, and in this case it's like a "no means no" policy when it comes to not really Muslims carrying out isolated incidents that don't represent the real Islam. So, when the next mega-jihad event happens on our soil, committed by earnest holy warriors with Arab names, howling Allahu akbar! as they reach the threshold of oblivion... we can rest assured that they were just violent extremists and not really Muslims. Or the next time a jihad-preaching sheikh is given a stiff sentence in our courts for reminding the faithful that Muhammad said, "Allah guarantees that He will admit the Mujahid in His Cause into Paradise if he is killed, otherwise He will return him to his home safely with rewards and war booty,"¹ we can take comfort in knowing that this is actually perversion of the real Islam.

Why are we so enthusiastic about uncritically accepting glib explanations for malevolent foreign concepts that are being brought to our attention forcefully enough and often enough to warrant a rational, studied examination? I suppose it may be more soothing and less painful than facing the prospect of affirming some of the unpleasant suspicions we have concerning those about whom we have never needed to know much. However, as more time passes and we see more and more isolated incidents of hateful violence carried out by extremists who don't represent the real Islam, which is really the Religion of Peace&trade, this position of docile complacence will become less tenable and more deadly.

So anyway, these American Muhammadan snake oil salesmen have dropped the f-bomb for Allah. Legally binding. Henceforth, you mischievous jihadis who get caught performing the non-peaceful inner struggle kind of jihad are dead to rights—Allah says so!

Well, not really.

Here is why you needn't bother busting out your Islamoreformation dancing shoes yet:

Ambiguity

There's absolutely no specificity about exactly what terror is, who is innocent, or even who is a civilian. There never is. The indeterminate nature of these words renders them meaningless. They need to be made clear in plain terms if we are to begin lending them credibility. The con men looking to allay infidel fears assume that we will believe that they understand these concepts the same way that we do. And the vast majority of the time they are right.

Jihad—striving in the way of Allah's religion, in a violent armed conflict against the infidel to establish Allah's religion everywhere, as well as spiritually within ones self—is a central, holy, and obligatory duty in Islamic doctrine. The whole point of Islam is to make Allah's religion supreme over all men, and that's just not going to happen peacefully. In the end, we are not fighting a war against an amorphous, nameless concept like terror. We are specifically fighting the sacred Islamic doctrine of jihad, and it is definitely war.

Jihad is never considered to be terror. Most of the time when we see it, we know it's terror, but this represents a great cultural divide between the West and the Islam. Some fatwas have even gone so far as to exculpate the mujahideen from killing innocents, claiming that the innocent will go to Paradise on the last day anway. So God's will is still done, if expedited a bit.

Who is innocent in the eyes of the Muslim world? The Muslims are innocent because they live in submission to God's decree as elucidated in the Qur'an and sunnah. The unbelievers are the universal "enemies of God," who are reviled, and who are definitely not considered innocent. Even the dhimmis (Jews and Christians allowed to live as second class citizens in Muslim lands) are held in great contempt, and belittled at all times.

• Surely the vilest of animals in Allah's sight are those who disbelieve, then they would not believe.
• Let not the unbelievers think that they can get the better (of the godly): they will never frustrate (them). And prepare against them with all armed force you can, including steeds of war, to strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah, your enemies...
• When your Lord revealed to the angels: I am with you, therefore make firm those who believe. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads... That is because they opposed Allah and His messenger. Whoever opposes Allah and His messenger, Allah is severe in punishing.
• And we await for you that Allah will punish you at our hands. So wait; For we are waiting for you. ²

As for who is a civilian, many fuqaha (scholarly experts of shari'ah law) assert that in democratic states, there are really no noncombatants because the citizens vote for the governments who are at war with Islam. Guilt by association and representation.

Also, democracy is inimical to the central principle of Islam, which is tawhid—God's unity or oneness. Proposing that anything be comparable or above God and His divine law (the shari'ah), including man-made democratic law, is a grave enormity, called shirk (translated loosely as "polytheism"), and it is the most hateful sin to the faithful. Muslims consider anyone who adheres to man's law over God's to be immoral and vile—even if by our standards, they are civilians. This is especially true when elected officials are sending troops to war in Muslim lands.

Qur'an & Sunnah Quotations

The Qur'anic verses and hadith (written account of the sunnah, or traditions, of Muhammad and his companions) quoted in our cool new fatwa, and the way they are quoted, are disingenuous and misleading. The first, 5:32, states in its original form: "For this reason did We prescribe to the children of Israel that whoever slays a soul, unless it be for manslaughter or for mischief in the land, it is as though he slew all men..." Mischief in the land is the Islamic catch-all phrase for anything unislamic. The quote in our fatwa, however, leaves that out, instead offering:

Whoever kills a person [unjustly]…it is as though he has killed all mankind...

