NPR just now broadcast an interview with a “media
ethicist”, re whether the media should display (any, or all of) an ISIL video
depicting the beheading of a Western hostage: Since it is intended as propaganda, propagating it further
might be playing their game.
We should instantly note that that kind of reasoning is ‘too
powerful’, hitting the bull’s-eye only at the expense of a vast scattering of
collateral damage. For it applies
to anything an adversary says: If he says it, it is because he
calculates that his saying it, and our hearing it, is to his benefit; that doesn’t mean we would be wise to
stop our ears up with wax.
The broadcast naturally did not pause to notice that logical
nicety, but still we may ask: What
is their game here? The answer is not obvious.
Our media ethicist opined that it was to spread “fear and
terror” (or words to that effect;
the NPR Web-site doesn’t make it easy to find the story to
double-check). But actually … I
don’t think so.
Trigger Warning
What follows contains
images and quotations from actual Reality.
NSFW
We must distinguish between the Western, non-Muslim audience, and the indigenous Muslim audience.
When ISIL mounts severed heads on metal spikes in the center
of the town of Raqqah, or when AQAP (and ISIL) choose public crucifixion (of all things) to punish
their enemies, then the cowing of the local population is indeed the intent
(though there may be other, murkier undercurrents as well)[** vide infra]. But Americans and Britons, comfortably
ensconsced in their Lay-Z-Boyz, washing down the popcorn with Diet Sprite ™, are
unlikely to be personally terrified -- horrified, perhaps, but not terrified -- :
not because of any stalwart composition, but simply because the scenario
is so remote. The three recently
slain hostages were Western men who had ventured professionally into denied
territory, knowing the risks.
That particular drama is
unlikely to happen to your average Kansan unless you go looking for it. Thus, disasters abroad with much
higher death-tolls -- from tsunamis, mining accidents, or Bhopal-style devastation
-- garner little lasting media coverage and less public memory; we only sit up and take notice if we
can imagine it happening to us -- as,
most prominently, plane crashes.
That prospect has a quite visceral grip upon the Western middle class,
even when (more narrowly examined) the circumstances are rather atypical (memo
to holiday-makers: Don’t go flying
over Ukrainian war-zones). Ferry accidents in Asia, by contrast, which sometimes have even higher death-tolls than your average place-crash, are not a hot item.
The most telling recent example of this was the Shabaab attack on the Nairobi mall. That one got a lot of airplay; but, as though to justify paying any attention to it, our media continually emphasized that it was an “upscale mall” -- the sort we ourselves might frequent (next time we’re on safari in Kenya).
The most telling recent example of this was the Shabaab attack on the Nairobi mall. That one got a lot of airplay; but, as though to justify paying any attention to it, our media continually emphasized that it was an “upscale mall” -- the sort we ourselves might frequent (next time we’re on safari in Kenya).
That point is so basic, it seems unlikely that the
media-savvy ISIL could be unaware of it.
So what was really going on, with this Theatre of Cruelty?
A key point is that, unlike any of the other ISIL propaganda
videos, these feature a Briton, speaking English. Accordingly,
the whole set-up has a scent of the Oedipal.
 |
| Mein Kleiner, das sollst du doch nur im Traume machen |
That surmise is strengthened somewhat by the sordid deathbed epiplexis by both the Israeli-American hostage and the British hostage, respectively blaming President Obama and Prime Minister Cameron for their plight.
And that in turn does serve a propaganda purpose: but it is not aimed at terrifying ISIL’s
enemies safely far abroad. Rather,
it reaches out to their potential foreign friends,
for recruitment purposes.
See? Back in Briton, I was
just a pimply nobody who couldn’t get a girlfriend; whereas now, as Jihadi John, I bid spectacular defiance to the whole Western
world!
[** Footnote] Similarly, the ancient Romans used to decorate
the Appian Way with tasteful arrangements of crucified rebel slaves, to
widespread audience applause.
The ancient Israelites also had a thing for decapitation, e.g. Judith beheading Holofernes.
The ancient Israelites also had a thing for decapitation, e.g. Judith beheading Holofernes.
 |
| David, with a portion of Goliath |
Likewise, re the decoration of fence-pikes with the fruit of
the headsman’s axe, cf. this, from 14th-century London
John Ball and other leaders were
executed, and their severed heads
displayed on London Bridge.
