The Sacred Muslim Practice of Beheading

[Batman]

The Sacred Muslim Practice of Beheading (http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=13371)


The Sacred Muslim Practice of Beheading

By Andrew G. Bostom
FrontPageMagazine.com | May 13, 2004

Reactions to the grotesque jihadist decapitation of yet another "infidel Jew," Mr. Berg, make clear that our intelligentsia are either dangerously uninformed, or simply unwilling to come to terms with this ugly reality: such murders are consistent with sacred jihad practices, as well as Islamic attitudes towards all non-Muslim infidels, in particular, Jews, which date back to the 7th century, and the Prophet Muhammad's own example.

According to Muhammad’s sacralized biography by Ibn Ishaq, Muhammad himself sanctioned the massacre of the Qurayza, a vanquished Jewish tribe. He appointed an "arbiter" who soon rendered this concise verdict: the men were to be put to death, the women and children sold into slavery, the spoils to be divided among the Muslims. Muhammad ratified this judgment stating that it was a decree of God pronounced from above the Seven Heavens. Thus some 600 to 900 men from the Qurayza were lead on Muhammad’s order to the Market of Medina. Trenches were dug and the men were beheaded, and their decapitated corpses buried in the trenches while Muhammad watched in attendance. Women and children were sold into slavery, a number of them being distributed as gifts among Muhammad’s companions, and Muhammad chose one of the Qurayza women (Rayhana) for himself. The Qurayza’s property and other possessions (including weapons) were also divided up as additional "booty" among the Muslims, to support further jihad campaigns.

The classical Muslim jurist al-Mawardi (a Shafi’ite jurist, d. 1058) from Baghdad was a seminal, prolific scholar who lived during the so-called Islamic "Golden Age" of the Abbasid-Baghdadian Caliphate. He wrote the following, based on widely accepted interpretations of the Qur'an and Sunna (i.e., the recorded words and deeds of Muhammad), regarding infidel prisoners of jihad campaigns:

“As for the captives, the amir [ruler] has the choice of taking the most beneficial action of four possibilities: the first to put them to death by cutting their necks; the second, to enslave them and apply the laws of slavery regarding their sale and manumission; the third, to ransom them in exchange for goods or prisoners; and fourth, to show favor to them and pardon them. Allah, may he be exalted, says, 'When you encounter those [infidels] who deny [the Truth=Islam] then strike [their] necks' (Qur'an sura 47, verse 4)”....Abu’l-Hasan al-Mawardi, al-Ahkam as-Sultaniyyah." [The Laws of Islamic Governance, trans. by Dr. Asadullah Yate, (London), Ta-Ha Publishers Ltd., 1996, p. 192. Emphasis added.]

Indeed such odious “rules” were iterated by all four classical schools of Islamic jurisprudence, across the vast Muslim empire.

For centuries, from the Iberian peninsula to the Indian subcontinent, jihad campaigns waged by Muslim armies against infidel Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, Buddhists and Hindus, were punctuated by massacres, including mass throat slittings and beheadings. During the period of “enlightened” Muslim rule, the Christians of Iberian Toledo, who had first submitted to their Arab Muslim invaders in 711 or 712, revolted in 713. In the harsh Muslim reprisal that ensued, Toledo was pillaged, and all the Christian notables had their throats cut. On the Indian subcontinent, Babur (1483-1530), the founder of the Mughal Empire, who is revered as a paragon of Muslim tolerance by modern revisionist historians, recorded the following in his autobiographical “Baburnama,” about infidel prisoners of a jihad campaign:

"Those who were brought in alive [having surrendered] were ordered beheaded, after which a tower of skulls was erected in the camp." [The Baburnama -Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emperor, translated and edited by Wheeler M. Thacktson, Oxford University Press,1996, p. 188. Emphasis added.]

Recent jihad-inspired decapitations of infidels by Muslims have occurred across the globe- Christians in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Nigeria; Hindu priests and "unveiled" Hindu women in Kashmir; Wall Street Journal reporter, and Jew, Daniel Pearl. We should not be surprised that these contemporary paroxysms of jihad violence are accompanied by ritualized beheadings. Such gruesome acts are in fact sanctioned by core Islamic sacred texts, and classical Muslim jurisprudence. Empty claims that jihad decapitations are somehow "alien to true Islam," however well-intentioned, undermine serious efforts to reform and desacralize Islamic doctrine. This process will only begin with frank discussion, both between non-Muslims and Muslims, and within the Muslim community.


