Who are the World's Number One Enemies of Islam? The Jihadists!!

They go by different names: Al-Qaeda; Al-Nussrah; Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Boko Haram, Jihad in Gaza, Ansar Al-Sharia, Al-Qaeda in Arabia, and the like.  They use Islam as a cover for killing the innocent and destabilizing regimes and societies.  Their faith is in power, their recruits are mostly the ignorant and the unemployed, their environment is one of intrigue, and their fallen are undeservedly glorified as "Shaheed" (martyr).

They burst on the international scene by perpetrating the criminal act of 9/11.  In a way, Islamophobia is their unintended ally as it generates for them funds and recruits.  The more they kill, the more Islamophobia, the greater justification for more killings by jihadists.  Hatred is their oxygen.  Even in deaths, Osama Bin Laden, a global crook, remains their prophet, and El-Zawahiri, his successor, a physician whose prescription is brutal killing, preferably by beheading, is their Calipha.

Where does Islam stand from them?  And why are they Islam's number one enemy?  Here follows a crash course in Sharia or Islamic law (a mini presentation of the course I teach at Fordham University School of Law).

The two primary sources of Islamic law are the Quran and the Sunna (The words and conduct of the Prophet Muhammad).  However, if there is no textual reference to a specific issue, ijtihad (application of reason and common sense to the text) fills in those gaps.  In general, ijtihad, though allegedly ended to avoid subjective controversies and divisiveness, has remained available.  Changing circumstances over 1435 years have made ijtihad and indispensable tool for the judiciary in Muslim societies.

In appointing judges, Muhammad made the resort to competent ijtihad in matters where the Quran and his own authentic utterances offer no clear guidance, a condition of appointment.  This is particularly so because the concept of "justice" (Al-Adl) is so highly regarded in Sharia that, in Islamic tradition, it is one of the 99 names used in reference to God (Allah, in Arabic).

A corollary of the concept of justice in Islamic jurisprudence is "the free will."  Coercion is abhorrent to the point that for centuries, that principle has become a sanctified adage: "No Coercion in faith."  The dogmatic justification for that principle is that faith is a matter of the heart, that it cannot be negotiated.  The reason is simple: the relation between God and man (i.e. male and female) is direct -no intercession and no middle man!!

In Islamic law and practice, this is the main gate to diversity of all kinds, especially in religious matters.  Thus from a legal perspective, this means that a Jew, a Christian, a Muslim, a Hindu...etc stands in equal position, proximity and status before their Creator.  Muslim jurists have even issued fatwas (a non-enforceable legal opinion -opinio juris, to the effect that Islam accepts agnosticism.  That is holding that nothing is known, or likely to be known, of the existence of God or of anything beyond material phenomena.  Is that extreme?  No!!

The premise here is that no human being has the right to judge another as a believer or a non-believer.  It is God who is regarded as the only evaluator, the only assessor.  Hence the Quranic verse: "The truth is from your Lord: let him who will believe, and let him who will reject" (Chapter 18/Verse 29).  The flip side of this total acceptance of diversity is that in Islam, the Prophet Muhammad is a messenger of God, and as a messenger, he is not a controller, a dictator, a thought oppressor, a deputy God.

What flows from these textual and ijtihad premises is a whole panoply of legal premises:
(a) gender equality; (b) judicial discretion in sentencing, due regard being given to the accused.  Such discretion dictates that the treatment of sentencing stated in the Quran, as in the cases of theft (cutting of hands or legs) or of adultery (stoning) as parables.  Consequently Omar, the second caliph after Muhammad, acted accordingly in dismissing cases even where the accused of theft offered his hand to be severed.  Omar's rationale: the accused has been victimized by society which did not afford him the means for a decent living; (c) freedom of expression and of assembly; (d) the right of the governed to remove an oppressive ruler; and (e) good government is based on justice which is premised upon the protection of minorities which might be vulnerable to the dictates of the majority.

From the above, one could see the huge distance between Sharia (Islamic law) and jihadism.  In fact the solid interpretation of the term "jihad" is the inner fight within the person to overcome his/her base urges, and the resort to self-defence in cases of outside territorial aggression.  In Islamic law, there is no offensive war, no proselytizing, no infidels, no difference between Sunni and Shii, and no terrorism.