-- Morris Bishop, The Middle
Ages (1968), p. 300
(By rights that should be caricature; yet a perverse aesthetic element is
plainly visible in several of the ISIL’s displays: cf. Jihadi ikebana.
It is the polar inverse of the Western taboo upon the parading of
military corpses or prisoners.)
~
One of the oddest scenes in the Vice News video of ISIL rule
in Raqqah (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUjHb4C7b94) was of a town square in
which people were milling about, going about their business, while propped up
against a public fountain was a
crucified man. It recalled
that eerie scene in the movie “Sid and Nancy”, where a woman (a dominatrix) is
calmly chatting with a visitor, while a bound man dangles behind her. Like New Yorkers stepping over
the recumbent forms of winos to proceed to the boutique; guess you can get used to anything.
Beheading has always featured a theatrical quality. That is why America, having gone weak at the knees over the
death penalty, and having adopted lethal injection as the most antiseptic
no-drama method of dispatching an unpleasant task, though tying itself in knots
every time something is botched and the condemned temporarily suffers -- has
never considered the swift and foolproof method of the guillotine. As a symbol it rises unique in
horror against a reddish evening sky -- though in historical fact the contraption
was invented as a kindness relative to other less certain, messier methods.
[Update 18 September 2014] As we suggested above, the point of the beheading videos,
when directed, not at Muslims already under ISIL control, but at Western
converts, is as a recruitment tool.
Here are the first fruits, this very morning:
The largest counter-terrorism
operation in Australian history,
Police allege the suspects were
planning to snatch and behead a random member of the public, then drape them in
the flag of Islamic State.
 |
|
Australian Mohammad Baryalei:
Part-time actor and
Kings Cross bouncer
who recruits young
men to fight for the ISIL
|
In the specifically Australian run-up to this:
A Sydney money transfer business
owned by the sister and brother-in-law of convicted terrorist Khaled Sharrouf,
an ISIS fighter, had its license suspended this week on suspicion it had been
sending 1 million Australian dollars ($900,000 US) a month to the Middle East
to finance terrorism.
Sharrouf gained international notoriety this year after he posted
online a photograph of his seven-year-old son in Syria holding the severed head
of a Syrian soldier.
~
The reference above to the “Theatre of Cruelty”, was just a
stray metaphor; but further
reflection suggests that it may go
to the heart of the matter.
Another loose term for what is going on: Schrecklichkeit.
 |
| Théâtre de la Cruauté |
~
Disclaimer: While we regret the macabre tone which
any discussion of these events must evince, analysis is essential if we are
judiciously to evaluate the adversary. Thus, consider that stunning example of theatricalized
Schecklichkeit -- the notorious Night of
the Long Knives (Nacht der langen
Messer, 1934), in which Hitler
… “decapitated” the Sturmabteilung, which thitherto had been the NSDAP’s brawny
right arm. In his
contemporary diary entry, the perceptive on-site observer William Shirer
wrote: “The French are
pleased. They think this is the beginning
of the end for the Nazis.”
By any normal, logical calculus, that would be the case (rather as
though the Republicans were to assassinate all the leading members of the Tea
Party; it would probably impact their poll numbers among swing voters). But there were
deeper currents at work here, than the Daladiers or the Chamberlains
understood. Failure to
appreciate the “demonstration-effect”, street-theatre aspects to such seemingly
insensate moves as mass decapitations or (for Muslims, even more momentous) the
sudden unilateral declaration of ISIL as a Caliphate, figuring that they are
simply crazy and will inevitably before long self-destruct, would be to
underestimate them, and to miscalculate their next moves.
Thus, consider the following demurral concerning the latest
reports from Australia, from the same folks who brought you that excellent
video on the Islamic State:
"It just isn't consistent with
any ISIS operations, strategies or tactics," a senior international
security analyst working on the Syrian crisis, who spoke to VICE on condition
of anonymity, said from Lebanon. "ISIS's philosophy and organization is
based on quite traditional ideas of force and warfare, they aim to seize and
hold territory in Iraq and Syria. Western countries are still seen as key
recruitment grounds and sources of finance, but I don't believe the
organization would order a random homicide in a country like Australia."
