ji·had·ica

Fatwa on the Permissibility of Killing an Ambassador

Joas Wagemakers September 21, 2012

I have to admit that it makes me feel rather uneasy choosing a title like this and writing a post about last week’s death of four staff members of the American embassy in Libya, including the ambassador himself, Christopher Stevens. Yesterday, however, a fatwa was published on the permissibility of killing ambassadors that I think Jihadica readers should know about.

Three questions

The fatwa, published by Abu l-Mundhir al-Shinqiti, is in response to three different questions by three different people. The first question deals with the permissibility of killing an ambassador who doesn’t approve of insults against Islam and has a positive attitude towards Muslims. For those readers thinking this is a direct reference to ambassador Stevens, who was apparently known for his affection for the Libyan people, think again. The person asking the question adds that he’s not talking about the American ambassador since “targeting American embassies in all corners of the world is permissible without them having insulted the Prophet”.

The second questioner wants to know if the post of ambassador can be compared with that of “messenger” (rasul), a job specified in Islamic law that is given to a representative of a non-Muslim country to bring a message to the rulers of the abode of Islam (dar al-Islam). Such a person was given some sort of aman (temporary protection) under Islamic law so that he could do his job safely. If there is indeed a parallel between a messenger and an ambassador, this could mean the latter is not allowed to be killed.

The third question is related to the second since it deals with the concept of ‘ahd (covenant). In the course of Islamic history, Muslim scholars have come up with ways to avoid calling all non-Muslim countries dar al-harb (the abode of war; i.e., those countries with which the Muslims are at least nominally at war). One of the alternatives they chose was dar al-‘ahd (the abode of the covenant), denoting countries with which the Muslim empire has a treaty. Such countries, Islamic jurists held,  should not be attacked since their treaty with the Muslims forbade fighting between them. Some modern scholars have argued that a visa can be seen as a modern equivalent of such a covenant or treaty and that persons who hold a visa or are citizens of a non-Muslim country are not allowed to fight these countries. Similarly, this questioner wants to know whether the ambassador’s legal status in Libya should have protected him from being attacked.

Messenger or ambassador?

While al-Shinqiti refers to an earlier fatwa of his for the third question, he does answer the first two questions. He denies the existence of any direct references to ambassadors in the sacred texts and also disagrees that ambassadors are the modern-day equivalents of the messengers dealt with in Islamic law. To prove his point, al-Shinqiti lists three differences between the two jobs. Firstly, an ambassador is a representative of a state that has sent him to do a job, while a messenger is simply a person sent with a message and nothing more.

Secondly, and closely related to the first argument, an ambassador has a whole range of tasks that his government sets for him, which depend on the relationship between the two countries. A messenger, by contrast, only brings a message and that’s it, al-Shinqiti states.

Thirdly, an ambassador is only dispatched to a country with which his own country has friendly relations. If these relations sour, ambassadors are called home. Messengers, on the other hand, could be sent to another country no matter what its relations with Muslims were like – peaceful, hostile or subject to a truce – and are therefore incomparable to ambassadors.

War on Islam

Because of the supposed differences between messengers and ambassadors, al-Shinqiti rejects any parallels between them and thus dismisses the argument that non-Muslim ambassadors cannot be killed by Muslims. Al-Shinqiti seems to believe, however, that this whole question of whether ambassadors are modern-day messengers is entirely beside the point with regard to ambassador Stevens.

In recent days, I have explained several times to people my conviction that the riots currently going on in the Middle East should be seen in the broader context of a) the dire political and socio-economic situation many Arabs are in; and, especially, b) the alleged war on Islam that is supposedly being waged by Western countries, in which the film “Innocence of Muslims” is perceived by many as simply the latest attack. I believe that the attacks on the American embassies have very little to do with Muslims’ rejection of images of the Prophet Muhammad as such, as some media would have us believe, but should be ascribed to the more specific factors mentioned by Will within the context mentioned above. In other words, if the Middle East had been a free and nice place to live and relations with America had been strong and widely supported by the people, I believe the reception of this film would have been entirely different.

The importance of this context is underlined by al-Shinqiti’s fatwa, which states that ambassadors are not only incomparable to messengers, but even if they were, it wouldn’t apply to the American ambassador. This is because the inadmissibility of killing messengers depends on them not being spies whose presence and jobs are damaging to Muslims. American embassies, al-Shinqiti claims, are not like other embassies. The Americans try to increase their influence in Muslim countries, wage war on Islam and spread “the democratic religion”, he contends, and all of this is planned from inside the American embassies.

