WATCH YOUR BACK, OSAMA: CAREER JIHADI ISSUES FATWAH AGAINST BIN LADEN, ZWAHIRI
"FOR BIN LADEN TO TIE [THE 9/11 HIJACKERS'] PERFIDY AND TREACHERY TO THE PROPHET IS TO DIMINISH HIM AND TO MOCK HIM, AND THE PUNISHMENT FOR DIMINISHING THE WORTH OF THE PROPHET IS WELL-KNOWN TO MUSLIMS."
Shades of Kruschchev denouncing Stalin at the 1956 Party Congress...I love the smell of ideological schism in the morning!
The Nobel Prize lads at MEMRI have translated excerpts from a new book by "one of the least public yet most important figures in the global jihad movement," Sayyed Imam Al-Sharif. He is serving a life sentence in Egypt for his jihadi activities, and for years was Al-Qaeda's in-house shariah expert, recruited by little Haman Zwahiri himself. Acc. to MEMRI: "The new book, which Imam wrote while serving a life sentence in Egypt, was published in serial form in two Arab dailies, the Kuwaiti Al-Jarida and the Egyptian Al-Masri Al-Yawm, and has been the subject of extensive discussion and polemic among Islamists and observers of Islamist movements. The document is at once a book and a formal initiative, and the majority of leaders and members of the Jihad organization in the Egyptian prisons have signed the document and promised to stop armed activities. This entire process was facilitated by the Egyptian authorities, and the document was reviewed by a commission of Al-Azhar scholars."
Here are some devastating hits from Mr. Al-Sharif, which should come in quite handy when arguing with your local AQ-symps:
Q: "What is your evaluation of the events of September [11], 2001?"
A: "The events of September [11], 2001, were betrayal of a friend and perfidy toward the enemy on the part of Al-Qaeda, and they were a catastrophe for the Muslims. All of these are traits of hypocrisy, and cardinal sins whose perpetrators are considered iniquitous - and whoever approves of their action shares their sin.
"This was betrayal of a friend, because bin Laden took the oath of allegiance to Mullah Muhammad Omar, leader of the Taliban, [and recognized him] as Commander of the Faithful in the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. [Bin Laden] lived under his protection, and [Mullah] Muhammad Omar refused to hand over bin Laden to anyone.
"More than once [Mullah] Muhammad Omar ordered [bin Laden] not to clash with America, saying that he didn't have the capabilities for this, especially since Afghanistan and its people were the ones who paid the price for bin Laden's bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998.
"Bin Laden and his followers lied to their Emir [Mullah] Muhammad Omar, betrayed him, violated [their] oath of allegiance to him, and carried out the events of 9/11 behind his back after having plotted them for more than two years in his country, Afghanistan, after Khalid Sheikh [Muhammad] suggested the idea to bin Laden. The Prophet said, 'Whoever defies [a ruler] has no excuse when he meets Allah'…"
"This was perfidy towards the enemy, because they entered America with a visa, which is a contract of protection. There is no dispute about this among the scholars - even… [if someone] forges the signature of the residents of [the Abode of] War, and they believe it to be authentic, and then he enters their land, he is forbidden to betray them in anything - their lives, their honor, their property, without any distinction between combatants (military) and non-combatants (civilians) among the residents of [the Abode of] War, as long as he remains in their country…
"The followers of bin Laden entered America with his knowledge and by his order, and they acted perfidiously towards its people, and killed and destroyed… Then they called their treachery and their perfidy a 'raid' in order to compare their actions to the Prophet's raids. To tie their perfidy and treachery to the Prophet is to diminish him and to mock him, and the punishment for diminishing the worth of the Prophet is well-known to Muslims; Qadi 'Iyyad mentioned it in Al-Shifa, and Ibn Taymiyya in Al-Sarim Al-Maslul."
Q: "What was the extent of the impact of these events on the situation of Muslims in the world?"
A: "It was a catastrophe for the Muslims. [Al-Qaeda] ignited strife that found its way into every home, and they were the cause of the imprisonment of thousands of Muslims in the prisons of various countries. They caused the death of tens of thousands of Muslims - Arabs, Afghans, Pakistanis, and others. The Taliban's Islamic Emirate was destroyed, and Al-Qaeda was destroyed. They were the direct cause of the American occupation of Afghanistan and other heavy losses which there is not enough time to mention here. They bear the responsibility for all of this."
