Second Thoughts On Fatwa

In yesterday's post I celebrated the release of an American Muslim "fatwa" condemning Islamic terrorism of every kind. The document was signed by a large number of well-known and influential organizations and individuals.

Some people, including Steven Emerson at The Counterterrorism Blog, are calling the fatwa a "fake."

In fact, the fatwa is bogus. Nowhere does it condemn the Islamic extremism ideology that has spawned Islamic terrorism. It does not renounce nor even acknowledge the existence of an Islamic jihadist culture that has permeated mosques and young Muslims around the world. It does not renounce Jihad let alone admit that it has been used to justify Islamic terrorist acts. It does not condemn by name any Islamic group or leader. In short, it is a fake fatwa designed merely to deceive the American public into believing that these groups are moderate.

Judea Pearl, the father of Daniel Pearl (who was butchered and murdered in Pakistan) has declared the fatwa to be

"....vacuous because it does not name the perpetrators of Islamic terrorist theologies and leaders of Islamic movements like Yousef Al Qaradawi, Osama Bin Laden, Ayman Al Zawahari, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, etc.” Pearl told (Emerson) that these groups are “trying to perpetrate a deception on the American public."

I'm not an expert in Islamic fatwas but I gather from Emerson's article that a legitimate fatwa must be specific to a particular person, organization or discernable entity (such as the Ayatollah Khomeni's infamous fatwa against Solomon Rushdie). If this is true, then this particular fatwa would appear to ring hollow, if not to those of us too naive to understand the subtleties of Islamic jurisprudence, then most certainly within the American Muslim communities it is addressed to.

Emerson also points out that many of the organizations and individuals (including the leader of the council that issued the fatwa) have been accused of supporting the very sort of terrorism and terrorist organizations addressed by their declaration.

Please read Emerson's article yourself and decide whether to be skeptical or not. I, for one, will be pondering the old question concerning whether the leopard can change its spots.......