Here’s a paraphrastic translation of the second installment published today. I promise, it’s worth reading to the climactic end:
As I said yesterday, the testimony and hadith transmissions of a liar are not acceptable in Islamic law or in the religious sciences. So Zawahiri’s religious pronouncement’s in the Exoneration should be rejected. [Sayyid Imam goes on to quote medieval scholars in support of his position.]
Before I get into Zawahiri’s jurisprudential mistakes, I want to say that this is not merely about the errors of one man on some jurisprudential issues. It is the attempt to establish a corrupt, wayward school (madhhab) to justify excess in shedding blood. I will detail how this school was established, examine its fundamentals, and refute them. This corrupt school has been called by some, “the al-Qaeda concept.”
1. How was the school of al-Qaeda established for excess in shedding blood?
The school emerged in the early ’90s and grew in the late ’90s when Bin Laden and Khalid Shaykh Muhammad put in motion their desire to kill the largest number of Americans possible. This led to 9/11, which killed without distinguishing between civilians and military personnel.
UBL left it to his prominent followers to justify the attacks Islamically, the fruit of which Z put in the Exoneration.
2. The principles of the school of al-Qaeda for excess in shedding blood.
To justify this kind of slaughter of Americans outside and inside their country, they had to ignore some Sharia principles. This is the “jurisprudence of justification” [ie making Sharia fit your objective, not the other way around], the most important principles of which are:
A) Transforming the fight against America from a personal matter to a matter for the entire Islamic umma. To do this, UBL depended on two things:
- Media propaganda to promote the corrupt idea that America is the cause of all the ills afflicting Muslims. He added the Jews because the Palestinian issue is the most visible among the masses, even though he did nothing for the Palestinians for reasons I will cover in part 3.
- Sharia support. UBL worked to obtain fatwas and letters of support from many shaykhs in Pakistan and Afghanistan to justify the idea of fighting the U.S. Z alludes to that in his Exoneration. UBL obtained these things before 9/11. When he decided to carry out the bombings of 9/11, he didn’t get a fatwa from anyone, acting as if his actions were supported by the previous fatwas. He didn’t get the permission of his amir, Mullah Omar, or of his Sharia committee. He did what he did behind their backs.
B) Mobilize the largest number of supporters for the strike on the U.S. That is why Z in the Exoneration rejected my argument that Muslims have options other than fighting when they are weak and that there are conditions that prevent jihad. He and his shaykh UBL want everyone to fight everywhere but they were the first to flee.
C) Legal artifice for avoiding the obligation of seeking the permission of one’s amir and host. They gave Mullah Omar allegiance as the commander (amir) of the faithful in Afghanistan, where they lived. Thus, the Sharia requires that they get his permission for jihad. UBL knows that Omar refused conflict with the U.S. and explicitly prohibited them from doing that. UBL thus created a legal artifice to get around this–the unlawful innovation called “localization of leadership,” meaning that Omar has jurisdiction over what they do in Afghanistan but not outside of it. There was a violent argument between UBL and his Sharia council over this before 9/11 and after. He told them in June 2001 that there was a big operation against the U.S. without giving specifics or locations. His Sharia committee opposed him, saying he had to get Omar’s approval. UBL refused and concocted the unlawful innovation of “localization of leadership.” I’ll refute it later.
D) Eliminate all the Sharia obstacles that prevent the killing of Americans. Instead, AQ formulated the following criminal principles:
- Fighting the far enemy before the near enemy
- Excommunicating and killing someone on account of their nationality because nationality is proof of loyalty and of adhering to the laws of infidel countries
- Can kill anyone who pays taxes to infidels because he (the taxpayer) is waging war with his money
- Can kill an infidel human shield and thus can kill civilians in infidel countries
- Can kill Muslim human shields and thus kill Muslims who mix with infidels
- Appealing to the principle of reciprocity in order to widen the scope of indiscriminate killing
- Fighting the U.S. is a defensive jihad; thus, one can travel to the U.S. to kill Americans without the permission of one’s father and other authority figures.
- Visas for Muslims in infidel countries are not guarantees of safe passage, so it is permissible to kill citizens in the country that granted you the visa. Even if it is a guarantee of safe passage, it can be violated for reasons that I’ll respond to later.
- A tourist visa for people coming to Muslim countries is not a guarantee of safe passage for them.
E) AQ stopped its critics by adopting defenses against those who criticize its criminal school of thought, including:
- No one may speak on these matters save Jihadi scholars cloistered in caves and mountains. This is an unlawful innovation.
- Those who criticize them are discouraging jihad, attacking the mujahids, and harming the umma.
- Those who criticize them are serving the interests of the Zio-American Crusade. Z said this about my Document even though he acknowledges that I had made the same criticisms in my 1993 book, The Compendium; nay, even before that.
3. Criticism of the principles of the school of al-Qaeda
They say the U.S. and the Jews are the reason for the ills of Muslims. Most of the Exoneration is designed to convince Muslims of this in order to mobilize them against the U.S. But the cause of Muslims’ problems is Muslims themselves. When Muslims lost at Uhud, God blamed the Muslims, not their enemies.
There is a hadith qudsi that says Muslims won’t be ruled by others until they become internally corrupt. God has put infidels over Muslims to punish Muslims for their sins.
“Who lost Palestine? Arabs who fought the Ottomans and expelled them from Palestine in WWI and then handed it over to Britain in 1916, who gave it to the Jews with the Balfour promise of 1917.
Who kills Palestinians today, especially their leaders? Palestinians who collaborate with Israel. Their betrayal makes it possible for Israel to kill whomever it wants.
Who today is building Jewish settlements in the West Bank to consolidate its occupation by Israel? Palestinian laborers.
Who introduced America to Afghanistan in 2001? Bin Laden and Zawahiri.
What was the reason the U.S. opened the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba for imprisoning Muslims? Bin Laden’s stupidity.
Who let America enter Baghdad long ago in 1258? The Vizier Ibn al-`Alqami.
Who let America enter Baghdad today in 2003? The traitorous senior Iraqi Army officers.
Who killed the Lebanese for 15 years, from 1975-1990? The Lebanese.
Who occupied Kuwait and killed its people in 1990? The people of Iraq, not America or Israel.
Who is killing tens of thousands of Sudanese in Darfur today? The Sudanese themselves are killing one another, just as the Yemenis are doing.
Regardless of the legitimacy of their presence, the American forces did not kill a single Muslim in Saudi Arabia during their presence there after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. The number of Muslims whose death and displacement was caused by al-Qaeda over a few years in Kenya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Pakistan, and elsewhere greatly surpasses the number of Muslims killed by or displaced by Israel in Palestine for the last sixty years. The declaration that al-Qaeda defends Muslims is a myth. It kills Muslims and displaces them.
Putting blame on others while not accepting it yourself, which is what UBL and Z do, is the school of Satan.
If Muslims are the core of the problem, then reforming Muslims from within is the solution. Zawahiri knows I have tried to do this with the Islamic groups and that I criticized them in the Compendium. I tried to reform them without success. They continued to cling to erroneous positions with no Sharia proof, only fiery rhetoric.
The Sharia excesses of Z and UBL reached such a point that one of the mujahid brothers excommunicated them in a meeting in 1992. He was Dr. Ahmad al-Jaza’iri, one of the students of Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi.
Document (Arabic): 11-19-08-al-masry-al-youm-denudation-part-2
