Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jarthur!nntp-server.caltech.edu!news From: zama@midway.uchicago.edu (iftikhar uz zaman) Newsgroups: soc.religion.islam Subject: Re: Muslim View on Middle East conflict Message-ID: <1990Aug25.020408.368@laguna.ccsf.caltech.edu> Date: 25 Aug 90 02:04:08 GMT Sender: news@laguna.ccsf.caltech.edu Organization: California Institute of Technology Lines: 62 Approved: bes@tybalt.caltech.edu Zafer Iqbal writes: >According to Islam, what Sadam has done is correct. Borders between 2 Muslim >countries should not exist!!! Wow! >Islam requires unification of Muslim countries And wow again! Zafer, living in this land where there are few Muslim around us I have found that we tend to get too intimate with this "Islam": being forced to continuosly explain what "Islam sez" on one topic or another, and being listened to like authorities on any issue dealing with Islam, my feeling is that the phrase "According to Islam..." slips off too easily from our tongues. My own solution to this has been that whenever I hear myself doing the "Islam sez" routine, to try to find WHERE "Islam" says the thing I hear it(/him?) saying it. What we have here is a fatwa: you have decided that there is some nass ("textual evidence": Quran, saying of the Prophet or somesuch) which demands that there be no borders between Muslim countries. I honestly can't think of where this nass might be. Can you? However, I do know that there are explicit ayahs in the Quran which speak of the evil of Muslims fighting Muslims. Look it up in your favorite concordance but it begins like this: "In ta'ifatan min al-muminin iqtatalu..." Roughly the meaning is that if two groups of Muslims begin to battle, try to find a way to bring about peace between them, if this is not possible and one is intent on doing injustice to the other ("in baghat ihdahuma...") then fight the one that does the injustice... Also, there is the explicit saying of the Prophet that the blood of a Muslim is haraam (forbidden) to any other Muslim except for three things-- apostasy, adultery and murder. [La yahillu dam imar'in Muslim illa bi ihda thalath: kufrun ba`d iman, wa zina ba`d ihsan wa qatl nafs bi ghayr haqq-- or words to that effect, from A'isha in Muslim Abu Da'ud etc.]. Now the fatwa you have given is that the demands of uniting the borders of Muslims outweigh the demands of this hadith, and of the ayah in the Quran referred to above. THIS IS fatwa: the weighing of all the textual evidence of the Quran and the hadith to judge which of all the evidence is the most appropriate to apply to the specific situation at hand. Do you really feel qualified for this task? >Secondly it is haram to have to rely on kufr for the defence of Muslims!!! >The Saudi puppet regime should have been overthrown long ago as should most of >the existing puppet regimes (including Sadam!). Once again, this is fatwa. A vague "Islam says" will not be good enough here. Let me take this opportunity to point out something I learned from a learned man a little while ago: a mas'ala is a "general rule" regarding some religious issue--for example, that if one falls asleep after making ablutions for prayers, one has to repeat the ablutions, or that if one has money which is unused for a whole year one has to give zakah on it. Similar to this might be a mas'ala you learn that "borders of Muslims must be united" (though I don't know whether this is a correct mas'ala). A fatwa is where you take the general rule and apply it to a specific situation: this really requires a lot more. Anybody can repeat a mas'ala he has learned, but a fatwa is a judgement in which you must take all the various mas'alas which apply to a situation and see which most appropriately fits the situation at hand... I think many a mufti would think twice about giving fatwa on the situation in Iraq... Respectfully yours, your brother in Islam, Iftikhar.