Author: Jeff Jacoby
Publication: The Boston Globe
Date: June 13, 2004
"A recent fatwa posted on a popular
Islamic website in Saudi Arabia," reports Neil McFarquhar in The New York
Times, "explains when a
Muslim may mutilate the corpse of
an infidel."
The ruling by Sheik Omar Abdullah
Hassan al-Shehabi specifies two circumstances in which the desecration
of an infidel -- i.e., a non-Muslim -- is permitted. One is retaliation
-- "when the enemy is disfiguring Muslim corpses or when it otherwise serves
the Islamic nation." The other is when mutilation will "terrorize the enemy"
or "gladden the heart of a Muslim warrior."
With conditions like those, it is
hard to imagine any situation in which an Islamist militant couldn't justify
the mutilation of a victim's body.
"That a cleric can post such an
argument in an open forum," comments McFarquhar, "goes a long way toward
explaining how the most radical interpretations of religious texts flourish
in Saudi Arabia."
But it isn't only in Saudi Arabia
that they flourish.
The popular "Ask the Scholar" feature
of Islam Online (www.islamonline.net) was recently asked "how Islam views
the issue of mutilating dead bodies of enemies." In a reply, Sheik Faysal
Mawlawi, deputy chairman of the European Council for Fatwa and Research,
began by declaring that mutilation is "not allowable" under Islam. But
then came the loophole:
"It is possible to mutilate the
dead only in case of retaliation. . . . If he inflicts any physical damage
on anyone, he should be retaliated against in the same manner. In case
of war, Muslims are allowed to take vengeance for their mutilated dead
mujahids (fighters) in the same way it was done to them." This, the
European sheik explained, is the
teaching of the Koran (16:126), which counsels patience but authorizes
revenge.
Does this mean that normative Islamic
law authorizes Muslims to mangle the bodies of non-Muslims they have killed?
I am not a scholar of Islam and would not presume to say. But two facts
seem indisputable: (1) A Muslim intent on such mutilation can find clerical
authority to justify it. And (2) a small but implacable minority of Muslims
are intent on such mutilation. Indeed, it has become a signature of the
evil we are fighting, as the news of the last few months has shown.
(Warning -- the following descriptions
are graphic.)
Fallujah: Four Americans are ambushed,
hauled from their vehicles, jumped on, pounded with bricks. As jubilant
Iraqis chant Islamic slogans, the
bodies are dismembered and set on fire. Two of the charred remains are
then hung from a bridge; the other two are dragged behind cars along the
city's main street. Khobar, Saudi Arabia: A British oil executive, Michael
Hamilton, is one of 22 people murdered in an Al Qaeda attack. His corpse
is dragged through the city, then dumped near a bridge.
Gaza: After six Israelis are blown
up in a bomb attack, Palestinians are filmed dancing in the streets and
playing with the dead men's body parts. In a video, two Islamic Jihad terrorists
take credit for the massacre -- and display the severed head of one of
their victims.
Iraq: Islamofascists videotape their
murder of Nicholas Berg, a 26-year-old US civilian. Shouting "Allahu akhbar!"
("God is great!"), they saw off Berg's head as he shrieks in fear and pain.
The disfiguring of victims' bodies did not begin this year. In a notorious
lynching four years ago, two Israelis were taken from their car to the
second floor of a Palestinian police station in the West Bank town of Ramallah,
where they were literally torn limb from limb. Their internal organs were
pulled from their bodies and their eyes gouged out. What was left of them
was then thrown from a window to a cheering crowd below, which set the
corpses on fire and dragged them through the town.
Perhaps even more infamous, at least
to Americans, were the beheading of journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan
in 2002 and the mutilation of the bodies of US soldiers in Somalia in 1993.
We are in a war to the death with
an enemy whose deepest civilizational values come straight out of the 8th
century. In the world that they would impose on us all, there is no dissent,
no pluralism, no path to God but theirs -- and no mercy or tolerance for
those who might choose a different path. Our enemies make no secret of
their intentions: We will bow to their totalitarian idea of Islam, or we
will be killed. And not only killed, but mangled, mutilated, and subjected
to the most hideous indignities they can devise.
The terrorists and their followers
burn and batter corpses for the same reason the Taliban smashed magnificent
statues -- for the same reason Hitler wrote "Mein Kampf": to openly proclaim
their contempt for the moral principles of the civilized world.
Ultimately it is up to the world's
moderate, modern Muslims to rise up against the barbarians in their midst.
Until that day comes, there is nothing the West can do to ameliorate or
appease this enemy. We can only destroy it
-- or be destroyed.
(Jeff Jacoby is a syndicated columnist
for The Boston Globe.)
