A bundle of twigs is not a tree : contextualising soundbites from mediaeval scholars used in propaganda to justify indiscriminate killing / compiled by R[oderic] V[assie], former curator of Islamic mss. & prison chaplain (paperback 978-1-83615-410-5, eBook 978-1-83615-411-2)
This volume focuses twenty-one excerpts from the works of famous and respected mediaeval Muslim scholars, including Imam al-Shafi‘i, Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Ibn Qudamah, Ibn Rushd, Ibn Taymiyah, al-Nawawi, al-Qurtubi, al-Tabari, Ibn Hazm, Ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani, Ibn Hajar al-‘Asqalani. Each excerpt contains an extremist soundbite that falls into one of two main themes:
(a) the killing of disbelievers, and
(b) the lack of criminal or civil penalty in the Sharia for doing so.
It is not difficult to work out the
intention of the propagandists of the so-called Islamic State / Daesh / ISIS /
ISIL / IS in choosing words from the books of scholars from all Sunni schools
of law for dissemination to their supporters. It is to make the vulnerable
untrained reader think that the indiscriminate killing of non-Muslims is not
part of a warped extremist political ideology but is – and always has been – a
wholly justified aspect of jihad, a core tenet of Islam.
The purpose of placing these soundbites back in their proper
context is to help not only fellow Muslims, but others also, better to
understand why extremism is so named, at least in relation to Islam. Going
through the excerpts, most from complex mediaeval works of jurisprudence, one
may well ask:
·
Why do those scholars
quoted so often contradict the extremist message?
·
Are the
errors in the propagandists’ translations deliberate or not?
·
Did the
original authors ever intend for their works to plundered in this way by
propagandists and disseminated to Muslims with no formal Islamic education to turn
their anger and frustration at the injustices into violence?
· Why is it that those soundbites that most read like legal axioms
on jihad are not found in the specific chapters on the laws of war but elsewhere?
Where deemed helpful, annotations and
explanations appear in footnotes. Mostly, however, the extracts are left to
speak for themselves; and the reader is left to conclude whether soundbite
selected for the purpose of radicalisation fairly represents the original scholars’
views. An example is Soundbite 18, taken from
Musnad Ahmad, which the propagandist accurately translates as Umar BIN Khattab (R)
said, encouraging Abu Jandal to kill his own father, Suhayl ibn Amr, “Be
patient, Abu Jandal, for they are merely mushrikeen & their blood is
nothing but like the blood of a dog”,
but fails to alert the target reader to ‘Umar’s declaration of remorse in the
same hadith, when he said, “I have not ceased to fast, give in charity, to
pray, and to free slaves due to what I did, out of fear
of the words that I uttered that day, hoping that it would be good for me in the hereafter.”
9781836154105 9781836154112