U. S. Muslims & War On Terror - Part 1

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Alexandra Paris is the author of Arable 

Fatwa:  Analysis by Qur’an War Maxims

By Alexandra Paris

Mental chaos and galaxies of fact and opinion swirl about the ongoing war.  New but essential information yet underlies this article.  It is the sort that Sir Winston Churchill redux would have commissioned by noon on September 11, 2001.  Certain words presage serious actions.

PROVENANCE

Late in this article is shown a novel, war maxims concept.   This concept is applied to new information of a sort.  This author first reformed the entire Qur’an, a derivation of verse-laws from multiple English translations.  Notable are those of Ali, Pickthall and Shakir.   Reformation rules involved legal drafting principles and formal if rudimentary skills of poetry.  Most importantly applied was the pertinent vantage, this being the discipline of a literalist who profoundly respects Allah’s revelations.   The resulting Qur’an restatement is 6,166 verse-laws in extent.  Second, knowledgeable parsing found about 350 war-related verse-laws, which were sorted with reference to military conflict concepts.  Third, and from such sorting, one could then write war maxims just as would Osama Bin Laden or his erudite chief of staff, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri.

INTRODUCTION  

Even in a time of war, it was historic.  At the Viet Nam War’s end in the mid-1970s, few Muslims lived in the just-defeated U.S.   Now 30 years later, millions of new U.S. Muslims have favored their fellow Americans. This favor extends only to civilians.  A new war engages the U.S. , against radical Islamic forces.  U.S. Muslims have yet officially announced their historic Muslim opposition to Islamic foes who are terrorists and extremists. New U.S. Muslim leadership in 2005 proclaimed their U.S. “Fatwa Against Terrorism.”   A fatwa is an authoritative Islamic legal order.   [1]

On July 28, 2005, the 18-man Fiqh [juridical] Council of North America issued this Fatwa (the U.S. Fatwa).  [2]  U.S. Muslim leaders thereby asserted new proofs that terrorism and Islamic extremism are not authorized by Islam against civilians.   Top-most, newly-identified  Muslim leaders wrote this new one-page commandment.  Top-most U.S. political leadership in August, 2005, studied this U.S. Fatwa.  The political  leaders were  Christians  and  presumed yet to be quick learners about the Qur’an.  Non-Muslim Americans then and now yet show confusion about world Islam’s role in the unfolding war.    Through an envoy the  U.S. President  instructed confused Americans that “there is no justification in Islam for terrorism.”  [3]  The U.S. Fatwa involves what the U.S. President has called  the war of ideas.

The 2005 Fatwa poses the best controversy by which to see two parallel universes. They are present in the unfolding world war.  They two universes differ in how they treat Allah’s Qur’an.   In one the Qur’an is devalued. Instead, unending, inconclusive Islamic multi-disciplinary analysis strangles minds in this universe.   In the other universe is the world at war.  In this other universe, on one side, there is  fierce and literal respect for the Qur’an.  The Qur’an is considered as  source for the religious ideology of the World Islamic Front (the WIFront).  On the other side of this real war universe are endangered non-Muslims.  They  need some true familiarity with Allah’s sacred text.

Have today’s U.S. Muslim leaders  yet followed in the footsteps of America ’s  most famous anti-war Muslim? Their U.S. Fatwa is implicitly pro-peace.  The 18 men of the Fiqh Council know of Muhammad Ali’s U.S. Islamic life of peace.  It began during the Viet Nam War, when Muhammad Ali became the first to educate American non-Muslims on pacifism.

“’War is against the teachings of the Holy Koran.  I'm not trying to dodge the draft.  We are supposed to take part in no wars unless declared by Allah or the Messenger [i.e., Muhammad].   We don't take part in Christian wars or wars of any unbelievers.’  Ali also said, ‘I ain't got no quarrel with those Vietcong.’…”  [4]

Such as Muhammad Ali’s brave Islamic pacifism also undergirds the U.S. Fatwa.  This article  is in seven parts. First is compared  a 1938 ideas-war incident  with today’s U.S. Fatwa.   Next described is the U.S Fatwa.   Third,  below is examined the 2005 circumstances in which the President joined U.S. Muslims to praise the U.S. Fatwa.  Next addressed are those  different parallel universes, reflecting the mental chaos.  The sixth part  shows how the radical World Islamic Front would  and could propagandize to discredit the U.S. Fatwa.    Such war-aggressive Muslims would disavow the U.S. Muslims’ interpretation of the Qur’an.  Particularly addressed in part 6 is  a four-verse set of war-laws which such as Sheik Bin Laden would argue are implicit in the U.S. Fatwa.  How would Osama approach the U.S. Fatwa?  [5]  Certain war maxims, based on the Qur’an, are formed.  An effort is made to apply how Sheik Bin Laden thinks.  He is a literalist.  Literalists think literally as to the Qur’an.    