The purported Islamic State agent
who ordered the attack is Mohammad Ali Baryalei, an immigrant from Afghanistan
who formerly made a living as a nightclub bouncer in Sydney's party district,
Kings Cross. He is alleged by authorities to have recruited up 60 people in
Australia, to travel to Syria and fight for the Islamic State. One of his
recruits, Khaled Sharrouf, is now famous for tweeting a photo of his 7-year-old
son holding a decapitated head in the conflict zone. Sharrouf turned to radical
Islam after LSD and amphetamine use brought on mental illness.
"Most of the beheadings that ISIS have committed, have been internal,
almost religious sacrifices" explained the security source "the
only cases of beheadings that were committed with external, political,
propaganda purposes were two journalists and an aid worker who had been held
for up to 18 months - meaning, they were in no rush. This sounds to me like it
is more likely someone attempting to emulate what they think ISIS is, rather
than someone within ISIS."
Now, we heartily welcome this
hold-your-horses-and-take-a-good-look approach, as opposed to taking every
breaking news story at face value.
But once again (as in the case of the “media ethicist”), we must
disagree with the quoted expert.
First: It is
not really the case that “ISIS's philosophy and organization is based on quite
traditional ideas of force and warfare”;
if that were the case, they would have hooked up with the Al-Nustrah
Front (as AQ head al-Zawahiri had been urging), and al-Assad might have been
overthrown by now. Instead,
after digging in a bit and winning some combat creds, they turned on ANF, and
indeed savagely attacked every single other opposition group, with the
ultimatum: Join us or die. If, shortly after entering WWII,
the United States had postponed the ultimate reckoning with Hitler and
initially turned on the British instead, it would have been seen as folly and
rank treachery, not an instantiation of “quite traditional ideas”.
Second: After
the ISIL seized Mosul, the near-universal expectation (among those who think in
terms of “traditional ideas of force and warfare”) was that they would march on
Baghdad. That did not happen. We ourselves predicted it would
not (see our earlier essay “ISIS vs. ISIL”), though what we did predict
-- namely, that the al-Baghdadi group would move swiftly to put the “L” into “ISIL"
by making it clear that they really did mean the Levant and not just
(French-created, lesser) Syria, by attacking Jordan and perhaps Lebanon (or
even Palestine) -- did not happen either, apart from a relatively minor
incursion into Lebanon, kidnapping and decapitating as they went. What they did do had no inherent
military value whatsoever: Namely,
breaking his long occultation (and I
use the term with an allusion to the Mahdist sense), al-Khalifah Ibrahim
suddenly appeared in all his robed splendor, on the minbar of the great mosque
of Mosul, to deliver a solemn sermon, utterly religious in content and
delivery, rather than martial or political.
What they’re doing, is keeping us guessing.
Third: Now,
here this kind of analysis becomes crucial. A matter of
(literally) life and death.
This Sunday, the Pope is scheduled to visit Albania, and
later Turkey, riding the public streets in an open car. ISIL threats against the pontiff’s life were reported a few
weeks ago (after he denounced their persecution of Christians in Iraq), and
warnings have just recently been renewed.
The Vatican has dismissed the concerns.
When I first read the reports in the press, I was incredulous,
even when [redacted]. Such
an absurd deviation and distraction from every possible military, social and
religious objective, in the near or medium term! But consider:
(1) The hostage-beheading videos likely served no military purpose, but were an entirely
needless provocation. But for
these, ISIL might not have rallied Obama and Cameron so strongly against them. Why poke the bear? (It is as though Japan, after bombing
Pearl Harbor, had unloaded a few on the Soviet Union, just for good measure.) They
truly seem to be saying (to quote another cocky military figure), "Bring
it on!"
(2) Consider more carefully the pontiff’s itinerary. Albania and Turkey are both majority
Sunni Muslim states.
This visit could well be considered a “Crusader” provocation -- indeed,
it is difficult to construe otherwise. As such, it could well evoke an extraordinarily
violent response. Shades of Sarajevo?
(3) When push comes to shove, people choose sides -- however
reluctantly -- even if they had been non-partisan before. (Heck, I chose sides, when the planes hit the towers.) And there are a great many Muslims in the world, most of whom
(Indonesians) have been far from the battlefields. Al-Qaeda itself recently tried to up the ante by declaring a
new franchise, “Al-Qaeda in the Indian Sub-Continent”, with its stated AOR
extending as far as the beleaguered Rohingya of Burma. At the time, this comment was met with incredulity by
seasoned observers: it seemed like
a comparative irrelevance, a weak bleat by a marginalized al-Zawahiri, in riposte to ISIL’s publicity
triumphs. But indeed, numerically,
most Muslims are not Arabs. So
what happens when ISIL does something utterly irrevocable, absolutely
polarizing?
