NOR DICITY

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Al Pope, March 14, 2005

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Osama and the sin of istihlal

Last week, Muslim clerics in Spain issued a fatwa against Osama Bin Laden. The announcement came on the eve of the first anniversary of the Al Qaida train bombing in Madrid that killed 190 people, injured 1400, brought down a government, and forced Spain’s withdrawal from the American ‘coalition’ in Iraq. It also falls one month after Iran’s Revolutionary Guard renewed the decades-old fatwa against British author Salman Rushdie.

If your understanding of the fatwa grew, as mine did, out of the Rushdie case, the Spanish edict might come as something of a surprise. Rushdie you may recall was, and still is, the victim of an extreme form of right-wing literary criticism. The Ayatollah Khomeini was not amused by Rushdie’s novel, the Satanic Verses, which allegedly mocks the Prophet. Not satisfied with merely burning the books, or pulling them from classroom shelves, the Imam sentenced the author to death, throwing in a free-ride to heaven as a reward for anyone who cared to take up the job of executioner. And as if that wasn’t enticement enough, the 15th of Khordad Foundation anted up a $2.8 million reward.

February’s announcement that Iran’s religious right haven’t softened their position on the Rushdie fatwa didn’t come as much of a shock, since the only person who can commute the sentence is the late Ayatollah himself. So far, there have been no indications that a dispensation from beyond the grave is in the works.

But not all fatwas are equal. When moderate Muslim clerics such as the Islamic Commission of Spain pronounce a fatwa, it can mean something quite, well, moderate. In this encyclical, Muslims are called upon not to assassinate but to ‘denounce’ bin Laden. Followers of al Qaida “should not be considered Muslims or treated as such,” the clerics say. In effect, the most feared terrorist organization in the world has been sent to Coventry. If the al Qaida leader is still alive (a doubtful proposition) and if he ever goes to Spain, a whole lot of people are duty-bound not to be nice to him.

The edict says nothing of the fact that, much as the mainstream Muslim population might despise terrorists, there are neighborhoods where denouncing bin Laden is a potentially life-shortening exercise. But no doubt moderate Muslims will know better than to carry their denunciation into the mountains of Afghanistan, or the radical mosques of Europe.

Being of a religious turn of mind, the Islamic Commissioners take a view of bin Laden’s crimes the secular outsider struggles to grasp. The great terrorist mastermind is to be denounced and treated as less than a Muslim, not on charges of the death and dismemberment of 1500 Spaniards, nor of the mass murders at the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, nor even of giving the U.S. an excuse to murder Muslims by the tens of thousands.

In the eyes of the Islamic Commission of Spain, bin Laden and his henchmen are to be punished for the crime of istihlal, or making one’s own laws. Because al Qaida claims its beliefs are rooted in the Qur’an, and its acts of terrorism therefore legal, its members are apostates, so say the Imams of Spain. To judge from the context of their remarks, istihlal means lawmaking in defiance of the Law; it is twisting a great moral code to justify horrible crimes.

It’s a glaring deficiency in the English language that we have no word for istihlal. Consider, for instance, the Christian leaders of English-speaking countries who use the Bible to justify carpet-bombing non-Christian civilians: pure istihlal. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the United Church could pronounce a fatwa declaring the Bush White House apostate, unworthy of the name Christian and not to be treated as such, and calling on all good Christians to shun and denounce them?

Now that I’m aware of it, I see the sin of istihlal everywhere I look. Illegal war, the Patriot Act – and it’s Canadian cousin the Omnibus Act – the Guantanamo torture camps: all istihlal. Defiance of the International Court, abductions instead of arrests, “renditions” of detainees to client torture states, illegal invasions, coups d’etat: all done in God’s name, all sworn on the Bible, and all pure istihlal.

Sadly, it’s a word with little power in the Western world. Accusations of istihlal will not serve to put the brakes on American imperialism. But there is another doorstep besides bin Laden’s where a fatwa against istihlal might land with a significant thump. It’s a place where denunciation by Islamic commissions has meaning, and fatwas are taken very seriously.

I wonder if the good mullahs of Spain could be convinced to extend that edict to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the Ayatollah Khamenei, and the Khordad Foundation?


Al Pope's novel, Bad Latitudes, was released last year by Turnstone Press.
Al's plays have appeared onstage and on CBC Radio, his short fiction and
poetry are published in journals and anthologies. His award-winning column,
Nordicity, appears weekly in the Yukon News, and at:
www.alpope.net




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