This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/4285
March 3, 2010
Such condemnations have taken place in the past, most conspicuously in the wake of the 9.11.01 attack in the U.S. and the 7.11.05 attack in London, unfortunately to little effect. Some observers of these efforts have labeled them as having been crafted more for public consumption than anything else. Tahir ul-Qadri's declaration does appear to be a bit different however, if for no other reason than the sheer length of his exegesis. In many ways the worth of such arguments depends on what weight imams give them, they being the ultimate determiners of appropriateness. In reality, no one aside from Islamic scholars and imams can legitimately determine to what extent ul-Qadri's reasoning is consistent with the large body of Islamic jurisprudence which already exists on this and related topics. In Islam, the term for defining how Quranic texts are interpreted is ijtihad, an Arabic word based on the root jahada - to change, also the root word of the now omnipresent jihad. Since many believe that the religion is less amenable to diverging interpretations than either Christianity or Judaism a strong burden falls upon those bent on realignment or reformation. Another complicating factor is that Tahir ul-Qadri is a Sufi, an extreme minority sect within Islam so again the bar will be raised in evaluating his arguments no matter how rigorous. In a seminal 2007 debate with then London Mayor Ken Livingstone, Dr. Daniel Pipes argued that Islam had changed in the past, that certain "loopholes," were invented to get around arcane or unwieldy propositions, and that change was necessary for the religion to reasonably coexist in a modern secular world.
The immediate response so far [from those whose ideology is most in need of reformation] to ul-Qadri's statement was not positive, with London based Azzam Tamimi a renown Islamic extremist who brushed off the scholar's efforts stating that despite having preached his interpretation for "many, many years...it's evident that an increasing number of people are resorting to suicide bombing..." [source, BBC interview, http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/news/2010/03/100302_suicide_bombing_fatwa_nh_sl.shtml] Demonstrative of his radicalization, in the same interview Tamimi would not condemn the practice of suicide bombing. ©2010 PipeLineNews.org LLC, William Mayer. Research provided by Beila Rabinowitz. All rights reserved . http://www.pipelinenews.org/index.cfm?page=ulqadri3.3.10%2Ehtm |
This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/4285