Finkelstein on UN Gaza Report

You have to ask yourself, if a Jewish lawyer (Richard Goldstone, the UN investigator who led the investigation of the conflict between Israel and Hamas) whose own daughter says he loves Israel and that he's a Zionist is condemning what Israel did in Gaza, then how do you continue to question whether what Israel did was merciless or not? This is absolute lunacy on the part of the far-right. They're grasping at the few stones in front of them before they finally fall off the cliff of reality. It's almost comical if it weren't so serious.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Israel refused to cooperate with the investigation and has claimed the UN Human Rights Council that ordered it was biased against Israel. This is some of what the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson Yigal Palmor had to say about the inquiry.

YIGAL PALMOR: This fact-finding mission was established in sin. This is why Israel was unable to cooperate with it. The resolution, in virtue of which the commission was established, was so extreme in its phrasing and in its prejudging of any conclusion that all European countries and other democratic countries did not support it. It was adopted with the support of human rights models such as Libya, Bangladesh, Cuba. This, of course, has no moral value whatsoever. So we didn’t feel that this was binding in any way.

In spite of everything I’ve just said, Israel is going to study this report and to examine it very carefully, as we have with all the national and international human rights reports. We are taking this seriously, and we are committed, as always, to abide by international law.

AMY GOODMAN: Israel’s response to the Goldstone report. Your response, Norman Finkelstein?

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Well, Richard Goldstone is a very respected jurist, and he also has a long record of being very supportive of Israel. If I’m not mistaken, he sits on the Hebrew University of Jerusalem board of directors.

Now, when the UN Human Rights Council asked Goldstone to chair the mission, originally his mandate was just to investigate Israeli crimes. He himself said he couldn’t fulfill that mandate, unless it was modified and included crimes on all sides. The Human Rights Council said, “Fine. We’ll modify the mandate, and we’ll accept your terms.” At that point, Richard Goldstone accepted to head the mission.

So you have to ask yourself the question: if what the gentleman said were true, why did Goldstone accept? If it were so biased, he always had the option of saying no. Why would a well-known supporter of Israel have accepted that mandate if it were biased against Israel?

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think, Norman Finkelstein, are the limitations of the report?

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: The main limitation of the report is it’s all cast in the language of violations of the laws of war. And the fundamental fact about what happened in Gaza is it wasn’t a war. There was no war in Gaza. That’s the main misunderstanding about what happened there. In fact, one of Israel’s leading strategic analysts, he said—after what happened in Gaza, he said the one mistake Israelis are making is that there was a war there. He said there was no war. There were no battles in Gaza.

The picture is fairly clear. Israel flew about 3,000 sorties over Gaza. Every plane came back. None was damaged. None was downed. There was no fighting in Gaza. If you read the reports that were issued by the—the testimonies of the Israeli soldiers, the one consistent theme in all of the testimonies was they never met any Hamas militants, they never engaged in any battles. Some of the Israeli soldiers expressed exasperation: “We came here to fight. We’re not fighting anyone.” There was no—there were no battles. There were no Hamas militants in the field. The basic fact was, as a couple of Israeli soldiers said—one of them said, “This was like PlayStation, a computer game.” Another Israeli soldier said, literally—I’m quoting exactly, almost word for word—he said, “It was like a child with a magnifying glass burning ants.” That’s what Gaza was like.

One soldier after another, literally—I wish listeners would just bring up the report. It’s called “Breaking the Silence.” And then, under—enter under the search mechanism, just enter the word “insane.” One soldier after another after another after another said Israel used insane amounts of firepower. Insane amounts of firepower. There were no soldiers, no battles, but they’re using insane amounts of firepower. One soldier said—two soldiers, actually, talked about how the ground was trembling because of all the bombing and all of the missiles and all of the rockets. Another said that “We were told—even though we were firing in the distance, we were told to evacuate the houses we were in, because the shaking from the distance was going to cause the house to collapse over our heads.”

It was a massacre in Gaza. And you don’t really see that, because they’re measuring everything against what they call the laws of war. But you’re applying laws of war to a massacre. There was no war there.

Read the rest.

