The despicable crime against "Charlie Hebdo," a satirist magazine which I have never seen, caused the bullets to ricochet!! As stones skipping on water in a pond, the ricochet has hit Islam itself!! There is no faith on the face of this earth that can cover this naked aggression against humanity.
Massacres of any type are acts of madness. They are extra-judicial; collective punishment; crime against humanity!! Charlie Hebdo is the face of humanity. The offending brothers are the face of real evil!!
From the Armenian massacre by the Ottoman Turks during World War I; to the Jewish massacre by the Nazis during World War II; to the Shii and Kurdish massacres by Saddam!! Three faiths united by a common bond: death for believing, though faith is non-negotiable!! In each of these cases, a fictitious high ground is claimed by the perpetrators. Clear illustration of the toxic combination of faith and politics, producing neither faith nor politics which are defined as "the art of the possible."
Again to "Charlie Hebdo:" Cartoons are not cartridges. They are cartouches which included Charles De Gaulle, Jesus Christ, and the Prophet Muhammad. They did nothing to change a belief, not even by one inch!! The rules of war in Islamic law call for "proportionality." A gun in the hand of an assassin who is not even a warrior is not the same as a pencil in the hand of a cartoonist.
The ignominy has not been brought upon Islam and its Prophet by those murdered journalists. But the Kalashnikov guns have caused anxious questioning about the faith of 1.5 billion Muslims. In true Islamic parlance: "only God Protects Faith." Instead, infamy has been again brought upon the term "Muslim." Confirming the saying by the late Egyptian philosopher, Abbas Mahmoud El-Akkad. "No imperialism has hurt Islam more than by the hands of its ignorant adherents."
That ignorance lies like sleeping or in active cancer cells in the various crevices which hold nearly hidden truths:
- In Sharia (Islamic Law) the martyr is not the suicide bomber. It is his victim: an uninvolved civilian;
- In Islamic tradition, an immigrant must respect the laws of his new abode. His new abode cannot be the arena for his practices;
- In real governance, faith and the State cannot be interchangeable. Faith is a choice; governance is an organized mechanism for communal life;
- In Sharia, there is no proslytization; no missionary endeavours; no in your face conversion;
- In Islamic Law, there are the Quran, the Sunna, and ijtihad (reason where the text is absent or unclear). In ijtihad, there is a special jurisprudence: "Fiqh Al-Maslaha" (public interest);
- By definition, "Sharia is for everywhere and every place." Here lies a total misunderstanding. This does not mean imposition. It means adjustment in application to suit changing circumstances;
- It is legally wrong to have several states in America banning lawyers like me from citing Sharia in their courts as a source of law. The ban is unconstitutional. But the blame from that Islamophobia lies at the door of jihadism;
- By tradition, Muhammed laughed in his councils at the joviality of drunken Arabs;
- In Islamic Law, an "infidel" does not mean a "non-Muslim;" it means a person without values;
- In Islamic jurisprudence, no one has the authority to declare others as "apostates;" that judgement belongs only to the Creator; no room for an ISIS or other jihadi scum; no middleman, no broker, no commission in terms of a religious credit;
- In Islam, the term "Holy War" does not exist. Jihad is an internal self-improvement and self-defense of territory and faith in case of external aggression. The State, not free lancers, has the monopoly on the use of force.
In both cases, while the Brotherhood was misunderstood in America as a legitimate opposition, its advocacy and practice of terrorism forced El-Sisi Administration to declare them a terrorist cabal. Secularism won over the Islamists because Egypt of 100 million has a secular and Muslim/Coptic DNA without which the country is non-recognizable.
In its historic document of August 2011, Al-Azhar, that Cairo citadel of more than 1000 years of moderate Islamic learning, responded to the ongoing confrontation everywhere between secularism and religionism (excessive religious zeal). One of its eleven principles, all cosponsored by the Egyptian Coptic Church, declared in effect: "Islam does not recognize a State based solely on religion." This explains why El-Sisi on January 1, chose Al-Azhar as his pulpit from which to call for "a religious revolution."
The killers at Charlie Hebdo cried "Allahu Akbar!!" Their war cry belied the huge distance between them and Sharia. For that term, "God is Great," means only one thing: We are all equal, in the eyes of God, regardless of our faith or non-faith. They missed that crevice. And hit the wrong target.
The real Muslims in the Charlie tragedy are the French police officer, Ahmed, a Muslim. Executed outside of the scene of the murder en masse, on a Paris pavement as he laid injured, but representing the valor of his professions. His execution recalled to mind a young Indian Muslim girl, Noor Enayat Khan, a French heroine of World War II. Dropped behind Nazi lines in occupied France to coordinate Morse Code signals in aid of the Resistance, she, a Sufi, was executed in 1944 in a Nazi concentration camp. Both Noor and Ahmed are the face of true Islam. So is the Muslim who helped hide jews inside a non-functioning freezer from massacre by a cohort of the assassins at Hebdo at that Kosher deli at the outskirts of Paris.
