Ansar Al-Mujahideen: Communiqué on Nidal Malik Hasan

Ansar Al-Mujahideen Jihadist Forum

(Image via Memri: Special Dispatch No. 2667)

The Memri website, usually a site that translates Islamist announcements from various languages into English, has this time reported on an Islamist communiqué that was itself already released in English by the Ansar Al-Mujahideen jihadist forum. I've borrowed the Ansar Al-Mujahideen image via Memri, but a fuller viewing of the printed text justifying Hasan's attack on his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood is available on the site Internet Archive (or even at Ansar Al-Mujahideen itself).

I think that I should point out that in addition to the usual Islamist support for Hasan's action, Ansar Al-Mujahideen's reasoning would implicitly have supported Hasan even if he had not been in the US military and had instead opened fire in a shopping mall. Here's the reasoning:

The general principle is that it is not allowed for the Muslims to live permanently in the lands of the infidels.

This general principle allows of exceptions, but only if Muslims can practice Islam properly:

There are scholars who have stated its permissibility, but with the condition that the Muslim is able to practice the tenets of his religion properly, from the most important of which is matters of alliance and disavowal (al-wala wal-bara -- the clear declaration of alliance with the believers and enmity and disassociation from the disbelievers). For most people living amongst the polytheists, this is not something possible.

Islamists such as those at Ansar Al-Mujahideen would argue that Muslims cannot properly practice Islam while living amidst the polytheists -- among whom they include Christians as tri-theists -- for Muslims in a polytheistic society are not allowed to follow shariah fully.

The Islamist implication from this inability to practice Islam properly is then derived from the Qur'an:

They ask you concerning fighting in the Sacred Months. Say, "Fighting therein is a great (transgression) but a greater (transgression) with Allah is to prevent humankind from following the Way of Allah, to disbelieve in Him, to prevent access to the Sacred Mosque, and to drive out its inhabitants, and fitnah is worse than killing . . ." ('Al-Baqarah: 217)

The "Sacred Months" were those months of the year when fighting was not allowed, according to Arabic custom, but some Muslim followers of Muhammad ambushed a Meccan caravan during that sacred period -- if I recall correctly -- whereupon Muhammad 'received' a revelation justifying the attack as having been prompted by Meccan restrictions on the practice of Islam. What is meant by fitnah? Let's see what the Islamists of Ansar Al-Mujahideen say:

Mujahid and others said that the word fitnah here means disbelief, meaning, "your disbelief is worse than our killing them." The majority said, "The meaning of fitnah here is putting Muslims through trials which may turn them away from Islam and be destroyed," and that this is a greater crime than their killing in the forbidden months.

The Islamists present two possible interpretations, fitnah as disbelief on the part of non-Muslims and fitnah as trials imposed by non-Muslims upon Muslims. The former would legitimate the actions of any Muslim in attacking and killing any non-Muslim. But this is a minority view, as even the Islamists of Ansar Al-Mujahideen acknowledge. The latter interpretation, however, is not much better, for any restriction upon shariah could be viewed as a 'trial' that might turn Muslims away from Islam.

Since a secular society like that of the United States does restrict shariah, and that severely, then according to the reasoning employed by the Islamists of Ansar Al-Mujahideen, Hasan would have been permitted to kill Americans even if he had not been a US soldier and even if he had opened fire not on a military base but even in a shopping mall.

Or in a church. Or a synagogue. Or a Buddhist temple. Or anywhere.