Neo-Cons Losing Serious Ground

As are the vehement pro-Israel advocates, the likes of which that are constantly clamoring for the bombing of Iran, and who also advocate the theory that Muslims want to destroy Western civilization through jihad and stealth efforts. The people who share these ideas are in the same camp, they all seem to associate with one another. They're world view is crumbling, thankfully. But it's a long way from being accepted as truly false. They still have widespread power and support throughout the government and media, however, as Greenwald notes below, they are being called out and exposed more and more. And all they can really do is huff and puff.

One of the nation's most Churchillian and courageous warriors, Norman Podhoretz, is now devoting himself to the complaint that most American Jews are liberals rather than neoconservatives. He has a whole new bookabout this. The argument he's making about why Jews should be neocons rather than liberals is really quite notable. Here he is in the Wall St. Journal today:

Since 1928, the average Jewish vote for the Democrat in presidential elections has been an amazing 75% -- far higher than that of any other ethno-religious group.

Yet there were reasons to think that it would be different in 2008. The main one was Israel. Despite some slippage in concern for Israel among American Jews, most of them were still telling pollsters that their votes would be strongly influenced by the positions of the two candidates on the Jewish state. This being the case, Mr.McCain's long history of sympathy with Israel should have given him a distinct advantage over Mr. Obama, whose own history consisted of associating with outright enemies of the Jewish state like the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and the historian Rashid Khalidi. . . .

In 2008, we were faced with a candidate who ran to an unprecedented degree on the premise that the American system was seriously flawed and in desperate need of radical change—not to mention a record powerfully indicating that he would pursue policies dangerous to the security of Israel. Because of all this, I hoped that my fellow Jews would finally break free of the liberalism to which they have remained in thrall long past the point where it has served either their interests or their ideals.

Apparently, The Godfather of Neoconservatism believes that American Jews do -- and should -- base their political beliefs not on what is best for their own country, but on what is best for a foreign country (Israel). According to him, even though Obama shares most of their views on political matters ("on abortion, gay rights, school prayer, gun control and assisted suicide, the survey data show that Jews are by far the most liberal of any group in America"), American Jews should have nonetheless voted for McCain because of McCain's alleged "long history of sympathy with Israel." Isn't this the "dual loyalty" argument that nobody is allowed to make upon pain of being accused of all sorts of bad things -- that the political beliefs of some American Jews are shaped primarily or even exclusively by loyalty to Israel? Yet here we find not Walt and Mearshimer or Chas Freeman making this claim, but Norman Podhoretz.

This extreme and flagrant double standard has been permitted for a long time now. Neocons arrogate unto themselves the right to make appeals to what they believe is the "dual loyalty" of American Jews -- most of whom, in fact, reject their radical ideology -- when trying to coerce support for their agenda. Podhoretz's Commentary Magazine convened a "symposium" of some of the nation's most typical war-loving neocons to discuss his new book, and virtually everyone of them argued that American Jews should shift their political loyalties to the Right because the Right is "better for Israel" -- as though considerations of what's best for a foreign country is how most American Jews (rather than just neocons) decide how they vote in American elections. Neocons have long gotten away with this manipulative game: simultaneously demanding that American Jews support the Right on the ground that the Right is allegedly better for Israel (i.e., a "dual loyalty" appeal) while branding as "bigots" and "anti-Semites" anyone and everyone who points out that neocons think this way.

The reason why Podhoretzian neocons are so frustrated that more Americans Jews don't respond to their pressure tactics is because most don't think the way neocons do and don't have the same priorities. Not only do the vast majority of American Jews reject virtually every core neocon tenet of American politics, but they also have the same prioritiesas Americans generally when it comes to deciding their political loyalties (the economy, health care, social issues -- not Israel). In 2008, while most American Jews said they "care about" Israel in general, only 6 % identified "support for Israel" as the most important factor in determining their vote. That's why Norm Podhoretz and his friends are so angry and confused. Devotion to Israel is at the center of their political world-view-- it's what shapes their political beliefs. One right-wing columnistactually complained that while Obama "may even be pro-Israel and pro-Jewish to an extent . . . to him America’s interests take precedence" -- as though that's a bad thing. But that view -- that Israel's interests should predominate American politics -- is shared only by a small minority of American Jews (namely: neocons), which is why their "dual loyalty" appeals fall on deaf ears.