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Andrew G. Bostom, MD, MS is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Brown University Medical School, and occasional contributor to Frontpage Magazine. He is the editor of a forthcoming essay collection entitled, "The Legacy of Jihad".

[abu afak]

CHOPPING HEADS

By AMIR TAHERI


May 14, 2004 -- THE murder of Nick Berg, a 26-year-old American businessman, by a group of Islamist terrorists in Iraq continues to send shock waves through much of the West. What has impressed most people is the fact that the terrorists cut Mr. Berg's head in the way that sheep are beheaded at the annual Feast of the Sacrifice.

Berg is, of course, not the first to be murdered in such a gruesome manner. Nor, alas, is he likely to be the last. For the cutting of heads (in Arabic, qata al-raas) has been the favorite form of Islamist execution for more than 14 centuries.

In the famous battles of early Islam, with the Prophet personally in command of the army of believers, the heads of enemy generals and soldiers were often cut off and put on sticks to be shown around villages and towns as a warning to potential adversaries.

In 680, the Prophet's favorite grandson, Hussein bin Ali, had his head chopped off in Karbala, central Iraq, by the soldiers of the Caliph Yazid. The severed head was put on a silver platter and sent to Damascus, Yazid's capital, before being sent further to Cairo for inspection by the Governor of Egypt. The Caliph's soldiers also cut off the heads of all of Hussein's 71 male companions, including the one-year-old baby boy Ali-Asghar.

Islamic history is full of chopped heads being sent around by special delivery to reassure rulers, to terrorize foes and to impress the common folk. In 1821, the Qajar king of Persia ordered a week of celebrations when he received the severed head of a Russian general who had been captured in a battle near Baku. In 1842, the Afghans massacred the British garrison in Kabul, a total of 2,000 men and their wives and children, chopping off their heads and putting them on sticks to decorate the city. (They allowed one man to leave to report to the British.)

In 1885, it was the turn of British Gen. Gordon to have his head chopped off and put on a stick in Khartoum after it had fallen to the forces of the Mahdi. Slightly later, Mullah Hassan, the Somali rebel known to the British as "the mad mullah" but to his fanatical supporters as "the Shah," made a habit of chopping Western heads in what is now Somalia. At one point he had a large collection of severed Italian and British heads.

Iran's Khomeinist mullahs also love severed heads. In April 1980, Ayatollah Sadeq Khalkhali wanted to cut off the heads of eight American soldiers who had died in a failed hostage rescue mission in the Iranian desert. He was prevented from doing so thanks to a last minute intervention by the Swiss government. In 1986, the Khomeinist mullahs cut off the head of William Buckley, the CIA's Beirut station chief who had been kidnapped by the Hezbollah and sent to Tehran for interrogation.



And in 1992, the mullahs sent a "specialist" to cut off the head of Shapour Bakhtiar, the shah's last prime minister, in a suburb of Paris. When the news broke, Hashemi Rafsanjani, then president of the Islamic Republic, publicly thanked Allah for having allowed "the severing of the head of the snake."

In 1993, Fereidun Farrokhzad, one of Iran's most famous pop stars, had his head chopped off in Germany by a Khomeinist hit squad after the mullahs issued a fatwa for his murder.

Chopping off heads was widely practiced throughout the Afghan wars of the 1980s. An estimated 3,000 Soviet soldiers, many of them Muslims, had their heads cut off by the Mujahedeen, who at the time enjoyed U.S. and other Western support. (In other cases the Mujahedeen cut off the testicles of the Soviet soldiers and fed them to other Soviet prisoners.)

Needless to say, rival Mujahedeen also chopped off each other's heads. The group led by one Haji Akbari was especially notorious in that respect. One of its members was Osama bin Laden.

Throughout the 1990s, head-chopping was routinely carried out by the Army for Islamic Salvation (AIS), the Islamic Armed Group (GIA), the Salafi Group for Preaching and Armed Jihad (GSPAJ) and other Islamist terror outfits.

