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Africa North
Salafi-Jihadi Holy Man Issues Fatwa Sanctioning Killing Of U.S. Ambassadors
2012-09-21
[MEMRI] Following the September 11, 2012 killing of U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens, a number of queries were sent in to the Salafi-jihadi website Minbar Al-Tawhid Wal-Jihad (MTJ) regarding the legitimacy of this action. Answering on behalf of the website's shari'a committee, Sheikh Abu Mundhir Al-Shinqiti issued a fatwa in which he approved of the killing of the U.S. ambassador and other U.S. diplomats, and refuted religious arguments raised by some Islamic scholars against such actions.

It should be noted that over the past two years, religious queries on MTJ have been fielded almost solely by Al-Shinqiti through various fatwas, despite the fact that the shari'a committee has numerous other members. This may be explained by the longstanding imprisonment in Jordan of MTJ founder and prominent jihadi holy man Sheikh Abu Muhammad Al-Maqdisi.

Those who submitted the questions raised two main points: first, whether a person should be killed for an act he himself did not commit or approve (hinting at the fact that the ambassador had nothing to do with the anti-Islamic film "Innocence of Mohammedans"); and second, whether an ambassador can be considered an "courier" under Islamic law, and thus be granted immunity. In addition, Al-Shinqiti was asked for advice regarding the proper response to recent events.
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Olde Tyme Religion
Jihadist Forum Thread Discusses If and When One May Eat the Flesh of U.S. Soldiers
2009-06-27
A recent thread on the Al-Falluja jihadist forum discussed the case of whether a Muslim who has nothing else to eat may kill an infidel in order to eat him. The discussion was prompted by a recently published book by Abu Muhammad Al-Maqdisi, one of the most influential jihadist sheikhs active today.

The following is a summary of the discussion thread. (JTTM subscribers can read the full report; to subscribe to the JTTM.

"Is It Permitted To Eat The Flesh of American Soldiers?"

On June 13, 2009, a member of the Al-Falluja forum who uses the moniker "Al-Maqdisi's Student" wrote a post based on this passage [in full report] titled "Is it permitted to eat the flesh of American soldiers? A quote from the illustrious Sheikh Al-Maqdisi, may Allah preserve him." He began by recounting an exchange between the early Muslim commander Khalid b. Al-Walid and the Byzantine commander at the battle of Yarmuk (in the year 636 C.E.) The Byzantine commander said to Khalid that the Muslims had only gone out from their land due to hunger, and offered to buy them off. Khalid responded: "It was not hunger that drove us out of our land, as you say; we are a people who drink blood, and we know that there is no blood more delicious than Byzantine blood. That is why we came."

"Al-Maqdisi's Student" then cites the aforementioned passage from Al-Maqdisi's Beginner's Guide [in full report], and follows up with the words: "The mujahideen should inform their belligerent [infidel] and apostate enemies of this exceptional law so that they can bring it up and study it at their conferences on human rights, counterterrorism, and so on! Then they in turn can proclaim that our soldiers lick their lips [at the thought of] eating the flesh of their hamburger- and Pepsi-eating soldiers!"

"If We... Eat Americans, Let's Make Them Into A Gunpowder-Flavored Kabsa With Some Hors D'oeuvres Made Of Apostates"

Most of the numerous responses to the post were off-topic. Some responses, however, did take up the flesh-eating issue. "Abu Hajir Al-Muqrin" wrote: "If we are forced to eat Americans, let's make them into a gunpowder-flavored kabsa with some hors d'oeuvres made of apostates."

"Muhammad Al-Baghdadi" wrote: "But the slaughtering needs to be according to the shari'a. He then wrote "perhaps this is the best way" above stills from the Nick Berg decapitation video.