Q: "What is your opinion on the way in which bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri have managed the war against the Americans?"
A: "Bin Laden, Al-Zawahiri, and others fled at the beginning of the American bombing [in Afghanistan], to the point of abandoning their wives and families to be killed along with other innocent people.
"I think that a shari'a court should be established, composed of reliable scholars, to hold these people accountable for their crimes - even if in absentia - so that those who are ignorant in their religion do not repeat this futility.
"The Taliban used to punish a woman who left her house with her face uncovered - so how could the leaders of Al-Qaeda not be held accountable - they who caused the destruction of their country, the spilling of their blood, the destruction of their houses, whose children were orphaned and wives widowed - all of this in disobedience to their Emir?..."
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"The issue of my joining their group remained conditional on my meeting their sheikhs. I only discovered after the Jihad case of 1981 that Ayman was a charlatan who used secrecy as a pretext. I discovered that he himself was the Emir of this group, and that they didn't have any sheikhs, and that he was the cause of his companions' arrest, and that he testified against them."
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"After I arrived in Yemen and was practicing medicine, I learned from one of the brothers that the Jihad group had altered my book Al-Jami', struck things out of it, and changed the name of the book to Al-Hadi ila Sabil Al-Rashad. They [also] said that their Shari'a Council had confirmed it [to be correct].
"I asked the brother who had typed the book into the computer and had arrived in Yemen to work, and he informed me that Al-Zawahiri and he alone was the one who did all of these perversions [to the book], because he had found in the book criticism of the Islamist movements that I had written [based on] the reality of having lived with them.
"I don't know of anyone in Islamic history having committed such deceit, fraud, falsification, and betrayal of trust with such hostility to someone else's book, and perverted it - no one before Ayman Al-Zawahiri. When one of the righteous forefathers saw something he considered an error in someone else's book, he would write a rebuttal…
"Aggression towards someone else's book, and the perversion of it, like Al-Zawahiri did, is something that is done only by bandits and people who have no morals and no character. I wrote a communiqué deploring what he had done.
"Neither Al-Zawahiri nor his Shari'a Council have the competence to examine or correct books on shari'a - even with the permission of the author - and they don't have anyone capable of writing a single page without an error in jurisprudence…"
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A: "The dispute is objective. Ayman Al-Zawahiri was entirely dependent on me, in matters of instruction, professional matters, shari'a matters, and at times [even] personal matters.
"He had a contract to work as a surgeon with the Kuwaiti [Red] Crescent Hospital in Peshawar in 1986. He had never been trained in surgery, and had never done a surgery internship in any hospital. He had received a theoretical MA in surgery by studying what I had written, and he had worked a bit in Saudi Arabia as a general physician, and when he enlisted he worked in anesthesia.
"When he got the job at the Kuwaiti [Red] Crescent Hospital he asked me to be at his side and teach him [how to perform] operations. I taught him until he started to stand on his own two feet. If I hadn't done this, he would have been exposed [as a disgrace], since he had taken a contract for a profession that he had never practiced."
"[Al-Zawahiri] was in love with the media and visibility. I wrote works on shari'a and pamphlets, and he would put his name on them, so that I would give him a push [in the realms of] shari'a and the media.
"Al-Zawahiri dealt ungraciously with all of this. He was ungrateful for the kindness [I had shown him] and did not thank [me] for it. He bit the hand that I had extended to him in kindness. [This was] deceit, fraud, betrayal of trust, falsehood, and gangsterism.
"This nature remained in him, up to the point where he and his companions in Al-Qaeda bit the hand of Mullah Muhammad Omar, who had hosted them and protected them in Afghanistan, and who ordered them not to enter into a confrontation with America…
"This is part of the truth about Ayman Al-Zawahiri and his Emir, bin Laden - without falsification and without the media deceit that their followers shower on the two of them. [They are] extremely immoral. I have spoken about this in order to warn the youth against them - youth who are seduced by them, and don't know them..."
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"Some of his followers demanded that Al-Qaeda should have a program (a constitution) that would define the principles of its existence and its goals, and on the basis of which bin Laden would receive the oath of allegiance from the youth.
"bin Laden refused to be bound by any program, in order to give himself the freedom to behave with his followers however he wanted. He banished those who had demanded a program, and from that time on, unfortunately, the only people who have followed Bin Laden have been one of two [kinds of] people: people who are ignorant in their religion, or people who seek gain in this world."