1938  AND 2005

On September 2, 2005, U.S. leadership ratified the U.S. Fatwa against Terrorism.  [6]  This optimism was  curiously similar to famous peace hopefulness in  1938.   U.S.   leadership  in 2005 were entering their fourth year of the world war  against the radical World Islamic Front.  In 1938, British leadership was seeking peace instead of World War Two.  British foes were led by Germany .  In 2005, hopeful warriors for peace included  U.S. President George Bush.   In 1938, the hopeful leader  was British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.  Sir Neville was optimistic, then negotiating peace with the bellicose Chancellor  Hitler. 

A confusing year, 1938 was also a difficult year for optimism.  That year in September,  the British Prime Minister Chamberlain yet optimistically returned by airplane from a meeting with Hitler.  At Britain ’s Heston Airport , he held a press conference.  Sir Neville  was photographed holding up a paper in his hand.  It contained a resolution for peace as signed by himself and Hitler.  Chamberlain spoke at the airport.  [7]

“My good friends, …[I as ] British Prime Minister [have]…returned from Germany bringing peace with honor.  I believe that  it is peace for our time.”

They were made hopeful by the persistent peace efforts of  Lord Chamberlain and the Germans.  The British then gladly reduced their war readiness efforts.  Despite such optimistic  diplomatic efforts, there yet came no peace. British defenders soon were nearly destroyed by  deceptive and onrushing  Germans.  

Sixty-seven years later, world-class peace efforts were  again performed.   On September 2, 2005, the key political  participant was a personal envoy of the U.S President. His representative was Karen Hughes.  She had long advised  the President on U.S. politics.  The two had joined forces when he earlier  had governed Texas .  September 2nd found her in Illinois .  She was on assignment as stand-in for the President.   She soon held a press conference with a paper in hand, a posture curiously similar to  Chamberlain’s gesture 67 years earlier.  Her paper was the U.S. Fatwa.  This Muslim juridical order had been signed or endorsed by most Muslim leaders in the U.S.    The President’s envoy, a woman of strong Christian faith,  then urged  upon  her  fellow  non-Muslim Americans,  this  optimistic Islamic  conclusion.  [8] 

“[This Muslim ‘Fatwa Against Terrorism’] …says there is no justification in Islam for terrorism.”

JULY, 2005 -- THE  U.S. MUSLIMS’   FATWA

The intent of the U.S. Fatwa is to show that Islam is for peace and against extremism and terrorism.   U.S. Muslim leaders seek  to command  all of the some 1.2 billion Muslims in the global Islamic brotherhood.  The Fiqh Council began the document  with their wish and a reaffirmation.   [9]

            “The Fiqh Council of North America wishes to reaffirm Islam’s absolute condemnation of terrorism and religious extremism.”    

The U.S. Fatwa hence challenges  legitimacy of terrorists and extremists, ill-defined as wrongdoers.  The U.S. Muslim leaders  quoted four    Islamic laws   drawn from  sacred texts. These include three verse-laws from Allah’s Qur’an.  Also quoted is one law from the Prophet Muhammad.  Based on these authorities, the U.S. Fiqh Council posed three anti-war  commandments to Muslims.

            “1.  All acts of terrorism targeting civilians are…forbidden….

            “2.  A Muslim [must not]…cooperate with …[terrorists].

            “3.  …Muslims…[must] cooperate with law enforcement…to protect…civilians.”

This U.S. Fatwa’s obvious elements are such U.S. Muslims’ pro-U.S. reaffirmation -- of Islamic  non-terror and non-extremism -- and the three commandments.  Two other elements are important.  First is that the Fatwa identifies by name the men of the  Fiqh Council  and also the endorsing Muslim leaders and  entities.  These heroic men, women and entities published and endorsed this pro-peace Muslim juridical order.  They put their names on the line in dangerous times.

            “ENDORSED BY: …145 Muslim organizations, mosques and imams have endorsed the preceding fatwa as of July 28, 2005….  More signatory organizations are to be added in the following days.  To add your American Muslim organization to the list, please email your name, title, and affiliation to cair@cair-net.org”

Another important element of the U.S. Fatwa is the strength of the writers’ central proof, drawn from Allah’s Qur’an.   This proof  will here be shown as pivotal to understanding the two parallel universes.  This proof is to make believable the Fatwa’s reaffirmation, of no-terror and no-extremism,  and the said three conclusions.  This proof convinced the U.S. President and his envoy, Ambassador Hughes.  It is verse-law 32 from chapter 5 of the Qur’an.  The  pro-U.S. Muslims of the Fiqh Council  quoted as follows.           

                      “The Qur’an [is] Islam’s revealed text, [and] states:             “’Whoever kills a person [unjustly]…it is as though he has killed all mankind.  And whoever saves a life, it is as though he had saved all mankind.’ (Qur’an, 5:32)”  

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