"Al-Maqdisi's Student" weighed in again towards the end of the thread and wrote: "A true story: a group of mujahideen from one of the brigades was in the mountains during the jihad against the Russians. One of them was sent off on a mission; he went and came back, but he couldn't find any of the brothers. He saw a roasted calf leg that the brothers in the brigade left for him for dinner, and he ate of it until he was full. When he went back to the main camp, the brothers saw him and offered him dinner! He said: praise Allah, I already ate! They said: Where did you find dinner? He said: You left me roasted calf leg! They said: No, no, that wasn't calf, that was the leg of a Russian infidel! He answered: No matter, it's all Islamic slaughter! (smile)"
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Arabia
Saudi Columnist: Jihadist Salafist Ideology is Like Nazism
2005-10-19
"Why Aren't We Fighting the Religious Scholars, Theoreticians, and Preachers of Terrorism like Criminals, Murderers, and Robbers?"
Saudi columnist Muhammad bin 'Abd Al-Latif Aal Al-Sheikh published two articles in the Saudi daily Al-Jazirah, in which he attacked the ideology of the Al-Salafiyya Al-Jihadiyya movement. He said that the ideology of this movement was similar to, or even worse than, the Nazi ideology, and that it should be dealt accordingly.
After the ruin, destruction, and bloodshed that Nazism brought upon mankind, [and since] the number of its victims reached tens of millions, the world arose to fight against this murderous ideology, and all steps were taken – on the ideological, cultural, and political levels – to prevent this ideology from spreading anew. The question arises of why, in light of the similarity between these two ideologies, we haven't learned a lesson from this human experience, and why we are not fighting against the foundations of [Al-Salafiyya Al-Jihadiyya] – its religious scholars, its theoreticians, and its preachers – just as we deal with criminals, murderers, and robbers?

Abu Muhammad Al-Maqdisi, for instance, claims in his well-known book Millat Ibrahim [The Religion of Abraham, i.e. Islam] – a book that is a kind of manifesto for Al-Salafiyya Al-Jihadiyya – that the concept of jihad in Islam should be directed against internal [enemies] before [it is directed] externally, 'since the danger from the immediate vicinity, from its influence, its corruption, and from the internal strife that it engenders, is greater and more severe than the danger of that which is distant and not imminent... Thus, internal jihad and jihad [against] Satan take priority over jihad against enemies in general. The Prophet Muhammad did not start off [by fighting] the Persians, Byzantines, and Jews while ignoring [the Arab infidels] in whose midst he lived, [but rather began with jihad against the Arab infidels].'

Thus, the concept of jihad has become a destructive terrorist concept
 This idea is a formative and decisive idea in the platform of the modern Al-Salafiyya Al-Jihadiyya. In his call to murder – which they consider jihad – Abu Muhammad Al-Maqdisi is a criminal and a murderer. How can we find him innocent?..."
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Iraq-Jordan
Al-Hayat Inquiry into the city of Al-Zarqaa
2005-01-24
EFL. The whole article is worth reading
Al-Zarqaa Sent the Most Youths to Wage Jihad in Iraq

According to the inquiry, "Al-Zarqaa, located near the Al-Ruseifah Palestinian refugee camp, is the capital of the Salafi Jihad movement in Jordan, and the place from which it emerged. Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi grew up in one of its neighborhoods, and from there set out for the Jihad in Afghanistan, and then for the Jihad in Iraq." Likewise, the cities of Al-Zarqaa, Al-Ruseifah, and Al-Salt are "the Jordanian cities that sent the most youths to fight in Iraq
 The well-known Al-Zarqaa residents who were killed in Iraq were supporters of Al-Zarqawi, Abd Al-Hadi Daghlas, Yassin Jarrad, and Yazan Nabil Jarada. This is in addition to the dozens [from Al-Zarqaa] who were martyred before, in Afghanistan."

Al-Zarqaa Residents Figure Prominently at Herat Camp, Afghanistan

"It appears that it was at the Herat camp [in Afghanistan] that Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi became the field commander of the groups [of Jihad fighters]. This is also the camp that the Jihad fighters from Al-Zarqaa have mentioned repeatedly throughout the history of their movement. Anyone who follows the Salafi Jihad stream agrees that the Herat camp in Afghanistan is a major episode in the building of Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi's organization in Iraq today. Al-Zarqawi founded this organization in 1999, when he went to Afghanistan. The nucleus of the camp consisted mostly of those from the city of Al-Zarqaa, such as Abd Al-Hadi Daghlas, a Palestinian who was recently killed in Iraq; Khaled Al-Arouri, currently being held in Iran; and Yassin Jarrad, the father of Al-Zarqawi's second wife and the one who, according to the Jihad fighters in Al-Zarqaa, carried out the [September 2003] suicide attack that caused the death of Muhammad Bakr Al-Hakim and the deaths of dozens of Iraqis in the city of Najaf.