There's an equally important factor driving the long overdue erosion of neocon influence among American Jews: the collapse of their monopoly in defining what is "good for Israel." This week's New York TimesMagazine contains an excellent profile by James Traub on the emergence of J Street, the important and often courageous organization which is breaking the right-wing stranglehold of AIPAC and comrades when it comes to speaking for -- and defining -- American-Jewish political interests. Amazingly, Traub explicitly endorses a central Walt/Mearsheimer argument: that the AIPAC-led Israel Lobby -- until the emergence of J Street -- "had succeeded in ruling almost any criticism of Israel out of bounds, especially in Congress":

The idea that there is an "Israel lobby," with its undertones of dual loyalty, is a controversial notion. It has been around since the early 1970s at least, but it became a topic of wide discussion only after the publication of a notorious article in The London Review of Books in 2006 by the political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. The article, which was expanded into a book, infuriated many readers by its air of conspiratorial hugger-mugger; by its insistence that Jewish neoconservatives had persuaded President Bush to go to war in Iraq in order to protect Israel; and by the authors’ apparent ignorance of the deep sense of identification many Americans -- Jewish and gentile -- feel toward Israel. But the authors made one claim that struck many knowledgeable people as very close to the mark: The Israel lobby had succeeded in ruling almost any criticism of Israel out of bounds, especially in Congress.

"The bottom line," Mearsheimer and Walt wrote, "is that Aipac, a de facto agent for a foreign government, has a stranglehold on Congress, with the result that U.S. policy is not debated there, even though that policy has important consequences for the entire world." Mearsheimer and Walt also wrote that Aipac and other groups succeeded in installing officials who were deemed "pro-Israel" into senior positions. This is, of course, what effective lobbies do. The Cuba lobby, for example, long operated in the same way. But Israel is a much more important American national-security interest than Cuba.No country, whether Israel or Cuba, has identical interests to those of the United States. And yet mainstream American Jewish groups had implicitly agreed to subordinate their own views to those of the government in Jerusalem. The watchword, says J. J. Goldberg, editorial director of The Forward, the Jewish weekly, was, “We stick with Israel regardless of our own judgment.”

Those are some pretty amazing words to find in The New York Times Magazine. But numerous American Jewish groups have been challenging the hegemony of AIPAC, and J Street has been most successful of all in gradually highlighting how unrepresentative Norm Podhoretz, Bill Kristol, AIPAC and friends are when it comes to understanding the views of American Jews and even "the interests of Israel." As Traub notes, when AIPAC and other traditional Jewish groups threatened to target Rep. Donna Edwards for her blasphemous decision to vote "present" rather than "yes" on a House Resolution unequivocally supporting the Israeli war on Gaza -- how dare this American Congresswoman fail to show full-fledged fealty to Israel --J Street raised a substantial amount of money for Edwards and made clear it would support her in the event AIPAC targeted her for defeat. That is changing the nature of what it means to be "pro-Israel" and allowing an expanded scope of opinion on matters relating to Israel.

For that same reason, the AIPAC/neocon effort to bully Obama out of applying true pressure on Israel is failing as well. When Obama recently met in the White House with the heads of American Jewish groups, he notably invited J Street's Executive Director, Jeremy Ben-Ami (which, according to Traub, caused "some of the mainstream groups [to] vehemently protest" his inclusion), and this is what happened:

In July, President Obama met for 45 minutes with leaders of American Jewish organizations. All presidents meet with Israel’s advocates. Obama, however, had taken his time, and powerhouse figures of the Jewish community were grumbling; Obama’s coolness seemed to be of a piece with his willingness to publicly pressure Israel to freeze the growth of its settlements and with what was deemed his excessive solicitude toward the plight of the Palestinians. During the July meeting, held in the Roosevelt Room, Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, told Obama that "public disharmony between Israel and the U.S. is beneficial to neither" and that differences "should be dealt with directly by the parties." The president, according to Hoenlein, leaned back in his chair and said: "I disagree. We had eight years of no daylight” -- between George W. Bush and successive Israeli governments -- "and no progress."

