A scholar breaks rank

Recent developments in Saudi Arabia bring some light to an already dark era:

Sheikh Abd Al-Muhsin Al-’Abikan, advisor to the Saudi Justice Ministry and member of the Saudi Shura Council, adopts some very interesting positions:

1. He scorns the use of the J word in Iraq:

“There is a difference between Jihad for the sake of defense which is conditional upon the permission of the ruler, and Jihad for the sake of defense which is not. Jihad for the sake of defense which does not require the ruler’s permission is waged when a man is attacked in his home with the aim of killing him, taking his property, or harming his honor. However, in the case of an overall occupation, which is aimed at seizing overall control, the Shari’a does not say that the occupier is to be fought; it says that there must be an attempt to remove the [occupying] ruler by peaceful means which do not entail bloodshed.”

1. Criticizes ulema who have characterized it as such, saying that they “should stand trial for the damage they had caused to Iraq because of such fatwa-s.”
   
   

2. Dismisses the lie that the Americans are committing wholesale slaughter in Iraq.

   “Whoever says that the Americans are killing everyone or besieging every house – it isn’t so, because the siege is in specific neighborhoods in which the people who carry out explosions and kill Americans and those who help them have barricaded themselves.”

3. Calls for the creation of a high committee to curtail the spread of ‘takfeerism’ (labeling someone, most notably Muslims, as apostates), which has so torn the Ummah apart since the 18th century.

   “I maintain that we must establish a high committee to fight the concept of takfir. [This committee] would study the subject thoroughly… Some preachers agree when asked to give a lecture on terrorism, but then, when they come, they talk only about honoring parents… The idea of takfir exists in several of our schools and universities.”

4. In an Al-Sharq Al-Awsat interview, Al-’Abikan attributed the phenomenon of takfir and the terrorist attacks to the recent tendency among Saudi religious circles to prefer the Hadith and the Sunna as religious sources over fiqh, or Islamic jurisprudence. He stated: “There is no doubt that the Saudi religious circles’ interest in the science of Hadith comes at the expense of Muslim jurisprudence.”
   
   He goes on:

   “This is evident in the young generation, which is influenced by the statements of sheikhs who have condemned the adherence to the legacy of jurisprudence (taklid), and have called for endorse only the [actual historical] conduct of the Prophet (Sunna)…

“In these Islamic circles [who use takfir] there is hardly a single real scholar; most of them are interested in the tradition [Hadith] only, and their knowledge of Shari’a is minimal. This is one of the reasons why the takfir catastrophes and bombings have befallen us.”

1. Blames Arabs for the Palestinian-Israel conflict:

   “Who made them start their expansionism? History is very clear about this. President Jamal ‘Abd Al-Nasser is the one who started it by telling [the UN forces]: ‘Get out and we will throw them into the sea. We will throw the Jews into the sea.’ I tell you the problem is that those who caused the destruction were Muslims. I heard him when I was small. He said in his speeches, ‘Let’s throw them into the sea.’ Afterwards… the forces left. He told those forces to leave. He is the one who began fighting the Jews, and then there was defeat.

2. Praises Israel for bringing short-term peace to the occupied territories:

   “When some Arabs began fighting the Jews, they took over the West Bank and Gaza. We know that after the Jews took the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, things stabilized: There was no killing and we didn’t hear a thing. Later, there was… Some people with interests brought troubles upon them. It started with all [the talk about] ‘the children of the stones’… We would always hear about ‘the children of the stones.’ As if adults weren’t even involved. Only the children: ‘the children of the stones…the children of the stones…’

This precious scholar is also cited by one of the Saudi regime’s harshest critic, Stephen Schwartz, in an article entitled The King Who Would Be Reformer- Is there a silver lining behind the new Saud?

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