A world Without Islam pdfdrive com

Just Authority and Usama bin Ladin
The question of jihad emerged again with the stationing of American troops in
Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War to liberate Kuwait. Classical Islamic law
devotes great consideration to the legality of a Muslim ruler cooperating with
non-Muslims to kill other Muslims. Any such cooperation is limited to some
quite specific situations and requires narrow treaty terms; in the case of Saudi
Arabia, the Saudi ‘ulama finally agreed to permit US forces on Saudi soil on a
strictly temporary basis for the purposes of defending the kingdom against
possible invasion by Iraq, with the understanding that these troops would depart
once the conflict was over. In any event, US troops did not depart at the end of
the war, which the ‘ulama saw as a violation of the agreement, but most dared
not raise the issue against the Saudi state. Usama bin Ladin and large numbers of
clerics and citizens did raise it, however, and the issue occupied a significant part
of one of bin Ladin’s early denunciations of US military policies in the region.
As he stated in an interview with Robert Fisk of the Guardian in 1996:
When the American troops entered Saudi Arabia, the land of the two
holy places [Mecca and Medina], there was a strong protest from the
‘ulama [religious authorities] and from students of the Shari’a law all
over the country against the interference of American troops….
… The ordinary man knows that his country is the largest oil producer
in the world, yet at the same time he is suffering from taxes and bad
services. Now the people understand the speeches of the ‘ulama in the
mosques—that our country has become an American colony. They act
decisively with every action to kick the Americans out of Saudi Arabia….
Ultimately, all Muslims will unite in the fight against America…. I
believe that sooner or later the Americans will leave Saudi Arabia and that
the war declared by America against the Saudi people means war against
all Muslims everywhere. Resistance against America will spread in many,
many places in Muslim countries.
We do not have to accept bin Ladin’s interpretation of events to realize he
was making a credible legal case to the Saudi public and other Muslims against
the legitimacy of foreign troops on Saudi soil. But this is how bin Ladin began to
build his larger case, starting with the US military presence in Saudi Arabia, and
then proceeding to broaden the scope of his attacks. His case obviously achieved

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huge prominence in the Muslim world after 9/11 and the resulting Global War on
Terror, which strengthened the desire among the disillusioned and the zealots to
turn to terrorism and suicide bombing. There is little of Islam in here except the
rhetoric, while there is a great deal of geopolitics and nationalistic perception of
the Saudi-Muslim interest.
But that is the language of al-Qa’ida, an extremist jihadi organization, whose
religious credentials lack the authority of established institutions. Look at a
totally mainstream religious institution, the Islamic Research Academy at Al-
Azhar University in Cairo—as establishment as it can get. On the eve of the US
attack on Iraq on March 11, 2003, it issued a statement that has the weight of a
fatwa: it
called upon Muslims to unify their efforts and join forces in facing this
illegitimate and aggressive war… represented by the military troops
armed with the most powerful and dangerous weapons of destruction….
Our Arab and Islamic ummah (nation) and even our religious belief
(Islam) are undoubtedly the main goal of these military troops, whose
targets will be millions of the members of our ummah as well as our
belief, sacred places and all sources of power and wealth that Arabs and
Muslims possess. The first stage to achieve these goals is to attack Iraq
and occupy its land and seize its abundant reserve of oil wealth…. The
Academy hails and backs the resolution of the Islamic Summit, which
rejected an attack on Iraq and stressed the necessity of resorting to
peaceful means in solving the crisis…. In light of all the current events,
most people think that attacking Iraq is inevitable. According to Islamic
Shari’ah, jihad becomes an individual duty (fard ’ayn) upon all Muslims
if the enemy occupies a Muslim land. Our Arab and Muslim ummah will
face a new inhumane campaign that aims to deprive us of our land, belief,
honor, and dignity…. The Academy calls upon all Arabs and Muslims not
to surrender to prospective attacks, as Allah has guaranteed to render His
religion victorious.
In November 2004, twenty-six highly prominent Saudi religious scholars and
professors at Saudi universities issued a fatwa denouncing the war in Iraq. After
discussing the need to first search for peace, their statement said:
There is no doubt that jihad against the occupiers is a requirement for

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every able person. It is a defensive jihad that falls under the category of
fighting the aggressor. In this case the conditions are different than
initiating jihad and pursuing it. You don’t have to have a general
leadership. You should have that only when it is feasible (Fear Allah as
much as you can). Without a doubt the occupiers are aggressors and all
divine laws permit fighting them until they leave humiliated, God willing.
Additionally, all man made laws recognize the right of nations to resist.
The original permission for jihad was granted for this reason, when Allah
said “Permission to fight is given to those who are fighting because they
have been wronged, and surely, Allah will grant them victory” [Al-Hajj,
Verse 39]. Allah has decreed that fighting one another is natural where it
guarantees the protection of life or when it upholds justice and the power
of the Shari’ah. So resistance is not only a legitimate right, but a religious
duty that obliges the Iraqi people to defend themselves and defend their
honor, land, oil, their present and their future against this colonial
coalition as they once before resisted their British occupiers.
Even the cautious and conservative Shi’ite Ayatollah Sistani in Iraq has
issued rulings that it is legal to fight American troops in Iraq in self-defense.
These are but a handful of the multiple rulings and fatwas that have emerged in
the context of this war, setting forth careful legal briefs on the permissible
Islamic conditions for jihad and war. Resistance against an invader anywhere is
natural; providing legal Islamic justification further bolsters the case.

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