Thursday, July 07, 2005

A much awaited reaction to the anarchy of fatwas

A couple of months ago, we had a heated debate on the role high profile religious leaders should play in denouncing and dismissing some fatwas by the likes of Bin Laden and Zarkaoui, which, despite lacking any Islamic soundness whatsoever, have been condoning and calling for all kinds of violence and atrocity one may think of, even if they are directed against civilians.

Today, Al-Jazira website run an article about a meeting hosted by Jordan, which gathered around 180 scholars representing eight Sunni and Shia Muslim schools of thoughts, chief among them such prominent figures as Egypt’s Sheikh Al-Azhar Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi and Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. The meeting aimed at finding means to stop unjustified violence committed in the name of Islam. One of the main steps in this direction was the issuance of the statement that it is forbidden and impossible to declare apostate anybody belonging to one of these eight schools, in a clear hint to the takfir and other fanatical movements who don’t think twice before declaring renegade Islamic minorities or people not sharing the same thoughts with them. Another stance adopted was this statement: "The issuance of religious edicts is limited to qualified Muslim clerics in the eight schools of jurisprudence.", in a clear reaction to the profusion of ill-founded fatwas in these times of crisis and hardship.

We cannot but praise such an initiative, and hopefully, this kind of meetings will take place on a regular basis. It must be clear, however, that the statements mentioned above, as much sincere they might be, won’t have the desired effect if they are not followed by systematic reactions by this group of eight schools, each time some “crazy” fatwa is issued or a terrorist act (in Iraq and elsewhere) is perpetrated in the name of Islam. General statements without any explicit verbal confrontation with terrorists’ rhetoric would be no more than yet another statement. It is time to call a spade a spade!

8 comments:

Khalij-Khazar said...

Thank you for making me aware of this development.

It is about time that these leaders of our community did such a thing. Muslims living in non-muslim countries are dealing with a lot of discrimination due to the lack of our communities swift action against radicals who commit crimes in the name of Islam. This is a big step forward in appeasing the hate which has been directed towards the muslim community in the West.

Jallal EL Idrissi said...

You are right, Khalij.

The Muslim world cannot anymore afford passivity and reactivity. We have much more to lose than anyone else if we stick in our immobilism.

Unknown said...

finaly,arabic or rather muslims are aware of what's happening
wherever an explosion happen, the 1st occused are muslims
muslims governement should find a solution for that unless we'll sure be distroyed

Jallal EL Idrissi said...

Hi Tarik, Welcome !

Yes, it’s matter of survival now!

Unknown said...

Hi, julal, thanks for being polite
well, i like that kind of topics to discuss, so hopefully u'll bring other ones
i have a friend that he posted a very hot topic(work of women)
i post some comments
so i'll be glad if ur post urs there
here's the link:
http://islamkarim@blogspot.com

Jallal EL Idrissi said...

Tarik, hope we’ll see you more often here!

Thanks for the link. I’ll certainly drop by the referred blog.

Unknown said...

what's up man i liked your previous posts they're so interesting especially that they concerne our holly religion, but i see that u haven't posted a new one yet
i'm waiting
i also wait for ur comments in my blog

Jallal EL Idrissi said...

As you might have seen, this blog has at least one section devoted to Islam (Political Islam actually). You might find many posts of interest to you. You guessed right, I’ve been getting lazy these days. But I’ll try to write something soon. So, stay tuned!