Mutilation of victims and Muslim law

By Jeff Jacoby - June 13, 2004

"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."

Given those conditions, it is hard to imagine a situation in which an
Islamist militant couldn't justify the mutilation of a victim's body.

"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.

Does this mean that normative Islamic law authorizes Muslims to mangle
the bodies of non-Muslims they have killed? I am not a scholar of
Islam and would not presume to say. But 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.

(Warning -- the following descriptions are graphic.)

Fallujah: Four Americans are ambushed, dragged from their vehicles,
jumped on, and pounded with bricks. As jubilant Iraqis chant Islamic
slogans, the bodies are dismembered and set on fire. Two of the
charred remains are then hung from a bridge; the other two are dragged
behind cars along the city's main street.

Khobar, Saudi Arabia: A British oil executive, Michael Hamilton, is
one of 22 people murdered in an Al Qaeda attack. His corpse is dragged
through the city, then dumped near a bridge.

Gaza: After six Israelis are blown up in a bomb attack, Palestinians
are filmed dancing in the streets and playing with the dead men's body
parts. In a video, two Islamic Jihad terrorists take credit for the
massacre -- and display the severed head of one of their victims.

Iraq: Islamofascists videotape their murder of Nicholas Berg, a
26-year-old US civilian. Shouting "Allahu akhbar!" ("God is great!"),
they saw off Berg's head as he shrieks in pain and fear.

The disfiguring of victims' bodies did not begin this year. In a
notorious lynching four years ago, two Israeli reservists were taken
from their car to the second floor of a Palestinian police station in
the West Bank town of Ramallah, where they were literally torn limb
from limb. Their internal organs were pulled from their bodies, their
eyes were gouged out, and what was left of them was thrown from a
window to a cheering crowd below, which set the corpses on fire and
dragged them through the town.

Perhaps even more infamous -- at least to Americans -- were the
beheading of journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan in 2002 and the
mutilation of the bodies of US soldiers in Somalia in 1993.

We are in a war to the death with an enemy whose deepest
civilizational values come straight out of the 8th century. In the
world that they would impose on us all, there is no dissent, no
pluralism, no path to God but theirs -- and no mercy or tolerance for
those who might choose a different path.

Our enemies make no secret of their intentions: We will bow to their
totalitarian idea of Islam, or we will be killed. And not only killed,
but mangled, mutilated, and subjected to the most hideous indignities
they can devise.

The terrorists and their followers burn and batter corpses for the
same reason the Taliban smashed magnificent statues -- for the same
reason Hitler wrote "Mein Kampf": to openly proclaim their contempt
for the moral principles of the civilized world.

Ultimately it is up to the world's moderate, modern Muslims to rise up
against the barbarians in their midst. Until that day comes, there is
nothing the West can do to ameliorate or appease this enemy. We can
only destroy it -- or be destroyed.

Jeff Jacoby's e-mail address is jacoby@globe.com.


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"Ah yes, we must mollify angry fanatics who seek our destruction
because otherwise .. they might get mad and seek our destruction."
- Ann Coulter 9/26/2002