The anti-neocon view -- that blind, uncritical American support for anything Israel wants and does is not only bad for the U.S., but also for Israel -- is gaining widespread acceptance among American Jews. As Traub notes:

As Martin Indyk, a former American ambassador to Israel and now the director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, puts it, "In the Bush years, when Israel enjoyed a blank check, increasing numbers of people in the Jewish and pro-Israel community began to wonder, If this was the best president Israel ever had, how come Israel’s circumstances seemed to be deteriorating so rapidly?" Why was Israel more diplomatically isolated than ever? Why had Israel fought a savage and apparently unavailing war with Hezbollah in Lebanon? Why were the Islamists of Hamas gaining the upper hand over the more moderate Fatah in Palestine? "There was kind of a cognitive dissonance," Indyk says, "about whether a blank check for Israel is necessarily the best way to secure the longevity of the Jewish state."

The self-pitying, angry lament of Norm Podhoretz that most American Jews reject what he has to say is understandable. He's right: they do, and that's becoming increasingly apparent. But if Podhoretz wants to run around insisting that American Jews should decide their political loyalties based on the interests of a foreign country (even though most don't), then it shouldn't be impermissible to point out that this is how he and his neoconservative allies think. There are still a lot of highly critical issues even beyond Israel over which this faction is attempting to exert influence -- beginning with Iran and Afghanistan -- and keeping a light on what they really are, and are not, is vitally important.

Interesting Take on the Rifqa Bary Case

From altmuslimah.org:

The first thing that was clear was that Rifqa learned about "honor killings" from Christians not from Muslims. Periodically in the video, when she's flustered, she looks over to someone off camera. This is a sign when someone has been coached. They seek visual confirmation by making eye contact. At the five minute mark she says, "It's in the Quran." Which it's not, but then she looks off camera and says, "You can, like, give them knowledge about it." She gestures, and a man answers unintelligibly. Then she says to the reporter, "He really will explain it and break it down. They have to do this!" Who ever that man is, he is the coach. And we know it's not the pastor because he's holding her, but I'm certain he had a hand in it. He's quoted as having said, "These are the last days, these are the end times, and this conflict between Islam and Christianity is going to grow greater. This conflict between good and evil is going to grow greater." But if this is her religion, her upbringing, her life, she would be fluent in its details. She wouldn't need someone else to explain it for her.

But that's not enough. Blake Lorenz had only had her for a few weeks in Florida. That's time for coaching, but not for brainwashing. So, I looked to her church activity in Ohio. Only a few articles briefly mention that she attended a church called the Xenos Christian Fellowship. A little Googling on this group immediately brings the whole picture into view. Message boards and articles about the Xenos Fellowship are filled with comments about the group's cultish tendencies, specifically its manipulative efforts to isolate people from their friends and family.

"Xenos" means "Alien", that is, the members of the Church, called "Xenoids," should be aliens in this world, seeking only their home in Heaven. Ex-Xenoids speak of years of rigid social control and peer pressure before they could get out and ostracism once they left. Stories emerge of "Leaders" running a "Ministry House" where groups of older members live together and host "Home Church" to "Cell Groups" of high school and junior high-aged members. The group takes 13 and 14 year old girls out on "Bible Study" camping retreats with college-aged boys.

Ex-leaders describe a community where adults and youth are discouraged from socializing outside the fold without bringing another Xenoid along. This is a community where leaders conspire to orchestrate the romantic relationships of members by pairing "workers" together and breaking off "fringe" members. Others describe losing loved ones to the Church, their siblings, or children or even spouses being so engrossed in the Church they abandon all other ties. They describe the Church as preying on confused teenagers, exploiting their weaknesses and then jumping in to "save" them. Even worse, they have on staff an on call psychologist to keep people in line.

Feminist Hawks

The obvious question for new-feminists like Horowitz is "why do you care about Muslim women so much to the exception and exclusion of women in your own country?" I have yet to receive an answer to this question. Instead, Horowitz's disciple, Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer, has called the injustices American women suffer from as "perceived ills."

Below is from the NYT:

How do big ideas spread on the Internet, and how are they changed in the process?

Consider the feminist-hawk position — the one that advocates the use of force to liberate Muslim women from persecution and burkas. This position has become an integral part of the ideological Web. Feminist-hawk arguments may even be considered an artifact of the Web, just the way the revolutionary arguments of 18th-century America can be seen as an artifact of pamphlets.