One Algerian specialist in slitting throats and cutting off heads was known as Momo le Nain (Muhammad the Midget). He was a 20-plus-year-old butcher's apprentice recruited by the GIA for the purpose of cutting off people's heads. In 1996 in Ben-Talha, a suburb of the capital Algiers, Momo cut off a record 86 heads in one night, including the heads of more than a dozen children.

In recognition of his exemplary act of piety, the GIA sent him to Mecca for pilgrimage. Last time we checked, Momo was still at large somewhere in Algeria.

Four years ago, Iran was shocked by the murder of the well-known dissident leader Dariush Foruhar and his wife Parvaneh. The couple, in their 70s, had their heads chopped off and displayed on their mantelpiece. The regime blamed "rogue elements" within its Ministry for Intelligence and Security. But no one was punished.

Cutting heads is frequently practiced against clerics from non-Islamic faiths or even rival Islamic sects. At least four Christian priests and nine Sunni Muslim muftis have been murdered in that way in Iran since 2001.

In Pakistan, rival Sunni and Shiite groups have made a habit of sending cut-off heads of each other's activists by special delivery. By one estimate, over 400 heads have been chopped off and mailed since 1990.

Chopping heads is also practiced by Muslim militants on the Indonesian island of Borneo as a means of driving the Christian majority out. It has been effective in forcing nearly half of the island's Christians packing.

At one point in the 1980s, the Abu-Sayyaf Islamist group in Mindanao, The Philippines, used the tactic of severing heads as a means of terrorizing the security forces.

Americans should also remember Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was brutally murdered in the same way in Pakistan over two years ago.

Although head-chopping is now seen as a mode of communication between Islamist militants and the Western world, the overwhelming victims have been Muslims.

Mankind has a natural propensity to become used to the worst atrocities and factor in the cruelest facts of life. But the sight of a severed head will continue to shock even the most blasé of the cynics. This is why those who are defying the whole of humanity in this war on terrorism are certain to continue to employ people like Momo le Nain.

http://nypost.com/seven/05142004/postopinion/opedcolumnists/20835.htm

[andak01]

Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite! Oh, sorry, that was a different group of head choppers! The secular kind.

[ibrodsky]

Originally posted by andak01
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite! Oh, sorry, that was a different group of head choppers! The secular kind.

Deflect, obfuscate, excuse, whitewash.

The question posed on all of the Sunday morning talk shows: why is there so little outrage over the Nick Berg beheading--videotaped and broadcast over the Internet so his parents and siblings could see it--in the Arab/Muslim world?

[MichaelC]

Originally posted by andak01
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite! Oh, sorry, that was a different group of head choppers! The secular kind.
There has always been a certain entertainment value in sitting back and watching you flailing about in the historical archives. You have often gone to the distant past to find what you can in an attempt to take the focus off the barbarians of our age who have learned nothing from history and who continue in forms of savagery most people dropped long ago.

[andak01]

Well of course you are correct. I would have to reach back in history to the year 1977 to find the last official use of the guillotine in France.

1977 The last official use of the guillotine in France. On the 10th of September Hamida Djandoubi was executed. (And may it never be used again.)

http://www.metaphor.dk/guillotine/Pages/Guillot.html

And of course I'll need some other sources for that one.

http://www.tigerx.com/history/0910.htm

1977 Tunisian immigrant Hamida Djandoubi is convicted of murder and is the last person executed with the guillotine in France

http://www.magazine.magnus.se/artikele.asp?artikel=giljotin

However, it is true that the guillotine was used in France as late as 1977 to execute Hamida Djandoubi for torture and murder.

http://www.public.coe.edu/~bjvanwau/LaGuillotine.html

La dernière exécution par la guillotine était en 1977 quand Hamida Djandoubi à été tué a Paris.

http://www.boston.com/news/daily/10/history.htm

In 1977, convicted murderer Hamida Djandoubi, a Tunisian immigrant, became the last person to date to be executed by the guillotine in France.

[Mira~]

Originally posted by ibrodsky


The question posed on all of the Sunday morning talk shows: why is there so little outrage over the Nick Berg beheading--videotaped and broadcast over the Internet so his parents and siblings could see it--in the Arab/Muslim world?

