Written by al-Ustaz on Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 in Ramadan.
answers asked: According to some a death warrant without trial, defense, etc. violates Islamic jurisprudence. In Islamic fiqh, apostasy by a mentally sound adult male is indeed a capital crime, however, Fiqh also:
… lays down procedures according to which a person accused of an offense is to be brought to trial, confronted with his accuser, and given the opportunity to defend himself. A judge will then give a verdict and if he finds the accused guilty, pronounce sentence…
Even the most rigorous and extreme of the classical jurist only require a Muslims to kill anyone who insults the Prophet in his hearing and in his presence. They say nothing about a hired killing for a reported insult in a distant country.
Other Islamic scholars outside of Iran took issue with the fact that the sentence was not passed by an Islamic court, or that it did not limit its “jurisdiction only [to] countries under Islamic law.” Muhammad Hussan ad-Din, a theologian at Al-Azhar University, argued “Blood must not be shed except after a trial [when the accused has been] given a chance to defend himself and repent.” Abdallah al-Mushidd, head of Azhar’s Fatwa Council stated “We must try the author in a legal fashion of Islam does not accept killing as a legal instrument.” [65]
The Islamic Jurisprudence Academy in Mecca urged that Rushdie be tried and, if found guilty, be given a chance to repent, and Ayatollah Mehdi Ruhani, head of the Shi’i community in Europe and a cousin of Khomeini, criticized Khomeini for `respect[ing] neither international law nor that of Islam.
There was also a question of the fatwa against Rushdie’s publishers. According to one scholar: “The Sharia clearly establishes that disseminating false information is not the same of expressing it. `Transmitting blasphemy is not blasphemy` (naql al-kufr laysa kufr). In addition, the publishers were not Muslim and so could not be “sentenced under the Islamic laws of apostasy.” If there was another legal justification for sentencing them to death, “Khomeini failed to provide” it.
The Islamic Republic’s response to calls for a trial was to denounce its Islamic proponents as “deceitful.” President Khamene’i accused them of attempting to use religious law as “a flag under which they can crush revolutionary Islam.”
Create a video blog