In the late 1990s, an e-mail petition of unclear origin began to circulate. It was called “The Taliban Is Waging a War on Women!” Styled like a chain letter, it came in several variations, each featuring reports of misogynistic crimes in Afghanistan. (“One woman was beaten to DEATH by an angry mob of fundamentalists for accidentally exposing her arm.”) If you signed, you agreed that the United Nations ought to, by “support and action,” show its intolerance for “the situation overseas.”

The petition blamed the Afghan regime and not Muslim culture for the abuses of women, and some iterations sought to pre-empt relativists who would “excuse everything on cultural grounds.” The petition typically carried a list of signatories, some with M.D.’s and Ph.D.’s, from cities like Grenoble, Cleveland and New Delhi.

Unlike Revolutionary-era pamphlets, the petition did not ground its case in political theory. Instead, it relied on the promise of global participation implicit in online communication. It made clear that a far-flung community with eyes and ears everywhere — and connections in high places — already existed. You could add your name to its moral ranks with a few keystrokes.

Today that e-mail message rarely lands in in-boxes, and when it’s cited, it’s mostly to show the oppressiveness of spam. (“The Taliban has since been removed from power,” says BreaktheChain, an anti-junk-mail site. “Too bad this chain letter can’t similarly be ‘removed.’ ”) This is a mistake. Though the petition didn’t stop the Taliban, it sounded a meaningful alarm. It also codified a polemical line that has, unexpectedly, become a war horse of hawkish bloggers.

David Horowitz, the conservative firebrand, is among those who have seized on the feminist-hawk position. Horowitz may not be an obvious feminist, but as someone who has dedicated his life to political media (producing or contributing to magazines, books, political ads, cable news, talk radio, blogs, video podcasts, even a pamphlet), he’s adroit at adapting ideologies for media platforms. Right now, this one is working for him.

Like many conservatives, Horowitz appears to have come to feminist-hawkism after 9/11. But in his hands, the ideology has fast became a tenacious memebrid — as Tim Hwang, a sociologist and the director of the Web Ecology Project, calls memes that unite two or more cultural phenomena.

“The neat marriage of hawkish tendencies and feminist framing of issues does this quite effectively,” Hwang explained to me in an e-mail message. Borrowing left-wing shibboleths is one way that “conservative ideas can make it big in a generally more liberal online social sphere,” he wrote. Furthermore, to depict Islamic regimes less as terrorists than as repressors of civil liberties may appeal even to traditional isolationists, as it “plays off of the strong communities of libertarians that dominate some prominent spaces.”

Hawkish sites that have taken up feminism include Little Green Footballs, Jihad Watch and Horowitz’s FrontPage Magazine. On a recent day, the home page of the last featured reports of female prisoners being raped in Iran; prepubescent girls getting married in Gaza; and a possible honor killing by an immigrant in New York. This material is expected to help seal Horowitz’s general case for the war on terror, though he has not yet changed the name of his cause to, say, the war on misogyny.

Would the architects of the original anti-Taliban e-mail petition recognize Horowitz’s crusade as their own? Probably not. Where the original message aimed to engage the United Nations, Horowitz considers the United Nations to be “one-world kleptocrats.” And where at least one version of the chain message reproves Americans for cultural relativism, Horowitz considers his position staunchly American.

As a fan of intensely specific forms of communication — blogs, memoirs, reality TV — I don’t believe that any idea exists apart from its mode of dissemination. But I also know that ideas that seem especially big and irresistible are usually so elegantly integrated with particular communication technologies that it’s hard to conceive of them separately. Could Rush Limbaugh’s patriotic anti-elitism have coalesced anywhere but on AM radio? Could “family values” have emerged without Christian TV?

And could the feminist-hawk position have emerged without the weird confluences of the Web? Like any wily and surviving creature, this new ideology has faced evolutionary pressures and adapted to its ecological niche.

Honor Killings and Islam: Is There a Link?

This article was published on altmuslimah.org:

There has been a recent upsurge in honor killings throughout the world – the practice of killing family members who have allegedly tarnished the family’s honor by engaging in shameful conduct.

Just last week in Montreal, a father and son murdered their four female relatives to preserve their family’s honor because their female relatives were accustomed to wearing Western-style clothing. Last Friday in Gaza, a father tortured and then killed his daughter, a divorced mother of five, for having a cell phone conversation with someone he believed to be another man. Fearing that his daughter was involved in an illicit relationship, he killed her.