Unfortunately, we already have an early answer to that.
After the wee-hours raid this Thursday morning in New South
Wales, and the revelation of an absolutely astounding scheme (among plotters
whom ASIO had been following closely for some time, and then were forced to
move because of the threat’s imminence) to kidnap some random Australian off
the streets, chop his head off, and wrap him in the ISIL flag, the local Muslim community… what …
Begged forgiveness?
Denounced the ultras who are bringing shame upon Islam’s good name? Retired in embarrassment and confusion
to the interiors of their homes, drawing down the blinds?
You would think;
but you’d be wrong.
They hit the streets of Lakemba in Sidney in protest … against
the raids.
 |
| Fanaticism is never having to say you're sorry |
Also, recall that there is already precedent for a Muslim attempting
to assassinate the Pope, and almost succeeding:
(Hate to “rake up old coals”, but the global, strategic, clash-of-civilizations
aspect of recent developments is
perhaps not being taken with sufficient gravity. It’s really not just about the IS pressing on to Damascus, or our getting Mosul and Raqqa back.)
~
Exhausted by all this, I took a break, and circumambulated
the Lake with my wife. I
recounted how, at a time of extraordinary world tensions in Eastern Europe and
the world of Islam, the Pope is about to set out to the most chaotic and
crime-ridden country of Eastern Europe, Sunni Muslim majority to boot, in an
open car; and asked her if it
reminded her of any event from history.
She answered immediately. “JFK!”
I was taken aback, then answered, “You’re right. He was
riding into Dallas, which is Denied Territory. -- I’d actually been thinking of
Sarajevo.”
[For a fantasy-post covering Dealey Plaza, the Pope, Neville
Chamberlain, and dark doings in Eastern Europe all in one, try this:
*
Commercial Break
A private
detective confronts the uncanny;
but must call upon
the power of the Church:
*
If, God forbid, there were to be another Sarajevo, whether
in Tirana, or Ankara, or Rome, then once again the Clash of Civilizations might
come to a head, in the form of a World War. And by an odd coincidence, the Pope has recently been
discussing this very subject:
~
With the prospect of papal peril before our eyes, it is
difficult to focus on anything else.
Still, there’s nothing more I can do about it right now; so I might as well type up some miscellaneous
notes from earlier today.
* We welcomed
the musings of the anonymous “senior international security analyst” cited by
Vice News above, in the spirit of debate, of give-and-take. Actually the analysis was (as we
attempted to show) so shallow and off-the-mark, that one wonders whether the
anonymous pundit might not have been Fred over by the water-cooler. Mais
passons. A less charitable take on the Nameless One’s
contribution, would be that it is on the relatively moderate/empirical end of
the spectrum of anti-government knee-jerk skepticism-à-outrance reactions,
brought to a summit by the Apollo-denialists, the 9/11-denialists, and the
Birthers. One Canadian reader of
the CBC.ca story on the Australian Decapitation Plot wrote:
This is another false flag
operation to once again take more & more of our rights away from us and
turn the western civilized world into a police state.
(Or, in the older terminology, to steal our Precious Bodily Fluids.)
* On Schrecklichkeit.
The U.S. has indulged in that as well, both as official
policy (Dresden fire-bombing; Nagasaki) and unofficial (My Lai, and more recent
bavures). In the Dubya-Cheney Iraq war, that was the whole idea going
in; they called it “Shock and Awe”. And it worked pretty well for starters -- there was only pitiful
opposition from the Iraqi Army.
Later, we tried to Make Nice, so as to Win Hearts and Minds,
only it didn’t work so good, because nobody else wanted to make nice back.
If we get dragged in again, to that wretched land, this time
it won’t be (Bush-style) Nation Building, but Nation Taming. Like: If you do this,
then we do that; work it out amongst
yourselves.
(In fairness to the Wilsonian idea of nation-building --
which actually was deployed to good effect under Truman, with the Marshall plan
in Europe, and in Japan: the
Bushies’ policy in Iraq was not precisely nation-building,
but putting up lots of (later
abandoned) buildings in the nation,
with fat contracts to Halliburton and other war profiteers.)
 |
| That is not what I meant! |
* Another look at the “Night of the Long Knives”.