There is no legitimate need for the presence of American embassies in Muslim countries, al-Shinqiti believes. On the contrary, he states, relations with the United States should be severed. Al-Shinqiti claims America has killed more Muslims than Israel and while Muslim states are always arguing for cutting ties with the latter, they don’t do the same with the former and, in fact, even assist the United States in its war on Islam. American embassies are expressions of a country that is at war with Islam and, he maintains, should be treated as such.

The Film

Not only does it not make any difference whether the American ambassador can be seen as a messenger or not; al-Shinqiti also states that whether such a person agrees or disagrees with the film “The Innocence of Muslims” is irrelevant since the country as a whole is responsible for that. American ambassadors, even if they disagree with the film, do agree with the “killing of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan that their government is engaged in”, with “the occupation of the lands of Islam” and with “the plundering of the revolutions of the Muslim countries”.

Interestingly, al-Shinqiti states that American embassies are not the biggest insult to the Prophet. That role is ascribed by him to “the deserting opportunists who reject violence and want to help the Prophet with words, not deeds, like [the famous Egyptian Muslim scholar Yusuf] al-Qaradawi and [former head of the IAEA Mohammed] El Baradei and others”.

“Killing all American ambassadors and destroying all American embassies won’t quench our thirst for those who have attacked the sanctity of our Prophet”, al-Shinqiti states. Muslims should therefore not show sympathy for the American ambassador and the other diplomats killed in Libya, as many did, and neither should they call for non-violence, as other Muslim scholars have done. Instead, al-Shinqiti insists, the proper response to the film is “to attack [American] interests, to attack their security, to attack their existence and to attack their economy because this is the language they understand”.

Just so you know.

Al-Qaida advises the Arab Spring: Libya

Joas Wagemakers January 9, 2012

Unlike the Arab uprising in Syria, which was the subject of my previous post, the one in Libya seems to have reached its end. The regime has been overthrown and Mu’ammar al-Qadhafi and some of his sons are dead. Although it is by no means certain that Libya is on its way to becoming a fully-fledged liberal democracy, the Libyan people have achieved things that most Syrians can still only dream of. In this post, I will look at how some scholars and ideologues associated with al-Qaida responded to the situation in Libya.

The West

One member of al-Qaida Central who responds to the situation in Libya is, perhaps unsurprisingly since he is a Libyan himself, Abu Yahya al-Libi. His comments stress that the United States is “the idol (taghut) of the age” (i.e., the country that other countries “serve”) and “the source of terrorism”. He asks rhetorically: “Isn’t America the one who supported the regime of ‘Husni Barak’, the pharaoh of Egypt, but why is it that today it is singing the praises of the Egyptian people’s freedom?! Aren’t America and the governments of the West the ones who supported and [still] support the despotic regime of ‘Ali ‘Abdallah Salih [in Yemen]? Aren’t America and France the ones who totally supported the tyrannical regime of Zayn al-‘Abidin [in Tunisia] that refused its people the least of their rights?! But why is it that afterwards they praise the people for obtaining their freedom?!”

Powerful stuff indeed. It is not entirely clear, however, how this is related to Libya, with which the United States has long been on very bad terms and for whose regime it therefore cannot really be blamed. The reason for al-Libi’s criticism of the US seems to be that the country has contributed to liberating Libya through NATO, for which many Libyans are supposedly quite grateful, and he may fear that this will lead to a positive image of the West among many Libyans.

NATO’s influence in Libya is also the subject of an “open letter to the Muslims in Libya” by Abu l-Hasan Rashid al-Bulaydi. The author emphasises that it is important to understand that “the Crusader NATO” is not out to help the Muslims but to “fight their religion”. “The Crusader West”, al-Bulaydi says, wants to serve its own interests and NATO aims to “contain your revolution”, give it “a secular identity and a Western spirit” and aim for “loyalty to the enemies of Islam and enmity and war against the jihadi trend”. He therefore advises Libyans to act with wisdom and “not to fear the power of the Crusader West, because God is more powerful”.

