Fatwa - Part One
A fatwa is a legal opinion concerning some dimension of Shari'ah and is
given by people who, supposedly, are competant to give such opinions.
However,. there is nothing binding upon Muslims with respect to the
issuing of such an edict.
A fatwa is a legal brief. If one is persuaded by the structure of the argument and logic contained in this sort of document, then, one may use such a presentation to shape one's intention in conjunction with some spiritual problem, or other, with which one is attempting to resolve. If, alternatively, one is not persuaded by the agruments contained in such a brief, then, really, one can dismiss the document without prejudice.
In a book entitled What is Right With Islam by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, there is a fatwa which appears in an appendix. The heading for the Fatwa is: "Fatwa Permitting US Muslim Military Personnel to Participate in Afghanistan War Effort."
This fatwa was not written by the author of the above mentioned book. Rather, it is the collective effort of 5 individuals who hail from Qatar, Egypt, and Syria.
Notwithstanding the foregoing issue of authorship of the fatwa, the author of What is Right With Islam does mention in the main text of the book how he had recommended to the New York Times that they publish the fatwa. Furthermore, by not commenting on the fatwa and permitting the fatwa to stand as it is without critical or evaluative remarks, he has given his tacit endorsement to what is being said by the five framers of the aforementioned fatwa.
Ostensibly, the fatwa was generated in response to some inquiries by the "most senior chaplain of the American armed forces". Nothing was said about the circumstances under which the five authors of the fatwa were approached by the chaplain, or why these people, in particular, were consulted, or whether efforts had been made to obtain any other determination, dissenting or otherwise, in conjunction with the presenting problem.
A critical analysis of the fatwa in question is given below. This is not a counter-fatwa, but it does serve as a dissenting voice, and it encompasses a perspective which people might wish to consider when reflecting not only on the issue of whether Muslim armed services personnel should participate in wars against other Muslims, but, as well, the whole issue of what constitutes justifiable homicide in relation to people in general.
Early in the fatwa, one finds the following:
"All Muslims ought to be united against all those
who terrorize the innocents, and those who permit
killing of non-combatants without a justifiable
reason." The authors of the fatwa do not say what
they mean by being "united", but one might offer
the possibility that certain factions within the
U.S. government - both present and past - certainly
qualify as being among those who any person of
decency would be opposed to ... if in no other way
than speaking out the truth in the face of tyranny.
Very serious and fundamental questions, for example, concerning legitimacy, justice, morality, and fairness could be raised about US involvement in, to name but a few, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, the Phillipines,
Iran, Iraq, Africa, Palestine, and most of Latin America. If terrorizing of innocents and the killing of non-combatants without justifiable reason is the issue, then, one may want to expand one's frame of reference and think about state-sponsored terrorism in conjunction with more than just Afghanistan.
However, irrespective of whom is terrorizing whom, none of this justifies killing and terrorizing innocent people during the process of tracking down criminals and apprehending them. Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocents have been killed in, collectively, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Balkans, and the Sudan (when the pharmaceutical factory in Sudan was mistakenly bombed, by order of William Jefferson Clinton, as a suspected plant for producing weapons of mass destruction - which it was proven not to be - the one source of pharmaceuticals for Sudan was lost and, as a result, tens of thousands of innocent people died from diseases and infections for which no pharmaceuticals were available to use in treatment) - by a self-serving, reprehensible US government policy. There was no due process for any of these people to determine if there was justifiable reason as to why they should die. There was no due process to establish that such people
were aiding, abetting, providing safety and comfort
for, or helping to finance the perpetrators of any
crimes.
Property has been destroyed in all of the foregoing
instances. People have been terrorized. Innocents
have been slain. International conventions have
been broken. War crimes have been committed. A
rogue government has run amuk in the world - but
since this is all done behind a facade of words
such as: freedom, humanitarian, liberation, justice,
democracy, and rule of law, then, everyone should
understand that the unfortunates who have had to
die, starve, become ill (through depleted uranium
munitions, as well as the diseases which have been
sprung loose through the systematic destruction
of infrastructure), be uprooted into refugee status,
and suffer - well, this is all for a good and noble
cause: US hegemony in which, like ancient Greece,
only the real citizens (i.e., the perpetrators of
crimes) get to consent to how they are to be
governed ... everyone else is mere chattel or fodder or 'deserving' of exploitation and manipulation.