ISIL has been doing this, directly by the ‘lateral jihad’
against other opposition groups in Syria, and less directly by their slaughter
of Sunni soldiers in Iraq [update 19 Sept: and, as of the past few days, of Sunni Kurds in northern Syria].
In this, they resemble al-Qaeda not at all, nor any other of the
better-known Muslim groups.
Indeed, to find a precedent from that milieu, we need to go back to the
strange saga of Abu-Nidal, well-told by Patrick Seale.
There is also a partial parallel in the career of the ISI
patron saint (or patron demon), Abu-Mus`ab al-Zarqawi (the original jihadi beheader of Americans) who, in the midst of the
US occupation of Iraq, and against the pleadings of UBL, swiveled the focus of
the IQ affiliate towards massacring fellow-Muslims, namely Shiites (after first
declaring, takfiri-fashion, that these were No True Muslims at all).
 |
| Still comin' atcha ... from beyond the grave |
* Another classic analogue is the Stalinist purges. The exact analogue of the
Sturm-Abteilung bloodbath is
Stalin’s purging of his senior military leadership, on the eve of what would be
World War II; he prevailed in that
conflict anyway. And the
Stalinist purges were like the ISIL media blitz, in emphasizing the theatrics
of the thing: not for nothing do
people refer to the Moscow “show trials” of the 1930s: they were the hottest ticket in
town. And -- like the ISIL videos
-- brilliantly staged.
~
Well, this is turning into a longish essay. And if you’re still with me, chances are you are interested in what-all I have to say. So while I go get dinner and
refresh the inner man, you can
nourish your hunger for further WDJ insights, here:
That, along with the more historico-linguistic essay “ISIS vs ISIL”,
is our basic foundation essay on this fascinating group; this “beheading” thing was supposed to
be just a minor psychological sidelight, but then they had to go do that thing
in Sidney.
And if, after all that, you still desire another helping from the pen of old Dr J, there's always this:
http://www.linguasacrapublishing.com/justice.html
And now, off to the modest repast.
http://www.linguasacrapublishing.com/justice.html
~
[Post-prandial update]
Let us cast another glance at that anonymous-expert
contribution from Vice News,
"Most of the beheadings that
ISIS have committed, have been internal, almost religious sacrifices."
Not quite sure what that means. Neither Islam, nor even the pre-Islamic peoples of Arabia,
had traditions of human sacrifice;
and indeed ritual sacrifice of any sort is looked down on by Sunnis as
pagan. In the published videos of manacled prisoners-of-war from
Iraq, the typical scenario was: Swear
allegiance to us or die. Then,
Bang. That’s not a ‘sacrifice’.
The phrase did, however, put me in mind of a passage read recently, this time
from the ill-fated Balkans:
During the Balkan Wars of 1912 and
1913, a Greek bishop in Macedonia
ordered the assassination of a Bulgarian politician, and then had the severed head brought back to the church to be
photographed.
-- Robert D. Kaplan, Balkan
Ghosts (1993), p. xxvii
~
The banned French comedian Dieudonné had a recent riff on ISIL beheadings,
transparently satirical (and alluding to such cases as that cited immediately
above), but which was deliberately misinterpreted by his many ill-wishers as an endorsement of their
barbarism. Check it out here:
~
This narrative of intransigence combined with ultraviolence,
is a subset of the effects of intransigence generally. In the simplest case, known
inflexibility gives a player the advantage in the (deadly) ‘game’ of
Chicken. For additional analysis,
with especial reference to the curious rise of Ted Cruz, click here:
http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-power-of-intransigence.html
~
ISIL as Grand Guignol.
Back in 1966, avec mes
dis-sept ans, residing in Paris, I took in a performance of the play “Marat-Sade”
(in a French version). Not
something I would care to see again, but for a pimpled adolescent, it was heady
stuff.
An even stronger mixture along the same lines was a superb
production of Dostoyevsky’s “L’Idiot”, with a splendid spluttering Charles
Denner as Rogogine. It was all
sound and fury; but yet furious, and at bottom sound.