Al-Zarqawi's Organization: Made Up of Extremist Palestinian Sheikhs Who Emigrated from Kuwait to Jordan
The inquiry noted that following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and the 1991 Gulf War, 250,000 Palestinians emigrated from Kuwait to Jordan. This phenomenon was called "those who returned from Kuwait." The inquiry stated: "According to calculations by Jordanian experts and researchers, some 160,000 of these displaced persons came only to Al-Zarqaa. The experts noticed a connection between their return and the flourishing of the Salafi Jihad trend in Jordan, particularly in Al-Zarqaa." According to the inquiry, the phenomenon of "the returnees from Kuwait" was perceived by many in Jordan as "a turning point in social change." The Jordan Center for Research at the University of Jordan conducted a survey on the matter and found that beginning in 1993, "the youth [in Jordan] became more conservative than the youth of preceding generations, and a large percentage of them supported polygamy and gave priority to educating boys rather than educating girls."

Among the returnees from Kuwait were "a number of people belonging to the Jihad stream, and at their head Sheikh Abu Muhammad Al-Maqdisi, [whose real name is] Issam Muhammad Taher Al-Burqawi. [He is] a Palestinian who lived in Kuwait, who later became the spiritual teacher of this stream in Jordan, and in 1989 became Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi's teacher. "[Al-Maqdisi] went from Kuwait to Afghanistan with the Palestinian sheikh Omar Mahmoud Abu Omar, known by the nickname Abu Qatadah. When Al-Maqdisi returned to Kuwait and then to Jordan, Abu Qatadah found refuge in London. [But] these two figures became the main source of authority of the Salafi Jihad ideology in Jordan
Also among the returnees from Kuwait was Abu Anas Al-Shami, the jurisprudence authority of Al-Zarqawi's organization, who was killed several months ago in Baghdad, as well as Abu Qutaybah, senior military official in the Al-Qa'ida organization
These and others, with Abu Mus'ab [Al-Zarqawi] at their head, constituted the nucleus of the Salafi Jihad movement. They met in the mid-1990s at one of the mosques in the Ma'ssoum neighborhood in the city of Al-Zarqaa."

Working Together: Abu Muhammad Al-Maqdisi and Al-Zarqawi
The inquiry also examined the relationship between Abu Muhammad Al-Maqdisi, currently behind bars in Jordan, and Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi: "Abu Muhammad Al-Maqdisi arrived in Jordan as an immigrant from Kuwait in 1991. At that time, he was known only amongst the Salafi Jihad circles, particularly among a few hundred Jordanians who had heard about him or met him in Afghanistan where he had gone [to wage] Jihad. The Afghan Palestinians and Jordanians — among them Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi — constituted the nucleus of the stream that Al-Maqdisi had begun to organize. The Jordanian Jihadis spoke of this period as 'the beginning of the Da'wa [Islamic propagation],' and they described Al-Maqdisi's rounds starting from his home in the Al-Ruseifah camp next to Al-Zarqaa. He would visit their homes in the various Jordanian cities, usually joined by Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi
.According to the inquiry, after Jordan signed the peace agreement with Israel in 1994, "the Salafi Jihad movement was being nourished by a new wellspring
The most prominent of the clandestine organizations established in Jordan was perhaps the Bayat Al-Imam organization, founded by Al-Maqdisi and Al-Zarqawi. Some time after the establishment of [this organization], the Jordanian security apparatuses uncovered weapons and explosives in the possession of Al-Maqdisi and Al-Zarqawi, and both were imprisoned until 1999. During the period of their incarceration, the two managed to organize a not inconsiderable number of activists
 In their activity among the prisoners, the two relied on Abu Mus'ab's strong-arm tactics and his familiarity with the world of the criminals amongst whom he had lived in his youth.

The inquiry related that "[a man called] Abu Othman said that Abu Muhammad [Al-Maqdisi]'s personality was kind and good, and non-confrontational, while Abu Mus'ab [Al-Zarqawi] showed strength and toughness in the prison. Abu Othman added that the tribal personality of Abu Mus'ab [Al-Zarqawi] made it possible for him to obtain oaths of allegiance from others within the prison, and that he was confrontational. The youths surrounding him in prison were actual Jihad fighters, and thus they rejected the command of Abu Muhammad Al-Maqdisi, preferring Abu Mus'ab [Al-Zarqawi] because of his strength and determination. They thought that if [Al-Zarqawi] was [their] imam, Abu Muhammad Al-Maqdisi would have spare time for engaging in independent judicial ruling [ Ijtihad ] and [religious] study."
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