The Montreal Gazette reports “The Canadian Muslim Forum fears the deaths will lead to ‘Islamophobia and anti-immigrant sentiments.’” Less important it seems is whether the Canadian Muslim Forum will do anything to prevent future honor killings within Canada, or will worry only about how such a crime will increase anger against Muslim Canadians.

While Muslims in the West are slowly coming to realize that honor killings are not just a geographical issue for our brothers and sisters in South Asia and the Middle East, anti-Islam pundits, bloggers and intellectuals are using this recent rash of honor killings to link the religion of Islam to the murders.

Despite the fact that honor killings occur in Hindu and Sikh communities throughout Asia, anti-Islam pundits continue to attempt to link Islamic texts to the practice of honor killings.

Leading the way in this effort is Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer. Spencer cites to two Islamic texts to argue that Islam sanctions honor killings. He references the 12th century Shafi’i legal manual Umdat al-Salik, more commonly known as The Reliance of the Traveler, where it says, "retaliation is obligatory against anyone who kills a human being purely intentionally and without right." However, "not subject to retaliation" is "a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring's offspring." (Umdat al-Salik o1.1-2).

Spencer also references a hadith from Sahih Muslim, one of the two great Sunni hadith collections, where it says the following:

"The Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) used not to kill the children, so thou shouldst not kill them unless you could know what Khadir had known about the child he killed, or you could distinguish between a child who would grow up to be a believer (and a child who would grow up to be a non-believer), so that you killed the (prospective) non-believer and left the (prospective) believer aside."

- Sahih Muslim Book 019, Number 4457.

Spencer advises, “Until the Islamic roots of the practice are discussed openly and human rights groups begin calling for reform, honor killings will continue in the Islamic world - and in Muslim communities in the West.”

Spencer’s assumption about honor killings is based on the idea that honor killings have Islamic roots and that he has shown us some of these roots via the references he cites above from The Reliance and Sahih Muslim. Spencer has long been able to cite jihadists who quote the Qur’an and hadith of the Prophet Muhammad to justify their violence, but in the case of honor killings the situation does not provide him with honor killers quoting the Qur’an or sunnah of the Prophet to validate their actions.

Spencer’s two references, after careful examination, fail to prove his point.

The first, the text of The Reliance, simply delineates the point that a father or mother is not to be retaliated against for murdering one of their children. This seems to be the dominant Shafi’i position according to the author of The Reliance, Shaikh Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri.

But why is a mother or father not to be retaliated against for the killing of their children? Ibn Naqib does not say, and neither does Spencer. The Reliance unsurprisingly makes no mention of preserving family honor. Spencer, however, seems to want his readers to assume this is the reason.

Exploring another Islamic text may provide an answer. Looking to another Islamic legal school provides some helpful insights to the unanswered questions stemming from the citation Spencer quotes from The Reliance. Matn Al-Risala of Shaikh Ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani, a Maliki jurist, says the following about a father who murders his son: “The blood money is made more exacting in the case [of] a father who kills his son…”

This itself demonstrates that there is a punishment for a parent that kills its child. However, why is the father not executed for the homicide?

The commentary of the text notes why: A father “is not executed because of the respect for fatherhood.” The commentary adds a caveat, however: “If circumstances indicate the [father] actually intended to kill [the son], then [the father] is killed for him in the well-known position.”

The dominant Maliki position, according to the Risala, is to provide for an actual penalty for a parent who murders his or her offspring. Either the parent would pay the blood money, which amounts to a large payment for the death of the child, or if it is found that the parent murdered the child intentionally, the parent is executed.

Islamic legal texts aside, there are no specific primary texts within Islam, from either the Qur’an or the hadith, that either promote or tolerate the killing of relatives for allegedly shaming the family.

Yet, this does not prevent Spencer from citing Sahih Muslim to prove that the Prophet did tolerate the killing of young children under certain circumstances.

As noted above, Spencer quotes a hadith from Sahih Muslim where it seems, based on the text, that if parents can determine that their child will become an unbeliever, then they can kill the child. This is a lot to swallow. But this hadith in Sahih Muslim is one of four hadiths on the same topic. Spencer quotes only one of these hadiths.