In Algeria, in the early 1960s, I saw amity between the FLN and the French army outside Oran. De Gaulle has sanctioned my entry into Algeria as UN Porte Parole (spokesman) toward the end of that war for Algerian independence. I was a UN junior officer, an Egyptian who spoke French. De Gaulle hated Nasser, but welcomed French-speaking Egyptians. There, east of Oujda and in Tlemcen, I saw Algerian and French combatants become brothers. That was the age of Houari Boumedienne, not the age of the bottom of the barrel, the evil brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi.
Pity the conflicting reactions from the Muslim world to the Charlie Hebdo massacre. It pains me to translate into English those condemnations into Arabic. Following the Paris massacre, Sarkosi, former French President, admonished against "mixing between that crime and French Muslims" (5 million of them; 8% of France's population). Rouhani of Iran blamed the crime on Islamophobia encouraged by France. "President Rouhani: Blaming the victim for the commission of the crime is like blaming the woman victim of rape for the violation of her womanhood."
The guiding light for the assassins at Charlie Hebdo is Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi -the false Caliph of ISIS, a thug from Anbar, Iraq. The guiding light for the real Muslims, a vast majority, is Salah El-Din. "Saladin" in the midst of war welcomed St. Francis of Asisi as a peace-maker between the Muslims forces and their crusading adversary.
France welcomed Muslims to its territory, including the parents of those assassins. Citizenship is a bestowed right, not an inherent right. Its violation is an act of treachery. That violation is not redeemable by self-help: individuals assuming the mantle of avengers.
"Muhammed: We have avenged you, Messenger of God" -yelled one of the two killers of 10 French journalists and two police officers. Guess what -Mr. Blood-on-Your-Hands: Muhammad and his Ummah (community) would never sanction your massacre masquerading as Islamic. For it is pure Satanic!!
I am a professor of Islamic jurisprudence at a Jesuit law school in New York City -Fordham University School of Law. My father, a graduate of Al-Azhar in Cairo, introduced me properly to the Prophet Muhammad. From my specialization I conclude the following: To Muhammmed, terrorism would have been a denial of Allah -the God of all.
In the Quran, it is said in the name of Muhammad, addressing his community: "Say: 'I am only a mortal like you; it is revealed to me that your God is One God' (Chapter 18;verse 110). This is the essence of "Tawheed" (the onness of God). This universalizing principle unites faiths of all types together. It is like a golden thread that keeps a necklace of pearls together. From the smallest to the biggest adorning the neck of every human being.
The first word in the Quran is "IQRA" -whose surface meaning is "READ;" but its comprehensive meaning is "LEARN." The problem with the villains of January 7 is that they live in a bubble of ignorance.
Their like-minded terrorists in Nigeria, who have just massacred 2000 in one incursion, adopted the name of "Boko Haram" (western learning is un-Islamic.) By contrast the Prophet Muhammad urged his community to seek education -"even in China," his farthest point from Arabia.
While the Ottoman Empire avoided non-Muslim trainers, thus hastening its collapse, Egypt under Muhammad Ali (the founder of modern Egypt: 1805 -1849) nearly occupied Constantinople in 1839/1840. Reason: French training in every field, from the army to archeology, since the days of Napoleon in Egypt as of 1798!!
When Khomeini was chased out of his sanctuary in Iraq by Saddam as urged by the Shah after 1975, his refuge was in France. It could, therefore, be safely said that the Islamic revolution in Iran, a shii majority country, was launched from France, the mother of "the freedom of speech" (liberte de l'expression).
Nearly a hundred years before Khomeini's Islamic revolution, France was the birthplace of even a more pervasive Islamic movement. Led by two of the greatest reformers, Jamal El-Din Al-Afghani and Muhammad Abdu, who were united in Paris, it aimed at Islamic modernization.
Upon his return from Paris to Alexandria, well before his death in 1905, Sheikh Muhmmad Abdu was greeted at the pier by a group of reporters. He was asked "How did you find the West?" His answer fully reflected the values of France's protection of personal liberties. Akin to what Islam calls for, though ignored in the practice by most countries of the Muslim world. His words eternalized by the ages, especially in this age of chaos were: "I found Islam there, and the Muslims here!!" An emphasis on value as compared to superficial belonging.
Now that we all are "Charlie Hebdo," and you, the three assassins, have already reached hell, use your hotline with a sizzling message. Text jihadis everywhere: "Your end is near. The pen is mightier than the Kalashnikovs!!" A lasting advice from "Charlie's Angels" who are now rushing to get a copy of the million copies of the incredible "Hebdo!!"
Your satanic acts in which 17 innocent victims were martyred made Paris on January 11 the capital of the world. At that one-million person rally, the Muslims marched with signs declaring "Not In My Name!!" NOT IN MY NAME EITHER!!