The fatwa continues with: "We find it necessary to
apprehend the true perpetrators of these crimes as
well as those who aid and abet them through incitement,
financing or other support. They must be bought to
justice in an impartial court of law."
Of course, the US government does not consider
the World Court to be an impartial venue of law
because it had the audacity to find the US
government guilty of violating Nicaraguan sovereignty,
as well as conducting illegal blockades and systematically
destroying the economy and people of that country.
Nor, does the US government consider the United Nations
an impartial court of law because it has had
the temerity to seek to place constraints on how
or when or if the US wields its considerable
military might, not to mention that the US government objects to being reminded that, for almost forty years, it has been stonewalling Resolution 242 which indicates, among other things, that no country - say, Israel - has the right to hold onto territory gained through hostilities, or the US government wishes to ignore Resolution 687 which says, among other things, that once the matter in Iraq is settled to the satisfaction of the UN Security Council - something which is unlikely to happen because the US will veto anything that is not in accordance with its plans for hegemony - then, all weapons of mass destruction, including the nuclear weapons possessed by Israel, must be eliminated from the Middle East. The US government finds such matters of international agreement inconvenient for its purposes of real politik, and, therefore, blames the failure of the UN on everyone but the real source of difficulty which is undermining UN effectiveness - namely, the United States government.
No, the only impartial court of law is the vigilante
system of the armed forces and the kangaroo courts
known as military tribunals. Apparently, the only people who
can be trusted are those who are infected with the
same mental and spiritual disease even though many truly independent people might see this as a conflict of interest with respect to basic issues of justice, fairness, and objectivity.
Really, what is the difference between what Osama
and company have done, and are doing, or what the US government has done, and is doing. Neither of these parties have bothered much with determining who the "true perpetrators"
are. Neither of these parties have concerned themselves
much with due process. Neither of these parties
have given any evidence that they are concerned
about whether or not the people who die, or those
who are terrorized, or the property which is destroyed,
or the individuals who suffer are, in fact, guilty
of anything except being in the wrong place at the
wrong time.
Osama claims that the people who died in the Twin
Towers were guilty because they paid taxes and,
therefore, aided and abetted the actions of the
US government. Oddly enough, and quite ironically,
Osama seems not to realize that there are many
individuals - both homeless and corporate - who
do not pay any tax, and, yet, such people died
through the implementation of his plan, or they
will die through succumbing to the respiratory
diseases and other toxic particulates that are
being breathed by people in New York city as a
result of the destruction of the World Trade
Center and which, according to different news
accounts are already showing up with rising
demographics of disease, disability, and death.
One might also ask Osama if he, or any of his fellow
architects of destruction, bothered to check to
see whether, among the people who would be in the Twin Towers on that tragic day, there were individuals present who were not US tax payers but may have been tourists
from overseas, or who were there as individuals conducting
business on behalf of a company located in a foreign country. Or, maybe, there were government officials visiting the Twin Towers who were from other countries.
It makes no difference whether, or not, such people were in the Twin Towers. The fact of the matter is this: these kind of people could have been in the Towers on 9-11, and, therefore, the intention to destroy lives was done in a state of knowing ignorance - more specficically, Osama bin Laden and the other perpetrators of the tragedy knew they didn't know whether, or not, there were any innocents in those Towers, and, as a result, his entire post-facto justification for his feeling 'okay' about killing people who might have been innocent because everyone pays taxes and, therefore, there were no innocents - is entirely specious - for, as the book which Osama claims to live by - namely, the Qur'an - indicates: if even one innocent person is killed, it is as if the whole of humanity were killed. Osama stands condemned by his own logic and values.
However, whether the people who died in the Twin Towers were, or were not, tax payers, they were innocents. The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) indicated that one may not wage war on the elderly, women, children, non-combatants, and one may not seek to destroy the means of livelihood of a people.