One of the other hadiths reads as follows:

“And you have written asking me about the killing of the enemy children in war. (You should understand that) the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) did not kill them and thou shouldst not kill them unless thou knew what the companion of Moses (i.e. Khadir) knew about the boy he had killed.”

- Sahih Muslim Book 019, Number 4458.

The other two hadiths are similar to this one by noting that the children being discussed are the children of the enemy, or whoever the Muslims were engaged in conflict with. Not the children of the Muslims. So if enemy children are not to be harmed during a battle, what treatment could the children of Muslims receive? It seems hardly plausible the Prophet would sanction their death or tolerate it under any circumstances.

The companion of Moses, known as Khidr or Khadir in Muslim lore, is a being whose job it is to carry out the commands of God in the unseen. His actions, as noted in Qur’an commentaries, would get any normal Muslim into serious trouble if carried out. He operates with his own set of rules because he has knowledge of things normal humans do not, such as how children will turn out in the future.

The reference to Khidr then in the above hadiths is purely symbolic. No Muslim could ever know how their child would turn out, whether sinner or believer. Therefore, to use such a hadith to justify killing one’s child for family honor has no basis in Islam and Spencer would certainly have a difficult time finding a single Muslim using this hadith to justify killing their child.

While there are no links between the religion of Islam and honor killings, this certainly does not eliminate the reality that honor killings are real and Muslims are committing many of them.

Many Muslims seem to have apathy towards this terrible crime, more concerned with the image of Islam than with stopping and preventing such acts from occurring in the future. By turning their back on the actual roots of honor killings, such as the societal pressure stemming from an extreme conservatism of tight knit communities, many will blame the wrong factors. Islam has nothing to do with such a disgusting crime, but ignorance of Islamic values and teachings does.

It is time for Muslims, especially in the West, to begin or ramp up educational efforts and outreach to overcome these sorts of societal customs. Domestic violence is a disease in all cultures, but honor killings are especially troublesome because of how they permanently damage the family and can horrify an entire community. Islam makes the family of central importance and the taking of life a grave issue. Such a horrific practice could find no sanction in God’s final revelation to humanity.

Omer Subhani attends the University of Miami School of Law. He writes frequently on his blog at omersubhani.blogspot.com.

Iran 2008: Faces and Places from Inside Iran

Apostasy: Girl flees family after converting to Christianty

An Ohio girl fled to Central Florida after converting to Christianity. The girl, Rifqa Bary, is seventeen and her family is from Sri Lanka. She alleged that her father said he would kill her for converting.

A video of her was posted on a bunch of anti-Islam web sites, such as Atlas Shrugs and Jihad Watch. Robert Spencer at JW asserts that "this is a girl who was raised as a Muslim, and who knows what Islamic law is regarding apostates. Contrast her palpable fear to the lies of the smooth apologists who claim that Islam does not mandate death for those who leave Islam. Rifqa Bary knows better, and not because she is an "Islamophobe," but from her personal experience."

(Does Spencer know of Bary's "personal experience" regarding the execution of apostates from Islam? Can he elaborate on this point?)

Similar to issues regarding jihad, rules pertaining to apostasy are centered around the issue of the Islamic state and an acting caliph.

This girl, whatever her father may want to do to her, cannot be killed for changing her belief. There are a host of issues a Muslim jurist would have to figure out here, but the number one issue is obviously the fact that this girl resides in a non-Muslim society (dar al-harb or dar al-sulh) where the rules of an Islamic authority (caliph) cannot be carried out.

Hence, even if her blood were halal, she could not be killed by virtue of the fact that she lives in a non-Muslim society.

Bary seems adamant to make her situation like that of other Muslim girls who have been killed in honor killings (on debunking the link between Islam and honor killings see my piece here). That will ultimately be up to the courts to decide. Based upon her video interview, Bary doesn't know too much about her old faith, other than the old motto of "Islam kills apostates."

She continuously uses the honor killing issue to highlight her situation. Yet there is no "honor" in carrying out the hudud because this is the responsibility of the executive of an Islamic state, not her dad. Her father does not have any power from any Islamic source to kill her for leaving Islam, even if they lived in a Muslim country. He would be punished for arrogating the caliph's authority if he did so, something Spencer leaves out (see below).

