How muslims justify mutilation

Monday, June 14, 2004

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/06/13/mutilation_of_victims_and_muslim_law/

A RECENT FATWA posted on a popular Islamic website in Saudi Arabia," reports Neil McFarquhar in The New York Times, "explains when a Muslim may mutilate the corpse of an infidel."


The ruling by Sheik Omar Abdullah Hassan al-Shehabi specifies two circumstances in which the desecration of an infidel -- a non-Muslim -- is permitted. One is retaliation "when the enemy is disfiguring Muslim corpses or when it otherwise serves the Islamic nation." The other is when mutilation will "terrorize the enemy" or "gladden the heart of a Muslim warrior."


"That a cleric can post such an argument in an open forum," commented McFarquhar, "goes a long way toward explaining how the most radical interpretations of religious texts flourish in Saudi Arabia."

But they don't flourish only in Saudi Arabia.

The popular "Ask the Scholar" feature of Islam Online (www.islamonline.net) was recently asked "how Islam views the issue of mutilating dead bodies of enemies." In a reply, Sheik Faysal Mawlawi, deputy chairman of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, began by declaring that mutilation is "not allowable" under Islam. But then came the loophole:

"It is possible to mutilate the dead only in case of retaliation. . . . If he inflicts any physical damage on anyone, he should be retaliated against in the same manner. In case of war, Muslims are allowed to take vengeance for their mutilated dead mujahids (fighters) in the same way it was done to them." This, the European sheik explained, is the teaching of the Koran (16:126), which counsels patience but authorizes revenge.


Two facts seem indisputable: (1) A Muslim intent on such mutilation can find clerical authority to justify it. And (2) a small but implacable minority of Muslims are intent on such mutilation. Indeed, it has become a signature of the evil we are fighting, as the news of the last few months has shown.