Taking into account the aforementioned Sharia framework as an indispensable yardstick to measure the islamism of the terrorist jihadi organizations which sport the deceiving label of "Islamic," we find them lacking in every respect.

The Jihadist primary tool is terror.  Terror is anti-thetical to the exercise of the free will which is regarded by Sharia as an inalienable right for every human being.  Through the unislamic process of TAKFEER (declaring an individual an apostate), the jihadis nullify the twin concepts of the individual's direct relationship with God, and of diversity.  Those twin concepts have been at the heart of the vibrant Abbasid dynasty which had Baghdad as its capital, and which had fully absorbed the great experiences of the Byzantine empire, the Persian empire, and of Coptic Egypt.

Under the black banner of Al-Qaeda and like-minded retrograde murderous groups, gender equality does not exist.  Women liberation under Islamic Law had been obliterated.  The brutal resort to inhumane sentencing for illegal acts by reading the Quran's parables about the cutting of hands, legs (not to mention decapitation), as an external sentencing guide, attest to their total ignorance of what Islam is all about.

As to freedoms of expression and of assembly, these are the first casualties of jihadism where the right to rebel against injustice is regarded as a rebellion against God.  For them, sectarianism and endless war are to be waged for the glory of the Almighty God -for a quick ride to paradise!!  By the way, the fiction of 70+ virgins in paradise is a sample.  It is a reflection of a jihadi freedom from sanity zone of jihadi hallucination.

The abdication by the jihadis of this frame of Islamic Law and jurisprudence has made them Islam's enemy No. 1.  Their malicious call for the return of Islam to its pristine origin rings hollow: They are returning to a red dawn of their own making, as a means to sinister ends.

Where in Islam is the justification for terrorizing the innocent?  Where in the Quran, the Suma, or in ijtihad, is a license to attack the Copts in Egypt, the Shiis in Iraq, the Americans in New York, the Spaniards in Madrid, or the Christians in Nigeria or in the Central African Republic!

Their criminal and insane acts in Egypt of attacking the army, the police, and innocent civilians, are solely intended for destabilization of the emerging new order in the vain hope of stopping it to fill the vacuum.  Robbing them of the description of "Islamic" this or that, is a priority in warring against the mayhem which they are trying to spread from various locations thus giving the false impression of their "wide reach."

The only hope they cling to is to stay alive, and for them staying alive requires suicidal acts by their misguided cohorts which their leadership adopts for both fund-raising and more recruitment.

Their use of the pulpit in small mosques scattered throughout rural villages for spreading their venomous hate against moderate Muslims and all non-Muslims is being curtailed.  As an example, the Government in Egypt has recently announced the sequestration by the State of all such places of worship.  The purpose: Teaching of Islam to Muslims must be taken away from uneducated free lancers who, at times, are jihadi conduits.  The jihadis are in fact the propagators of world-wide resentment toward and suspicion of Islam.  In their attacks against U.S. President Obama, the American right keeps on calling him "a closet Muslim," and citing his middle name "Hussein."

In support of this process of preempting jihadism within its borders, and as an example to other Arab Spring States, the new Egyptian Constitution of 2014 contained various articles providing as follow:
Article 7: Al-Azhar is an independent Islamic entity ... and is the main recourse in matters of religion and Islamic affairs;
Article 74: It is not permissible to undertake political activity or to organize political parties based on religion or on discrimination based on gender, national origin, sectarian or geographic differentiation;
Article 237: The State is committed to combat terrorism in all its forms.

In the Quran, we read: "We ordained for the Children of Israel that if anyone slew a person -unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land -it would be as if he slew the whole people..." (Chapter V/Verse 32).

You, "Jihadists," have the blood of thousands upon thousands of innocents on your hands.  You continue to spread "mischief" (FITNAH) every where.  You psyche up yourselves to dream of the unattainable and unwanted resurrection of an "Islamic Caliphate."  Your advocacy of "freedom to hate" is not a human right.  You have even created a fiction of "the jihad of fornication" whereby your operatives justify prostituting young Muslim woman as a religious offering for satisfying them while waging "jihad."

You have recreated the medieval tradition of assassination.  In spite of all your acts of aggression against Islam and civilization, the real jihadis are those who are hunting you down worldwide in order to close down your "Murderers Without Borders!!"