The Complete Infidel's Guide to ISIS (50 page)

And it will not change the mind of a single jihadi. This letter is not an Islamic case against the Islamic State’s jihad terror that will move Islamic State fighters to lay down their arms, but rather a deceptive piece of propaganda designed to fool gullible non-Muslim Westerners into thinking that the case for “moderate Islam” has been made.

The disingenuous nature of the open letter should have been clear from the outset—from the involvement not only of Hamas-linked CAIR, but also of some of the 126 signers.

These included Professor Mustafa Abu Sway, who holds the Integral Chair for the Study of Imam Ghazali’s Work at al Quds University in Jerusalem—and is a Hamas activist; Dr. Jamal Badawi, an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas terror funding case; Mustafa Ceric, former grand mufti of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who has called for Sharia in Bosnia; Professor Caner Dagli, a venomously hateful Islamic apologist at Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts, who traffics in Nazi imagery about “unclean” unbelievers; Ali Gomaa, former grand mufti of Egypt, who endorses wife-beating, Hizballah, and the punishment of apostates from Islam; Hamza Yusuf Hanson, founder and director of Zaytuna College, USA, who blamed the West for Muslim riots over a teddy bear named Muhammad; Ed Husain, senior fellow in Middle Eastern Studies for the Council on Foreign Relations, who claimed in
September 2014 that seizing British jihadis’ passports so that they couldn’t return to the UK from the Islamic State would only create more jihadis; Muhammad Tahir Al-Qadri, founder of Minhaj-ul-Qur’an International, Pakistan, who drafted Pakistan’s notorious blasphemy law and had already issued a disingenuous and hypocritical Fatwa Against Terrorism; and Muzammil Siddiqi, chairman of the Fiqh Council and former head of the Hamas-linked Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).
⁵⁹

Hardly names to inspire confidence in the group’s “moderation.”

And sure enough, in the course of their very lengthy open letter, the signatories endorse these six elements of what is usually considered to be “extremist” Islam:

1. Jihad

Recently “jihad” has been the subject of a massive rebranding campaign—undertaken by none other than the very same Council on American-Islamic Relations that promoted this disingenuous letter. In 2013 CAIR began running bus ads featuring cheerful-looking Muslims with slogans such as “My Jihad is to stay fit despite my busy schedule. What’s yours?,”
“My Jihad is to not judge people by their cover. What’s yours?,” and “My Jihad is to build friendships across the aisle. What’s yours?”
⁶⁰

The 2014 open letter continued the campaign to whitewash the concept of jihad. “All Muslims see the great virtue in jihad,” it says, repeatedly claiming that jihad warfare is strictly defensive. “There is no such thing,” the scholars assert, “as offensive, aggressive jihad just because people have different religions or opinions. This is the position of Abu Hanifa, the Imams Malik and Ahmad and all other scholars including Ibn Taymiyyah, with the exception of some scholars of the Shafi’i school.”

On its surface, it sounds moderate to renounce “offensive” jihad to convert or subjugate non-Muslims and claim the right only to defend fellow Muslims when they’re attacked. But remember that in Sunni Islamic law, only the caliph has the authority to declare offensive jihad, while defensive jihad is obligatory upon all Muslims when a Muslim land is attacked, and need not be declared by anyone. Thus since 1924 (when the caliphate was abolished by Atatürk) to this day (except for those who accept the Islamic State’s claim to have revived it), all jihad attacks, even 9/11, have been cast by their perpetrators as defensive.

So endorsing only “defensive” jihad is not as moderate as it sounds.

In any case, the Shafi’i school, which even the open letter’s signatories have to admit does endorse “offensive” jihad, is one of the four great schools of Sunni jurisprudence. If some Shafi’i scholars allow for “offensive, aggressive jihad just because people have different religions or opinions,” can it really be said to be un-Islamic? Are the scholars pronouncing takfir on the Shafi’i school (declaring them heretics)? Or just deceiving gullible non-Muslims?

2. Dhimmitude

“Regarding Arab Christians,” the scholars remind the Islamic State caliph, “you gave them three choices: jizyah (poll tax), the sword, or conversion to Islam.” Jizya, as we have seen, is the tax specified in the Qur’an (9:29) to be
levied on “the People of the Book” as a sign of their dhimmitude, their subjugation and submission to Muslim hegemony. This, the scholars say, was wrong, because “these Christians are not combatants against Islam or transgressors against it, indeed they are friends, neighbours and co-citizens. From the legal perspective of Shari’ah they all fall under ancient agreements that are around 1400 years old, and the rulings of jihad do not apply to them.”

The letter’s explanation of jizya, however, is hopelessly self-contradictory.

The scholars tell the caliph that the Arab Christians are friends of the Muslims, who “did not wage war against you” and thus should not have been subjugated as dhimmis. But then in the very next paragraph they mention a “second type of jizyah,” which “is levied on those who do not wage war against Islam.” So if, as the signatories to the letter aver, “there are two types of jizyah in Shariah,” and only the first “applies to those who fought Islam,” then how is the Islamic State transgressing against Islam by levying the jizya on those who did not wage war against Islam?

These “moderate” scholars are apparently fine with a religion-based poll tax, a sign of the subjugation of the religious minority, in an Islamic state. In this the authors also contradict their earlier claim that jihad is only defensive; now “those who do not wage war against Islam” are to be made to pay the jizya, which in the Qur’an is the end goal of Muslims’ fighting the People of the Book: “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued” (Qur’an 9:29).

3–5. Stoning for Adultery, Amputation for Theft, Execution of Apostates

In Islamic law
Hudud
refers to the punishments fixed by Allah himself for serious crimes, including the stoning of adulterers, the amputation of
thieves’ hands, and the execution of apostates from Islam. While Islamic apologists in the U.S. routinely claim that these punishments are not really part of Sharia or Islam at all, these “moderate” scholars say: “Hudud punishments are fixed in the Qur’an and Hadith and are unquestionably obligatory in Islamic Law.”
⁶¹
Their quibble with the Islamic State is that it has been cruel and merciless in applying these punishments.

This is telling. In its campaigns against laws that would block the imposition of Islamic Sharia law in the United States, CAIR has claimed that these punishments are not an integral or essential part of Sharia.
⁶³
Now, CAIR has admitted otherwise.

6. The Caliphate

“There is agreement (ittifaq) among scholars,” say the scholars, “that a caliphate is an obligation upon the Ummah.”

A caliphate is an obligation. That is, Muslims should strive to establish a single multinational, multiethnic empire, to which alone they owe political loyalty. In other words, they owe no loyalty to the nations in which they currently reside.

This is a notable and extremely important admission. The Islamic State is appealing to so many young Muslims in the West because it claims to be the caliphate. Caliphates are established and sustained on the principle of Might Makes Right. If the Islamic State sustains itself and survives, more and more Muslims will pledge allegiance to it.

To be sure, Hamas-linked CAIR, the Fiqh Council, and all the signers of this open letter really do oppose the Islamic State. But they don’t oppose it because it is transgressing against the commands of what they believe to be
a religion of peace. They oppose it because they want to establish a caliphate led by the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Islamic State constitutes competition. This is clear from their sly endorsements of jihad, the Sharia, and the concept of the caliphate in this letter. But with so many infidels so eager to be fooled, their work is easy.

Chapter Nine