A decade later, in Berkeley, hanging out with a varied crowd
of largely Marxists, there was one woman in particular, from a peculiar coign
of the milieu (more NCLC than SL or PL,
let alone CPUSA), who candidly confessed that she felt a visceral -- or more
accurately, intercrural -- attraction to les
blonds bêtes de la mouvance brune -- all that gleaming leather …
The glittering emerald eyes, of that same basic snake, peer
out from many an otherwise incomparable ideology…
[Update 26 September 2014] More on the beheading-ethic (we would venture to say: the beheading-aesthetic), from essayist and Mideast hand David Ignatius,
reviewing دارة
التوحش
:
(Actually more like:
Dein Kampf.)
~
Okay, this is weird:
The excellent writer and thinker
Steven Pinker is asked in
the upcoming NYTimes Book Review, what books are on his nightstand. He replies:
“Severed: A History of Heads Lost
and Heads Found,” by Frances Larson.
Presumably he is looking into the matter for the same reason
I have been -- namely, the sudden arising of a beheading-aesthetic as a
recruitment trademark for ISIL.
~
Des aspects médiatiques:
Die Enthauptungen sind massenmedial perfekt
inszeniert. «Von Irrsinn geprägt ist das Ziel; die Methode jedoch ist
rational, weil perfekt auf ein Maximum an Wirkung ausgelegt»,
~
Hmmmm.... Beheading is spreading .... Coming soon to a cubicle near you:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/09/26/oklahoma-man-beheaded-former-co-worker-and-attacked-another-just-after-his-firing/
 |
| The perpetrator, BEFORE seeing the light of takfir … |
 |
| … and after. |
"Nolen had been fired from Vaughan Foods shortly before the attack. Witnesses told officers that Nolen had recently been trying to convert several employees to Islam..."
Quite apart from the politics of it all ... this decapitation fetish did not use to be the thing.
What is going on .........................
~
[Updat 27 Sept 2014]
A fair question is: What if anything does his case have to do with actual
Islam, as opposed to the mere opportunistic adoption of that label by a violent individual, as a
self-inflation and an excuse.
That his acquaintance with Islam may have been, let us say,
superficial, is suggest by a little linguistic detail. For although Wikipedia (with
uncharacteristic lack of Fleiss)
reports that
Prison records show that Nolen has
a tattoo reading "Assalamu Alaikum", an Arabic greeting that
translates to "Peace be with you".
other sources specify the wording “As-salaamu Ataikum”,
which is gibberish, though presumably a stab (pardon the verb in this context) at
spelling what, to any Muslim, and to many of the rest of us as well, is an
extremely familiar phrase (you’ll find it in the Merriam-Webster Collegiate
dictionary, for example). This
latter is the lectio difficilior (in
the phrase used by stemmatologists) and is inherently more credible. Additional evidence that our
budding Islamist may have been Arabistically and orthographically challenged,
is provided by an alternate spelling he uses in one of his Facebook posts:
SHALOM ALHAKEIUM O YE MUSLIMS! ALLAH SWT SAYS IN THE GLORIOUS QURAN
" FOR THOSE WHO REJECT AND HATE WHAT I HAVE REVEALED, THOSE WHO SAY ILL
OBEY PART OF WHAT THE QURAN SAYS-ALLAH (SWT) SAYS THEIR GOOD DEEDS WILL BE NO
EFFECT AT DEATH OR ON THE JUDGMENT DAY BECAUSE U CANT FUFIL HIS GOOD PLEASURE!!
SURA 47 AYAH 20-29
Well, let us set that guy aside; a disturbed individual, from which nothing can necessarily be drawn, without further
knowing in what way he may have been representative of present trends.
However, glancing for a moment for the “coworker” angle
(which is what has really given this story legs), there seems to be indeed a quite unsettling precedent, from
an Islamic. The Saudi Shaykh Saleh
al-Fawzan has reportedly issued a
fatwa saying its okay to kill coworkers who don’t pray. (And no, your prayers don’t count;
it has to be the right kind.)
Discussion of this fatwa, in a mainstream Arabic-language
publication, can be viewed here:
مواقع انترنت تتداول فتوى للفوزان تجيز قتل زميل العمل الذي لا يصلي
وكان يرد
فيها
الشيخ
الفوزان
على
سؤال
حول
طريقة
التعامل
مع
الموظف
مع
زميله
في
العمل
الذي
لا
يصلي.