But they live in the United States and there are rules in this country that Muslim residents must follow by virtue of living here. Islam does not tell its followers to toss out the rules of the nation in which they live unless it forces them to commit acts against Islam (such as a law that prohibited Muslims from praying). But this is not the case here.

Islamic authorities have long discussed such issues and the death penalty for apostates is one of them. This girl, Bary, cannot be killed for leaving Islam. She lives in a non-Muslim country. There is no Islamic authority to punish her for leaving Islam. It seems like she had zero interest in Islam anyway, therefore she probably never was a Muslim to begin with. Even if she was, she lives in a non-Muslim nation, so no penalty for apostasy.

Sure, her father could go berserk and murder her but he would be committing a sin, and he would suffer both in this life (prison) and the next (hell). Let's just pray it doesn't come to that. I'm sure her family is aghast at her conversion and is terrified and worried because she ran away to some white folks in Florida. That's a very difficult thing for an immigrant family to deal with, and people end up doing crazy things when they are angry and distraught. But that doesn't justify any harm they may do to her.

If the father has threatened to kill his daughter then maybe Robert Spencer, instead of desiring to tell anyone who will listen to him that Islam requires the death sentence for apostates, can tell the right people that this girl should have nothing to fear because if her dad knew anything about Islamic law then he would know that only the caliph can carry this punishment out. And since she lives in a non-Muslim country the dad should know that he can't do a thing to his daughter. But no, Spencer will tell authorities, if he can, that this girl should be kept in a bomb shelter with maximum security provided by Blackwater. And that Islam is an intolerant religion.

Yet Spencer himself quotes directly from The Reliance of the Traveler and misses the most obvious point about apostasy laws: "When a person who has reached puberty and is sane voluntarily apostatizes from Islam, he deserves to be killed. In such a case, it is obligatory for the caliph (A: or his representative) to ask him to repent and return to Islam. If he does, it is accepted from him, but if he refuses, he is immediately killed." -- 'Umdat al-Salik o8.1-2

The caliph is always the key.

But for some odd reason Spencer leaves out the next section: "If he is a freeman, no one besides the caliph or his representative may kill him. If someone else kills him, the killer is disciplined (def: 017) (O: for arrogating the caliph's perogative and encroaching upon his rights, as this is one of his duties)." -- Umdat al-Salik 08.3

So only the caliph can have the apostate executed? Seems like it. So wouldn't this free Bary from any threat to her life? But Spencer is the expert on Islam. I'm sure he would be able to tell us how this is wrong and how Bary's father would have a legitimate Islamic ground for killing her.

He could also probably tell us that execution for apostasy is only done where the apostasy is deemed a form of political betrayal of the Muslim community, i.e. high treason. Since Bary is a lowly seventeen year old girl in America it doesn't seem like she would qualify:

Mohammad Hashim Kamali [professor of law at the International Islamic University of Malaysia] pointed out to the hadith, the Saying of the Prophet (saws) which “makes it clear that the apostate must also boycott the community (muifariq lil-jamaah) and challenge its legitimate leadership, in order to be subjected to death penalty”³: “The blood of a Muslim who professes that there is no god but Allah and that I am His Messenger, is sacrosanct except in three cases: a married adulterer; a person who has killed another human being; and a person who has abandoned his religion, while splitting himself off from the community (muifariq lil-jamaah)”⁴.

Imam Ibn Taymiyyah explaining the aforementioned hadith of the Prophet (pbuh) inferred that “the crime referred to in the hadith under discussion is that of high treason (hirabah) and not apostasy (riddah) as such”⁵.

These are very interesting observations (from both contemporary and classical Muslim scholars), which make the case of apostasy for young Ms. Bary seem doubtful. While the four Sunni schools teach that apostasy is punishable by death, Spencer fails to note the intricacies of this issue. Is simple kufr punishable by death or does the apostate have to openly defy the caliph or legitimate Muslim ruler and call it into question? Spencer is the expert on Islam. He should be able to tell us.

Let us pray that this conflict resolves itself in the best way for both sides. Bary is on the verge of becoming an adult in this country and she would be free from the judgments and restraints of her parents. Hopefully that will be enough to free her from what she seems so desperately to want to run away from.