Manipulating the Islamic Religion

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

Everything is permissible in the Islamic religion, according to countless people who describe themselves as jurists and muftis. Ask for whatever fatwa you like, and you will find texts to justify it. Is seeking knowledge forbidden? Yes, it is forbidden, because “there is no good in a nation with too many readers.” Is resisting the oppressor forbidden? Yes, forbidden, because resisting oppression leads to strife. Is it forbidden for a woman to go out into the street? Yes, forbidden, because a chaste woman leaves her house only twice in her life: once to her marital home, and once to her grave. Is a golden thread on a woman’s robe forbidden? Yes, forbidden, because it glitters and draws attention to her. Is laughter forbidden? Yes, because it invites the devils near, and your natural state should be a scowl. And is marrying four wives the natural rule? Yes, because 80% of the earth’s population is female and 20% male.

Is it permissible for American troops to enter the Holy Land? Yes, permissible, because America’s soldiers are defending the believers. Is charging interest permissible? Yes, because it takes from the wealth of the rich to distribute to the poor. Is marrying men [to men] permissible? Yes, permissible, because you must “be shrewd, be shrewd.” Is obeying a base ruler permissible? Yes, permissible — indeed obligatory — because his baseness is by the will of God. And does the ruler have the right to sow strife and squander public funds? Yes, because God has chosen him to punish a wayward people. Is seeking a foreign power’s backing against a fellow Muslim permissible? Yes, permissible, because God has placed the foreigner at the service of His chosen rulers. Is visiting Jerusalem under the occupation’s spears permissible? Yes, permissible — indeed obligatory — so that you remember your duty to buy carpets for the Sacred Mosque. Is the Oslo Accord permissible? Yes, permissible, because the Prophet, peace be upon him, signed the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah, and because the PLO was going to defeat Israel just as the Muslims would have defeated Quraysh had war broken out at Hudaybiyyah. And is it permissible to be breastfed by your female colleague at work? Yes, permissible, so that she becomes your milk-mother and you cease to desire her afterward. And is alcohol permissible? Yes, permissible, because it makes you forget all these fatwas.

We are afflicted with clergymen who do not know God — and even if they did know Him, they do not know the pillars of His religion. They are ignorant, narrow-minded, and closed off, unable to see past the tips of their own noses, if they have noses at all. They stand ready with every variety of fatwa, prepared to dispatch you to Paradise or to Hell — good luck to you. Of course, not all religious people are of this stripe: there are believers who are respectable and aware, distinguished by breadth of vision, wide reading and knowledge, and a readiness for open discussion, debate, understanding, and mutual comprehension. (Here one must distinguish between the “religious man” and the “believer,” since the religious man is generally closed-minded while the believer is generally open.) But what floats to the surface is that ignorant, foolish type who collapses at the feet of the sultan, or who sees in this world nothing but the performance of rituals, preoccupation with the unseen, and the erasure of productive work and scholarly attainment.

The Grand Mufti of Egypt comes at the head of the list of the ruler’s men who cannot bring themselves to see jihad as a religious duty, preferring instead to come to Jerusalem in abject humility under the spears of the usurping enemy. He fails to grasp that jihad is an obligation, one that takes priority over every other obligation whenever the lands of the Muslims fall under invasion and occupation. He fails to grasp that jihad is an obligation whenever a Muslim man or woman is in danger, because blood takes priority over every holy site. This mufti came to Palestine bearing faded supplications, hoping through them to rout the enemy’s tanks by virtue of his own great blessing, which he imagines the angels of heaven stand guard over. Before him came al-Jifri, who followed, in his own words, in the Prophet’s example, on the grounds that the Prophet, peace be upon him, once visited Jerusalem while it was under Roman rule. It is clear from his words that the angels must have stood at the Roman checkpoints awaiting the soldiers’ leave to pass, or must have petitioned the Emperor of Constantinople for permission for the Buraq to cross.

Many are those who twist the arm of religion, hunting for a saying here and another there to justify their words and deeds. Whoever genuinely searches for fatwas to justify his own conduct will find no shortage of ancient sayings that acquire credibility and sanctity the moment they are attributed to some pious forebear whose actual righteousness we know nothing about. This resembles the Christian experience in Europe’s dark ages, in which lying, fraudulent, charlatan clergymen lorded it over people, forever hunting for unholy sayings to render holy in the ears of their listeners. People obeyed them and believed their words, until they were literally buying seats in Paradise. Many an ignorant, hysterical clergyman today would love nothing more than to be able to sort people between Paradise and Hell right now — why wait until the Day of Judgment, so long as the Lord has apparently deputized them with the authority to reckon accounts?