وجاء رد الشيخ: "الذي لا يصلي ليس بمسلم لقوله صلى الله عليه وسم بين العبد والكفر ترك الصلاة.. والأدلة من الكتاب والسنة على كفر تارك الصلاة كثيرة"، وتابع في معرض رده حول الواجب فعله ضد تارك الصلاة: "يجب عزله بل يجب قتله إن لم يتب إلى الله ويحافظ على الصلاة.. فهو يستتاب وإن لم يتب وأصر على ترك الصلاة فإنه يقتل". ويضيف: "من الأصل توظيف هذا الشخص خطأ لأنه لا يوجد تولية الكفار أمور المسلمين لأنه سيكون قدوة لغيره".
وجاء رد الشيخ: "الذي لا يصلي ليس بمسلم لقوله صلى الله عليه وسم بين العبد والكفر ترك الصلاة.. والأدلة من الكتاب والسنة على كفر تارك الصلاة كثيرة"، وتابع في معرض رده حول الواجب فعله ضد تارك الصلاة: "يجب عزله بل يجب قتله إن لم يتب إلى الله ويحافظ على الصلاة.. فهو يستتاب وإن لم يتب وأصر على ترك الصلاة فإنه يقتل". ويضيف: "من الأصل توظيف هذا الشخص خطأ لأنه لا يوجد تولية الكفار أمور المسلمين لأنه سيكون قدوة لغيره".
(Merci Umm-Tumas pour l’alerte.)
Note that the fatwa doesn’t say merely that killing a
recreant coworker is permissible; he states that it is obligatory (yajibu l-qatl).
One wonders whether the perp will adduce this interesting legal
opinion in defense at his trial.
Whether Shaykh al-Fawzan is well-suited to be a particular
favorite of black American Muslims, may however be
doubted. One of his most widely
reported judgments was this:
Slavery is a part of Islam ...
Slavery is part of jihad, and jihad will remain as long there is Islam.” As for
the modernist interpretation that Islam totally abolished slavery, he dismissed
its exponents saying, “They are ignorant, not scholars. ... Whoever says such
things is an infidel.”
[Update 28 September 2014] Beheading still spreading -- it’s like a meme.
The four men knelt in the sand,
hands bound and heads bowed. And in what has become a grisly Middle Eastern
trope, a video camera's merciless eye recorded their scripted confessions — swiftly
followed by their beheadings.
At least nine such executions have
taken place since August in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.
… The best-known such case was a
privileged young man named Islam Yaken, who grew up in an affluent district of
the Egyptian capital, spoke fluent English and studied law at Cairo University.
From Syria, he posted photos and videos of his new life with Islamic State,
including some that featured him posing with severed heads.
Sort of like getting your photo taken with Mickey at
Disneyland. Decapitation porn.
 |
|
Le Penseur,
contemplant sa décollation
|
[Update 17 November 2014] The latest mass-beheading video from ISIS is the talk
of Franch, owing to the participation of a Frenchman. But, unlike the majority who dismiss this as mere savagery
-- like an outburst by some forcené
on the street -- a thoughtful
reader points out the voulu, guignol
aspect of the performance:
La France et l'Occident en général
aurait tord de prendre l'État Islamique uniquement pour des fous furieux
sanguinaires incapables d e réfléchir.
Ce genre de vidéo n'est pas
uniquement une de ces horribles exécutions faites au hasard de combat. Il
s'agit la de véritables mises en scène macabres ou l'on a clairement pris le
temps de réfléchir sur la manière de mettre en scène la décapitation simultanée
de presque 20 militaires syriens
C'est de la propagande très bien
faite ( même si le contenu est véritablement monstrueux ), qui a plusieurs
objectifs : intimider ceux qui les combattent déjà, encourager d'autres a les
rejoindre et surtout faire voir aux puissances occidentales si besoin est,
qu'il y a a la tête de l'État Islamique des gens qui voient loin.
[Psycholinguistic footnote: There is a misspelling in the comment, which I have
reproduced tel quel : tord should really be tort. I left it because it just might be one of those
Freudian slips : in this case,
from the phrase tord le cou ‘wring someone’s neck’.]
[Update 18 January 2015] As further illustration, that ISIL is not simply
implementing shariah, including in those aspects which are quite punitive, but
are playing to the media -- to the Société
du spectacle -- consider their latest innovation as regards punishing practicing
homosexuals. Shooting, beheading, scourging,
lapidation, crucifiction -- naah, been there done that. What to do for an encore? -- Aha! Why not throw them off a roof, while an
expectant crowd with upturned faces
looks on from below!