There's a bit of latitude with what "unjustly" may denote. Killing an infidel who may or may not have actually caused "mischief in the land" is not unjust. It is righteous.

The hadith quoted from al-Tirmidhi is actually kind of a nice one, even though it is most likely meant to be understood in the context of ones conduct among the ummah (the Muslim community): "...Instead, accustom yourselves to do good if people do good and not to do wrong (even) if they do evil." It's actually almost redolent of Christian doctrine. In any event, al-Tirmidhi's hadith rank low in order of strength (putative authenticity) among the six major hadith collections, which are in order of strength, greatest to weakest: Sahih Al-Bukhari, Sahih Muslim, Sunan al-Nasa'i, Sunan Abu Dawud, Sunan Al-Tirmidhi, and Sunan Ibn Majah.

These are all reliable hadith, and they are universally used in Sunni fiqh (jurisprudence). But the hadith of Bukhari (judged highest in authenticity) are not so magnanimous. Take the "evil" of apostasy, or heresy (zanadiqa also translates as "heretics"), for example:

Some Zanadiqa (atheists) were brought to 'Ali and he burnt them. The news of this event, reached Ibn 'Abbas who said, "If I had been in his place, I would not have burnt them, as Allah's Apostle forbade it, saying, 'Do not punish anybody with Allah's punishment (fire).' I would have killed them according to the statement of Allah's Apostle, 'Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him.'"³

The next Qur'anic quote we come to, "Thus, have We made of you an Ummat of the just, that you may be a witness of the truth over the nations...," is merely one of many declarations of Islam's superiority. The Qur'an is full of such disdainful, unmerited arrogance. There is nothing altruistic or virtuous in this. If anything, the vainglorious hubris repeatedly found in the Qur'an is sanction for the hatred, and subsequent killing, of the infidel. In Allah's cause, of course.

The final piece of crooked timber holding up this edifice of falsity is the Qur'anic verse: "Let there arise out of you a nation who invite to goodness, and enjoin right conduct and forbid indecency. Such are they who are successful." This is, of course, another Islamosupremacist boast. It should also be noted that enjoining "right conduct" and "forbidding indecency" is what the ignoble Islamocrats in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Nigeria, formerly in Afghanistan, Sudan, and Pakistan do whenever someone has their throat cut, is flogged, stoned, hanged, shot, or beheaded. This is the Qur'an, and when right and wrong are mentioned, they are meant in the frame of reference of the medieval mind-set that forged Islam, and which is still adhered to literally by Muslims.

Getting back to the Qur'an (not the fatwa), it gets more interesting a few verses after the abovementioned one, where the point is brought home more emphatically:

You are the best of peoples to have been raised up for mankind. You enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong and you believe in Allah. If only the people of the Book [Jews and Christians —ed.] believed, it would be better for them. Some of them are believers, but most are perverted evildoers.⁴

How charming! Remember, this stuff is still viewed to be the inerrant word of God, by his correspondents on the ground. And then a few verses after that we read:

O you who believe! Do not take those from outside your own people as friends. They look to corrupt you and desire only your ruin...⁵

Allah is only enjoining what is right from His people (the best ever in mankind).

Conclusion

In short, this fatwa is yet another example of the sanctified Islamic practice of lying to maintain, protect, or advance the Islamic faith. This is called taqiyya (dissimulation). Examples from the Qur'an, sunnah, and shari'ah include:

• Allah indeed has sanctioned for you the dissolution of your oaths and Allah is your Protector, and He is the Knowing the Wise.⁶
• Let not the believer take unbelievers for their friends... except by way of precaution [taqiyya —ed.], to guard yourselves against them and gain security. And Allah cautions you (to remember) Himself; for the final goal is to Allah.⁶
• Allah's Apostle said, "Who is willing to kill Ka'b bin Al-Ashraf who has hurt Allah and His Apostle?" Thereupon Muhammad bin Maslama got up saying, "O Allah's Apostle! Would you like that I kill him?" The Prophet said, "Yes," Muhammad bin Maslama said, "Then allow me to say a (false) thing (i.e. to deceive Kab). "The Prophet said, "You may say it."⁷ [The reader should bear in mind that this man was killed to satisfy Muhammad's vain spite. He "hurt" Muhammad by writing poetry that Muhammad found offensive to Islam. He had his head cut off, whereupon it was given to Muhammad, who praised Allah for the act. This sheds some light on the murderous rage Muslims feel when their faith is criticized, and it also explains fatwas being issued against people like Salman Rushdie, Theo van Gogh, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, et al., not to mention blasphemy laws in Pakistan and elsewhere in the Muslim world —ed]
• PERMISSIBLE LYING r8.2 The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said,  "He who settles disagreements between people to bring about good or says something commendable is not a liar."