Osama bin Laden and his cohorts broke each facet of the foregoing prohibitions. They decided they knew better than the Prophet, and they also were of the opinion that they knew better than the Qur'an, and the only thing which mattered to them was their self-serving interpretation of the situation, unconstrained by such meddlesome, tedious irrelevancies as facts, evidence, proof, due process, objectivity, integrity, fairness, and justice.
Returning to the text of the Fatwa, the brief seeks to address the whole problem of an individual having to differentiate the innocent from the "true perpetrators". Therefore, at a certain point, the fatwa offers a Hadith of the Prophet which says: "When two Muslims face each other in fighting and one kills the other, then both the killer and the killed are in the hell-fire. Someone said: we understand that the killer is in hell, why, then, the one who's being killed? The Prophet said: because he wanted to kill the other person."
The Fatwa continues on with: "The noble Hadith
mentioned above only refers to the situation where
the Muslim is in charge of his affairs. He is
capable of fighting or not fighting. This situation
does not address the situation where a Muslim is
a citizen of a state and a member of a regular
army. In this case he has no choice but to follow
orders."
I love the way people make things up on the fly.
Unless a human being is mentally incompetent, one
always is in charge of his or her affairs - at least with
respect to the choices one makes.
One choice a person has is to not join the military in
the first place. One's country can be served in many ways, and being a patriot does not necessarily entail that one must kill others or destroy their propery and infrastructure in order to have sincerity of commitment to the core values of the United States. Another choice one has is to choose a court martial over killing innocent people.
Alternatively, one might seek to become a conscientious objector. In other words, if, before the fact of enlistment, one were not aware of the extent to which innocent lives are terrorized and brutalized by modern warfare, then, surely, when one becomes aware of this, one has a strong argument for disengaging from such activities - an argument which is rooted in moral principle, and is not sullied by either cowardice nor a lack of love for, and patriotism toward, one's country.
Why the military would want to hang on to people to kill others when the hearts and souls of such people are morally and spiritually not in synch with such actions, is a puzzle. Surely, the military must recognize that it takes courage to say "no" to the killing of innocents - especially, when the military is likely to take harsh action simply because in this land of democratic freedoms, the military leadership - bold warriors that they are - feels threatened by an act of moral conscience. On the other hand, if everyone were to act in accordance with his or her moral conscience rather than submit to orders, perhaps the military might not have enough bodies to carry out the wishes of its masters in the government ... and this just won't do.
Being in charge of one's affairs does not mean
one has control over the ramifications of one's
choices, nor does it mean one will enjoy the
consequences of one's choices. However, one
always is in charge of how one exercises one's
God-given capacity to choose - this is both the
strength and vulnerability of being human, and it is
shallow of the authors of the fatwa to suppose otherwise.
I also would be curious as to what the reasoning
is behind saying that the previous Hadith does not address
the situation in which a Muslim is "a citizen of
a state and a member of a regular army." Did the
Prophet inform the authors of the fatwa that this was the case? How does one know what the scope of the Prophet's words and intentions are in the case of the cited Hadith?
The fact of the matter is, we don't know. And,
so, jurists create legal fictions in order to bridge the
chasms into the unknown.
In ecology there is something called the 'precautionary
principle'. This precept indicates that when one
is faced with a situation in which the consequences
of one's actions may lead either to foreseeable problems,
or entail potential problems which our limited state of
understanding is not capable of foreseeing but is capable
of contemplating, then, it is better to err on the side of
caution and wait until our ignorance becomes less and, as
a result, we are better able to understand what is going on
and what the consequences of our actions will be.
Thus, with respect to the aforementioned Hadith, perhaps,
it is better to err on the side of caution and
entertain the possibility that the scope of the Prophet's
words may actually have encompassed what the authors
of the fatwa say it does not, then, to simply proceed,
without any justification, and claim, as the authors of
the fatwa do, that the Hadith does not apply to Muslims
who are citizens of a state and members of an army. The
unsupported claim of a jurist (or even a number of them)
does not take precedence over the guidance of the Prophet.
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