That question should be repeated...and add "the Arab media." It makes me really sick to my stomach when I read from Muslims that it was bad because it makes Muslims look bad, to play the issue down, or simply turn around and blame the United States and Israel for it. We saw this throughout the Muslim world after 9-11 too. The story is very fishy and I have enough questions that I think it should be investigated by an independent, credible and obviously courageous organization. However, at this point, everyone should be virulently denouncing it and want the perpetrators caught, irrespective of who they are. There are no excuses for this kind of savagery. When I hear excuses or silence, it only confirms once again that the Muslim world is in a deep spiritual, intellectual and moral crisis.

[MichaelC]

Originally posted by andak01
Well of course you are correct. I would have to reach back in history to the year 1977 to find the last official use of the guillotine in France.

1977 The last official use of the guillotine in France. On the 10th of September Hamida Djandoubi was executed. (And may it never be used again.)

http://www.metaphor.dk/guillotine/Pages/Guillot.html

And of course I'll need some other sources for that one.

http://www.tigerx.com/history/0910.htm

1977 Tunisian immigrant Hamida Djandoubi is convicted of murder and is the last person executed with the guillotine in France

http://www.magazine.magnus.se/artikele.asp?artikel=giljotin

However, it is true that the guillotine was used in France as late as 1977 to execute Hamida Djandoubi for torture and murder.

http://www.public.coe.edu/~bjvanwau/LaGuillotine.html

La dernière exécution par la guillotine était en 1977 quand Hamida Djandoubi à été tué a Paris.

http://www.boston.com/news/daily/10/history.htm

In 1977, convicted murderer Hamida Djandoubi, a Tunisian immigrant, became the last person to date to be executed by the guillotine in France.
So, your defense of muslims terrorists cutting heads off is to say that in 1977, France executed a convicted criminal. And you pump up the appearance of this particular event with lots of links addressing the same occurrence.

I think you may have sunk to a new low in your attemtp to explain away evil behavior by your coreligionists. But, I am sure you have even more lows to sink to and post here, so I'll get another cup of coffee while you gather your defenses.

[andak01]

Originally posted by ibrodsky
The question posed on all of the Sunday morning talk shows: why is there so little outrage over the Nick Berg beheading--videotaped and broadcast over the Internet so his parents and siblings could see it--in the Arab/Muslim world?

I am quite outraged and disgusted by this vile act. On the other hand, I'm not yet ready to chalk it up to uniquely Muslim behavior. My unwillingness to buy into stereotypes and propaganda has nothing to do with whether I find the act disgusting. I'm also unwilling to buy into stereotypes and propaganda against the Jews.

[MichaelC]

Originally posted by andak01
I am quite outraged and disgusted by this vile act. On the other hand, I'm not yet ready to chalk it up to uniquely Muslim behavior. My unwillingness to buy into stereotypes and propaganda has nothing to do with whether I find the act disgusting. I'm also unwilling to buy into stereotypes and propaganda against the Jews.
The truth is that you, like millions of other muslims, prefer to remain blind to the prevalence of savage crimes committed by muslims and attempt to explain them away with whatever excuse you can dredge up.

That last sentence of yours certainly sounded like the old line, "Why, some of my best friends are Jews".

[Mira~]

Originally posted by andak01
I am quite outraged and disgusted by this vile act. On the other hand, I'm not yet ready to chalk it up to uniquely Muslim behavior. My unwillingness to buy into stereotypes and propaganda has nothing to do with whether I find the act disgusting. I'm also unwilling to buy into stereotypes and propaganda against the Jews.

The point is that it was done in your name. That is why we NEED to see a strong reaction from the Muslim world denouncing the crime. We haven't seen that. What we have seen is just the opposite. Andak, I am not worried about you. The fact that you denounce it is not surprising to me.

[peacelover]

Originally posted by andak01
Well of course you are correct. I would have to reach back in history to the year 1977 to find the last official use of the guillotine in France.