Continue fighting

Somewhat in line with the above, several scholars argue that the fighting in Libya may have stopped after the fall of the regime but that it should continue until the country is an Islamic state. The Jordanian radical scholar Abu Humam Bakr b. ‘Abd al-‘Aziz al-Athari, in a short piece entitled “Oh people of success, have you already put down your weapons?”, states that Libyans should “fight for the sake of legislating the heavenly shari’a. That is the goal and for its sake does the upholder of the unity of God (muwahhid) fight till the end.” He cites a tradition about the life of the Prophet Muhammad in which the latter is said to have put down his weapons but was encouraged by the angel Jibril to fight on, which Muhammad subsequently did. This should serve as an example for Libyans today, whom Abu Humam advises not to listen to or try to satisfy NATO since “Jews and Christians will not be satisfied with you until you follow their religion” (Q. 2: 120).

Libya is ideally placed for a continuation of such a fight, argues Abu Sa’d al-‘Amili in a treatise on the revolution in Libya, because the country has certain advantages for mujahidun. First of all, he says, Libyans are conservative people; secondly, it has a “noble jihadi history”; and, thirdly, the country is geographically close to Algeria, where al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghrib (AQIM) has its base. Since Libya is part of the Islamic Maghrib and AQIM also has some Libyan leaders, Abu Sa’d writes, the revolution offers some excellent chances to link up with like-minded radicals in the rest of the region. The application of the shari’a should be the result of the jihad that Muslims in Libya have to wage. This is really necessary because the temporary leaders currently ruling Libya cannot be relied upon. “We cannot imagine”, Abu Sa’d states, “that these liberators [i.e. the revolutionaries who overthrew the regime] will give their loyalty to a gang of unknown secularists who follow the Crusader West to continue the occupation and exploitation of the country in the name of democracy.” NATO, the author writes, did not “participate in striking the military bases of al-Qadhafi to defend the honour of the Libyan people and to save thousands  of likely victims from the brutality of al-Qadhafi and his soldiers”. The West, he says, was involved to serve its own economic and security interests and actually “has a great fear of the Islamic tendency of the revolutionaries”. This, he says, is why there is a transitional council of secularists.

Reconciliation

An entirely different approach to the situation is taken by the Syrian-British Abu Basir al-Tartusi, who also had much to say about Syria. This time, however, we will look at what he wrote on the revolution in Libya. Although he obviously agrees that Libya should become an Islamic state with the shari’a as its only source of legislation, he stresses that the country should work on internal reconciliation. He states that all Libyans are Muslims who love God and the Prophet Muhammad and that jihadis should take care not to create a distance between themselves and the people by saying “these are with us and these are against us, these are with Islam and these are against Islam”. Also, he emphasises that the Libyan people have lived under a tyrannical and infidel leader for over forty years, which means that jihadis are likely to encounter tensions in society. Abu Basir advises jihadi to deal with these with friendliness and wisdom.

Interestingly, Abu Basir not only advises jihadis to take a friendly approach towards the Libyan people as a whole, but also towards the remnants of the regime. He mentions that most of those working for al-Qadhafi’s regime were probably ignorant, poor and forced to cooperate and that they should be dealt with in a spirit of justice and leniency. It is wrong, Abu Basir states, to treat your opponents with the mindset and law of a tyrant. In fact, and quite opposite to men such as Abu Humam al-Athari, Abu Basir advises that people should stop fighting once the regime has fallen and solve conflicts with words and through dialogue. The country is now entering the phase of rebuilding, which is more difficult than fighting. Jihadis therefore need all the wisdom they have to set up an Islamic state in Libya.

What’s AQIM’s Strategy?

Will McCants July 20, 2011

“What is the brothers’ plan in the Islamic Magreb?”  That’s the question raised today by Shmukh member Abu Safiyya.  He thinks it’s perfectly legitimate to kill troops but it’s getting Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb (AQIM) nowhere.  AQIM should be going after the leadership of the militaries in the region.

Some readers are sympathetic but most respond that you have to kill troops to get to the officers. To which Abu Safiyya retorts, “What effect does it have on the tyrants to kill a thousand or two thousand of their servants?”  Abu Safiyya’s retort is inadequately answered with, “Show us a better plan.”

New AQIM Reports

Thomas Hegghammer June 12, 2010

Two of the world’s foremost experts on al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb have published new reports on the group. Al-Hayat journalist Camille Tawil has written a report for Jamestown, and Sciences-Po professor (and Jihadica alumnus) Jean-Pierre Filiu has written another report for Carnegie. Needless to say they are both excellent and worth anyone’s time.

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