[…] because the clergyman had led her to believe that Paradise is only for those who outwardly submit [aslamu], not for those who [truly] believe [amanu].

We shall have our own Luther among us so long as such ignorant men, who neither know God nor fear Him, remain in our midst. And so that wars and strife do not break out among us, it is essential that each of us return to the Noble Qur’an, and treat it as the first reference against which every fatwa and every saying is to be measured. The Sunna supports the Noble Qur’an, but it is not a substitute for it — it is the second source of legislation, while the sayings of the forebears and the pious are for benefit, not for legislation. Abandoning the Qur’an opens the door to countless fatwas that have nothing to do with religion, and that contribute to the nation’s ruin and destruction. The Noble Qur’an is not for funerals and the opening of festivals, nor for unreflective recitation during Ramadan; it is a sacred Book in which God says: “Do they not then contemplate the Qur’an, or are there locks upon their hearts?”

The Crowd of Muftis Is Destroying the Muslims

Professor Abdul-Sattar Kassem

March 7, 2013

Every day, self-proclaimed Muslims parade before us on television screens and websites, lecturing us on countless marginal issues that have nothing to do with the substance of our lives, instilling in us dullness, foolishness, distraction, torpor, and delusion, and driving us toward error. These muftis multiply and speak with arrogance and insolence, imagining that this grants them sanctity and turns them into religious authorities capable of allotting seats in Paradise and in Hell. It is clear from the type of their fatwas, their subjects, and the manner in which they are phrased, that they are ignorant and narrow-minded, perhaps even purveyors of deviant, misguided agendas, and that their knowledge of religious matters is extremely limited and mixed with a great deal of nonsense and quackery. Below are some of the fatwas circulating on various websites:

If a woman lifts the hem of her garment while climbing the stairs, for fear of falling, the devils will catch up with her.

Praising a non-believer is forbidden.

If you greet a Christian, your ablution is nullified.

If you forget something during prayer, you must spit to the left and to the right as expiation.

It is forbidden for a woman to smile showing her teeth.

Using an intensive care unit is forbidden, because it defies the will of God.

It is forbidden to rise up against an unjust ruler.

It is forbidden for a woman to ride a bicycle or a horse.

Excessive reading leads to associating partners with God.

Confining a beautiful woman who does not cover her face is obligatory.

Teaching the social sciences and humanities is forbidden, because Islam has already given them their due.

Thinking is forbidden, because it leads to sin.

Thought has its limits, and whoever exceeds them falls into the abyss.

The devils dance upon mustaches.

A woman exposing herself before her husband makes divorce obligatory.

Whoever follows these serialized fatwas will hear of matters that never crossed his mind, not even in his dreams, and will find that a stratum of the “religious-but-not-believing” has crystallized over the years across the Arab countries, deeply invested in trivializing the Islamic religion and dragging Muslims into a culture of delusion that paralyzes minds and blinds hearts. It is clear that these people have taken upon themselves the task of striking at the Islamic religion by giving it a naive, ridiculous face, so that it becomes a laughingstock and a farce before the nations and before the sons of the Arab nation. Their goal, whether they are conscious of it or not, is to turn people away from the path of God, and away from the great matters that Islam is truly concerned with: establishing justice among people, and devoting oneself to knowledge, work, and jihad at every level in order to free people from injustice, enslavement, ignorance, submission, and backwardness.

This stratum of the “religious-but-not-believing” issues no fatwas about making peace with the Zionists and desecrating the sanctities of the Muslims; it says nothing about the foreign forces present on Muslim soil, nor about visits to the White House, nor about the scientific backwardness of Arab universities, nor about the injustice that rulers inflict upon the poor and destitute, nor about exploitation, enslavement, and oppression, nor about the importance of production and of technical, social, and cultural development, and so on.

The observer sees that this misguided faction is heavily preoccupied with spreading strife among Muslims, devoting great effort to stirring up bloody sectarian conflict between Sunni and Shia, dredging up the sordid history of conflicts among Muslims in order to revive it now, ignite wars, and drain the sons of the nation both materially and morally.

This is an extremely dangerous faction for Islam, for Muslims, for Arabs, and for our homelands. If these people are not simply ignorant, then they are serving agendas and schemes hostile to the nation, working to strike at the nation from within, under religious slogans.

Do not fear them. These people send no one to Paradise, and the keys of Hell are not in their hands; being wary of them and pursuing them is what saves the nation from their evils and their strife. The likes of them led Europe into harsh and bitter wars, and destroyed the resources of the European nations; and to run after them means a black future awaits the nation, with all its peoples, schools of thought, and sects.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “التلاعب بالدين الإسلامي” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.