Anything to maintain their ratings!
[Historiographic footnote] Actually, in being cast from a high place, the inverts have
been granted by ISIL a mode of
dispatch previously reserved for
an emperor. A historian
writes, re the capture of Constantinople in 1204:
The emperor, regarded as a wicked
usurper, was taken to the top of a high marble column and pushed off, “because it was fitting that such a signal
act of justice should be seen by
everyone.”
-- Morris Bishop, The Middle
Ages (1968), p. 104
[27 January 2015] It really is a matter of branding.
With ISIL, it’s heads;
for the central-African Lord’s Resistance Army (now back in the
headlines), their signature excision is lips & noses.
[Update Ash Wednesday]
An article by Hussein Ibish, along much the same lines:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/19/opinion/the-isis-theater-of-cruelty.html
[Update Jan 2016]
Historical precdents:
~
[Update 11 March 2015]
Desperate to maintain their lead in the atrocity sweepstakes, ISIL has
now given the starring role of executioner to a kid who looks like a choirboy:
Coming soon to a Theatre (of Cruelty) near you:
*
Execution by a little girl in pigtails
*
Execution by a chimp
ISIL: the Cable
Television of Jihadi entertainment.
[Update 21 Nov 2015]
[Update 21 Nov 2015]
The Washington Post as well offers a well-informed inside glimpse into those who make
ISIL’s société du spectacle possible:
What they described resembles a
medieval reality show …
And: Coming soon 2 a Cineplex near U !
The Islamic State’s most notorious
videos — including those showing the beheadings of Western hostages and the
burning of a caged Jordanian fighter pilot — were shown over and over, he said,
long after their audiences beyond the caliphate dissipated.
Abu Hourraira said he attended one
screening on a street near the University of Mosul that attracted about 160
people, including at least 10 women and 15 children. One of the videos showed
an execution by Emwazi, who is believed to have been killed this month in a
U.S. drone strike.
“The kids, they are not looking
away — they are fascinated by it,” Abu Hourraira said. Jihadi John became a
subject of such fascination that some children started to mimic his uniform, he
said, wearing all “black and a belt with a little knife.”
Owing to the extraordinary appeal of this offering among the
tots, the Islamic State has specially revised the rating of this video from PG-13 to PG.
[Update Jan 2016]
Historical precdents:
A historian quotes a memoir from Japanese-occupied Manchuria
during WWII:
As part of their education, my
mother and her classmateshad to watch newsreels of Japan’s progress in the
war. Far from being ashamed of
their brutality, the Japanese vaunted it
as a way to inculcate fear.
The films showed Japanese soldiers cuting people in half, and prisoners
tied to stakes being torn to pieces by dogs. There were lingering close-ups of the victims’
terror-stricken eyes as their
attackers came at them.
The Japanese watched the eleven- and twelve-year-old schoolgirls to
make sure they did not shut their eyes, or try to stick a handkerchief in their
mouths to stile their screams.
-- Martin Gilbert, A History of
the Twentieth Century, vol. II (1998), p. 443
Note that the point here, is not that the Japanese committed
atrocities, but that (unlike, for instance, the Nazis, for the most part, or
Stalin) they boasted about it, publicized it.
In the case of ISIL (we have argued), the beheadings are
aimed at more (much more) than terrorizing the enemy: they have a demonstration effect on their own ranks.
Ditto for the Japanese; re the year 1937 (when the Japs were already up &
active, well before Pearl Harbor):
The Japanese company commander,
Tominaga Shogo, later explained how, after decapitating a Chinese prisoner with
his sword, “I felt something change inside me. I don’t know how to describe it, but I gained strength
somewhere in my gut.”
-- Martin Gilbert, A History of
the Twentieth Century, vol. II (1998), p. 165
That wasn’t done to “inculcate fear”; it may well have been done out of
sight. Psychologically, it is more
comparable to cannibals eating the warriors they have slain, to incorporate the
mojo.
These were not isolated, private acts. From 1942:
On Singapore Island, 5,000 Chinese
civilians … were rounded up and …
killed: first their hands were
tied behind their backs, and then their heads cut off with a sword.
-- Martin Gilbert, A History of
the Twentieth Century, vol. II (1998), p. 165
That, note, is likewise ISIL’s favored posture for
decapitation.
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