Warrant for Terror: The Fatwas of Radical Islam and the Duty to Jihad (Hoover Studies in Politics, Economics, and Society) by Shmuel Bar

Author:Shmuel Bar
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2008-06-13T00:00:00+00:00

Beheading Hostages

Execution by beheading has become a trademark of the radical movements. It was widely implemented by the Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines in the early 1990s and has been used by the Chechen rebels since the late 1990s. The watershed use of this method by the international jihād groups, however, was the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan in February 2002. Since then, the beheading of prisoners (mostly civilians) has become increasingly common. The videotaped executions depict religious rituals, with the executioners abiding by regulations stipulated by shari‘ah, including identifying the hostages as belligerent kuffār or protected individuals (dhimmi or holders of aman), the permission to kill prisoners (instead of allowing their ransom) during the battle or after it is over, and the form of execution.

The first two questions have already been discussed. The dispensation for killing the hostages is granted because they are accomplices to the kāfir invasion of the Muslim land and therefore are not protected individuals. In the wake of the abduction and murder of journalists, a debate ensued over whether journalists should be protected because their reporting serves the cause of the jihād. Similarly, the abduction of French nationals and nationals of other countries “friendly to the Muslims” was debated as being damaging to general Muslim interests.

The revulsion in the West evoked widespread denials by Islamic scholars that the beheadings are in line with Islamic law. However, decapitation has historically been practiced by radical Islamic groups, including the Sudanese Mahdīsts and rebels against the secular Turkish regime.54 The groups that engage in the practice today (Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi’s Al-Tawhid wal-Jihād and others) justify it on the basis of two verses in the Qur’an: (8:12): “I will cast terror in their hearts and strike upon their necks” and (47:4) “When you meet the infidels on the battlefield, strike at their necks until you have crushed them completely and then bind the prisoners.” The interpretation is that the act of “striking at their necks” by the mujāhidūn is meant to put fear in the hearts of the enemy and that hostages cannot be considered “prisoners” (who may be ransomed) because the enemy has not been crushed. This echoes the reasoning of the eminent fundamentalist Islamic thinker Abu a’la Mawdudi (a forefather of modern Islamic fundamentalism who was strongly influenced by the Wahhabiya and who strongly influenced the Muslim Brotherhood in the Arab world), who wrote that verse 47:4 is a clear obligation: “By no means should the Muslim take enemy soldiers as captives (until) after the enemy has been completely crushed.”55 That verse is reinforced by the example of the Prophet, who ordered the execution by decapitation of seven hundred men of the Jewish Banu Qurayza tribe in Medina.

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