What Kind of Islam Kills Scholar al-Bouti?

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

The killing of the great scholar Muhammad Sa’id Ramadan al-Bouti is no passing event. It reveals the moral level to which the nation is sliding, a terrifying collapse in the ethics of disagreement, and a historical juncture in which fanatical ignoramuses are trying to seize mastery in place of oppressive, despotic rulers. When the ignorant grow insolent toward the learned, when the lustful and self-indulgent gain the upper hand over the virtuous, when the narrow-minded lord it over the thinkers, and when injustice, tyranny, and killing take hold indiscriminately, then the bells of looming black danger must be sounded.

The great scholar Muhammad Sa’id Ramadan al-Bouti was a venerable sheikh, a man of abundant learning, who never once ceased putting his knowledge to the service of his nation in obedience to God. And with such ease, a verdict of excommunication from the faith was issued against him, and he was killed in the mosque along with a great crowd of those listening to him.

This bloody series of events will continue for some time, in Syria and beyond, and it will spoil for the nation the historic political transformation it seeks, plunging it into sectarian labyrinths from which no one escapes unscathed. I have no doubt that the enemies of the Arabs and Muslims are pushing toward strife that keeps Arabs and Muslims occupied with one another, draining their energies and material resources. But I do not believe hired mercenaries are prepared to blow themselves up among children, women, and worshippers in hope of paradise, since whoever covets money is not prepared to give up his life. Those who blow themselves up are Muslims who believe they are establishing God’s rule on earth. And this carries within it dangers that will affect Islam’s standing in the eyes of the world, for the following reasons:

Many Muslims will reject Islam because of these acts, and the numbers of Muslims who no longer see in Islam a religion of peace and justice will grow, a process that will end in a rising tide of apostasy.

Islam’s image will grow more distorted at the global level, at both the official and popular levels, and the campaign against Islam and Muslims — and against our Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him — will intensify. Negative attitudes toward Islam and Muslims will spread further, acceptance of Muslims will decline, and wariness of them will rise.

Matters within the Islamic world will keep accumulating, reinforced by official and popular positions worldwide, until they end in strife between those who claim to carry the banner of Islam and those who reject Islamic law in favor of the modern civil state. This strife will end only at the expense of the Islamic idea itself, because this historical moment cannot bear narrow-mindedness, rigidity, and fanaticism, and because the Muslim side is utterly lacking in the qualities of leadership needed to achieve victory.

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…moderate Islamic intellectual movements and figures will be affected, because of what factions calling themselves Islamic are doing while practicing killing, destruction, and demolition.

Ethics is a vital and essential part of achieving victory, and if we wish to answer injustice with injustice, or confront moral collapse with moral collapse, and answer bloodshed with the killing of innocents, then it would be better for us not to remain as we are. It is truth that advances on falsehood and annihilates it; it is good that overcomes evil; it is justice that destroys injustice; and it is lofty morals that destroy debased morals. Whoever imagines that the darkness of armed action will carry us into a historical era in which light spreads is mistaken.

Arab rulers, through their injustice, their despotism, and their misdeeds, have contributed to the emergence of organized groups of the oppressed, some of whom came to believe that killing indiscriminately, left and right, would carry the nation into a life of faith. Many intellectuals and thinkers likewise contributed to handing Islam over to people who cannot see beyond the tips of their own noses, by distancing themselves from any real understanding of Islam and, sometimes implicitly and sometimes explicitly, rejecting the Noble Qur’an. They judged Islam through the lens of a handful of obscurantists and left it to them to interpret however they pleased, issuing whatever fatwas came to hand through fabrications put in the mouth of God’s Messenger.

Will the rulers, and Muslims in general, return to the Qur’an? And is there anyone within this nation who will wrest Islam out of the hands of the ignorant, who so easily surrender to sayings falsely and slanderously attributed to our noble Messenger?

Europe paid a heavy price for the divine mandate that rulers and clergymen granted themselves, and we most certainly do not want to reproduce the European experience. There are now those who issue fatwas in the name of Islam while spreading corruption on earth, and there are website owners and satellite-channel operators, both Sunni and Shia, who are corrupt and have no purpose but to spread rancor and hatred among Arabs and Muslims in order to ignite internecine war. All of these belong to the tribe and school of Abdullah ibn Ubayy ibn Salul, and are agents of Zionism, colonialism, and corrupt, corrupting Arab rulers. Confronting all of them is an Islamic duty.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “أي إسلام يقتل العلامة البوطي؟” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.