  This much is related by both Bukhari and Muslim, with Muslim's version recording that Umm Kulthum added,
   "I did not hear him permit untruth in anything people say, except for three things: war, settling disagreements, and a man talking with his wife or she with him (A: in smoothing over differences)."

  This is an explicit statement that lying is sometimes permissible for a given interest, scholars having established criteria defining what types of it are lawful. The best analysis of it I have seen is by Imam Abu Hamid Ghazali, who says: "Speaking is a means to achieve objectives. If a praiseworthy aim is attainable through both telling the truth and lying, it is unlawful to accomplish through lying because there is no need for it. When it is possible to achieve such an aim by lying but not telling the truth, it is permissible to lie if attaining the goal is permissible (N: i.e. when the purpose of lying is to circumvent someone who is preventing one from doing something permissible), and obligatory to lie if the goal is obligatory. [E.g., fighting "those who disbelieve in Allah and His messenger... nor follow the religion of truth... until they acknowledge its superiority... —Qur'an, 9:29 —ed.]
  

I will leave it to the astute and reasonable reader to infer the not-so-subtle nuances of Islam's agenda concerning which aims are praiseworthy.

This is the stuff you're not expected to know, and while it does take a serious commitment to really get into the meat of Islamic theology/jurisprudence (they are inseverably intertwined), I feel that at least a comprehensive skeptical overview—preferably on ones own, or with an objective guide—is advisable these days.

To the average American infidel, this fatwa is a hopeful and welcome development in what has been a confounding and discouraging ideological conflict between Islamic apologetics and the daily deeds of Islam's adherents. But it's not what it appears. It's duplicitous, misleading, and specious. It's all about semantics and detail that many of us are unaware of. Americans need to become more conversant in the source material for what is done all over the world in the name of Allah's (unreformed) religion. The Qur'an and sunnah comprise the unchanged, barbaric, and hateful blueprint that was drawn up 1,400 years ago, and which is actually red with the blood of Islam's infidel sword fodder past and present.

Americans are an optimistic and kindhearted people (except for our nutty überleftist bloc). We want to believe that everyone else in the world understands that freedom and plurality are preferable to and more beneficial than any other way of life. It's not easy for us to come to terms with the possibility that any sizeable number of our human brethren could harbor a visceral hatred towards us that not only leads to killing us en masse, but is also actually canonized as a noble act of loving devotion to God.

As always, I must qualify myself and say that I am aware that it is not the totality of Muslims who are primed and ready for jihad. But if we are talking about the oft-repeated "tiny minority," that is still 16 million (.1%) true believers who are willing to do whatever it takes to establish worldwide Khilafah.¹⁰ That's not a negligible number by any account. We need to treat such a threat to ourselves, our loved ones, and our way of life with the gravity and and preparedness that it rates. And all of this is to say nothing of the innumerable innocent Muslims who are degraded, beaten down, and killed in the name of Islam's retrograde dystopia.

So, at the end of the day, this fatwa isn't worth the paper it was written on, and I bet it was cheap paper indeed.

And then there are the so very sincere, Janus-faced men who are behind this public relations scheme...
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continued

¹Sahih Bukhari, Book 52: Fighting for the Cause of Allah (Jihaad), number 46
²Qur'an 8:55, 59-60, 12; 9:52
³Sahih Bukhari, Book 84: Dealing with Apostates, number 57
⁴Qur'an, 3:110
⁵Qur'an, 3:118
⁶Qur'an, 66:2
⁷Qur'an, 3:28
⁸Sahih Bukhari, Book 59: Military Expeditions Led by the Prophet (pbuh) (al-Maghaai), number 369
⁹Reliance of the Traveller (´Umdat al-Salik): A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law; Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri, trans. Nuh Ha Mim Keller; Amana
  Publications, 1994
¹⁰Caliphate, the universal Islamic state, as ruled by the Khalifah (Caliph)
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Copyright ©2005 Patrick D. O'Brien: may not be copied, published, or otherwise used (except for quotes) without express permission of author. Originally posted at Clarity & Resolve.