1977 The last official use of the guillotine in France. On the 10th of September Hamida Djandoubi was executed. (And may it never be used again.)

http://www.metaphor.dk/guillotine/Pages/Guillot.html

And of course I'll need some other sources for that one.

http://www.tigerx.com/history/0910.htm

1977 Tunisian immigrant Hamida Djandoubi is convicted of murder and is the last person executed with the guillotine in France

http://www.magazine.magnus.se/artikele.asp?artikel=giljotin

However, it is true that the guillotine was used in France as late as 1977 to execute Hamida Djandoubi for torture and murder.

http://www.public.coe.edu/~bjvanwau/LaGuillotine.html

La dernière exécution par la guillotine était en 1977 quand Hamida Djandoubi à été tué a Paris.

http://www.boston.com/news/daily/10/history.htm

In 1977, convicted murderer Hamida Djandoubi, a Tunisian immigrant, became the last person to date to be executed by the guillotine in France.

Of course. I fully accept that any Western non-Muslim countries have behaved in such a manner. I don't think that is really in doubt. But that doesn't alter the fact that Islamists have also done it, nor does it alter the morality of it.

The French have now stopped (as far as I know) but even if they haven't, their behaviour is a separate issue which must be taken up with them.

The Islamists behaviour must be taken up with Muslims, regardless of what France has or hasn't done, now or in the past.

Mira is right that it was done in Muslims' names, so they are, IMO, under a special duty to condemn it.

Your point is relevant only insofar as anyone was trying to argue that beheading is a practice exclusive to Muslims, but I don't think anyone was trying to say that. Or if they were, then they are stupid because it patently isn't the case.

[ibrodsky]

Originally posted by peacelover
Your point is relevant only insofar as anyone was trying to argue that beheading is a practice exclusive to Muslims, but I don't think anyone was trying to say that. Or if they were, then they are stupid because it patently isn't the case.

Peacelover, no one would claim that beheading is and always was a practice exclusive to Muslims.

But this is the 21st century. Can you name another religion that approves of beheading today?

Do you realize there is a reasonable chance that the savages who beheaded NicK Berg witnessed public beheadings in Saudi Arabia?

Keep in mind that in Islam the worst sin is to ascribe a partner to God. Since Muslims believe that Christians and Jews are guilty of this, the worst possible sin, it should come as no surprise that many conclude beheading Christians and Jews is a lesser evil.

In any event, do you really find it surprising after 25+ years of government-sponsored demonstrations in Iran at which thousands chanted "Death to the Jews!,"; viscious anti-Semitism in state-controlled media in many Arab countries; and widespread support for Palestinian terrorists that many, many Muslims can't understand all the fuss over beheading a lousy Jew?

It's good to see Colin Powell giving Arab states a tongue lashing over this.

Personally, I am tired of complaints from the Arab/Muslim world about the "humiliation" they endure. It is the height of arrogance to suggest the slightest wound to one's pride gives one license to maim and kill. But this is what passes as reasonable in much of the Arab world, and it would be dishonest to pretend it has nothing to with Islam.

[peacelover]

Originally posted by ibrodsky
Peacelover, no one would claim that beheading is and always was a practice exclusive to Muslims.

But this is the 21st century. Can you name another religion that approves of beheading today?

Do you realize there is a reasonable chance that the savages who beheaded NicK Berg witnessed public beheadings in Saudi Arabia?

Keep in mind that in Islam the worst sin is to ascribe a partner to God. Since Muslims believe that Christians and Jews are guilty of this, the worst possible sin, it should come as no surprise that many conclude beheading Christians and Jews is a lesser evil.

In any event, do you really find it surprising after 25+ years of government-sponsored demonstrations in Iran at which thousands chanted "Death to the Jews!,"; viscious anti-Semitism in state-controlled media in many Arab countries; and widespread support for Palestinian terrorists that many, many Muslims can't understand all the fuss over beheading a lousy Jew?

It's good to see Colin Powell giving Arab states a tongue lashing over this.

Personally, I am tired of complaints from the Arab/Muslim world about the "humiliation" they endure. It is the height of arrogance to suggest the slightest wound to one's pride gives one license to maim and kill. But this is what passes as reasonable in much of the Arab world, and it would be dishonest to pretend it has nothing to with Islam.

Sure, I was actually agreeing with you by trying to point out to Andak that mentioning other instances of beheading in no way excuses Islam's current association with it.