Islamist Cleric Hussein bin Mahmoud: "Islam Is A Religion Of Beheading"

Beheading of James Foley

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According to Memri's Special Dispatch No. 5826 (August 25, 2014), a "Jihadi Cleric Justifies IS [Islamic State] Beheadings: 'Islam Is A Religion Of Beheading.'" The jihadi cleric, Hussein bin Mahmoud, argued on the Shumoukh Al-Islam forum (August 21, 2014) that Islam not only allows but even encourages such acts as beheading because Islam is a warrior religion:

[P]eople are weeping over a Christian American harbi infidel who entered the Islamic State, knowing full well what the Islamic State is, and without a pact [of protection] . . . . All scholars, without exception, agree on the permissibility of killing a harbi infidel, and agree that his blood and property are fair game . . . . Many Muslims are influenced by the West's false views and its repulsive ideas, which are exported to the Islamic nation in order to weaken it and change the perception of its youth so that [the youth] become cowardly and subdued and abandon the means of power and terror, and thus create a generation that does not know fighting or the cutting of necks. Recently we saw some who are considered scholars mixing things up and deceiving the nation, changing the concepts of Islamic law to fit the plans of the enemies. We don't know if they did this out of ignorance about some of the tenets of Islamic law, or were [simply] lying . . . . Chopping off the heads of infidels is an act whose permissibility the [Muslim] ummah agrees on. Beheading a harbi infidel is a blessed act for which a Muslim is rewarded . . . . As for beheading infidel Jews, Christians and 'Alawites, as well as apostate Shi'ites, who commit crimes against the Muslims, they must be terrorized, filled with fear and beheaded without any respect. Cutting off heads is part of the tradition of the [Prophet's] Companions. In the Koran Allah ordered to smite the infidels' necks and encouraged the Muslims to do this. He said [in Koran 47:4], "When you meet those who disbelieve on the battlefield, smite at their necks until you have killed and wounded many of them" . . . . How many hadiths [relayed by] the Prophet's Companions have we read in which they demanded . . . the striking of necks . . . . Striking necks was a well-known matter that did not elicit any condemnation in the eras of the Prophet, the rightly-guided caliphs and their successors, right until the time of the Christian occupation of the Muslims' lands in the [20th] century. Those crusaders fought the Islamic legal concepts, distorted the religion, and convinced the Muslims that their religion is a religion of peace, doves, love and harmony, and that there is no blood in it, no killing and no fighting. The Muslims remained in this state until Allah revived the tradition of beheading by means of the mujahid and slaughterer Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi, may Allah have mercy upon him and accept him as a martyr . . . . The truth is that what distorts the image of Islam is not the beheading and terrorizing of infidels, but rather those who want [Islam to follow the path of] Mandela or Ghandi, with no killing, fighting, brutality, bloodshed or the striking of heads or necks. That is not the religion of [the Prophet] Muhammad son of 'Abdallah who was sent [to fight] with the sword [until] Judgment Day. The only Koranic surah that is named after him, Surah Muhammad, is [also] called "The Surah of Fighting" . . . . Islam is a religion of power, fighting, jihad, beheading and bloodshed, not a religion of turning the left cheek to whoever slapped you on the right cheek. On the contrary, it is a religion of breaking the hand that is stretched out to humiliate the Muslim. [Any Muslim] who fights for his property, blood or honor is a martyr . . . . There is no true life for its believers except through jihad, [and] the goal of its fighters is to die for the sake of their religion.

This is certainly Islamism. Hussein bin Mahmoud, the jihadi cleric, says that it's true Islam. Is he right? He doesn't offer a careful argument, but he does cite a few sources from the Qur'an and the Hadith.

My impression is that he's not so much trying to convince the ignorant as trying to remind the knowledgeable, as though every Muslim ought to know these things already.