Gatestone Institute
June 4, 2012
Liberal talk show host Tawfiq Okasha
recently appeared on "Egypt Today" airing a video of Muslims slicing a
young man's head off for the crime of apostasy, in this case, the crime
of converting to Christianity and refusing to renounce it. The video—be
warned, it is immensely graphic—is embedded here (the actual execution
appears from minute 1:13-4:00). For those who prefer not to view it, a
summary follows:
A young man appears held down by masked
men. His head is pulled back, with a knife to his throat. He does not
struggle and appears resigned to his fate. Speaking in Arabic, the
background speaker, or "narrator," chants a number of Muslim prayers and
supplications, mostly condemning Christianity, which, because of the
Trinity, is referred to as a polytheistic faith: "Let Allah be avenged
on the polytheist apostate"; "Allah empower your religion, make it
victorious against the polytheists"; "Allah, defeat the infidels at the
hands of the Muslims"; "There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his
messenger."
Then, to cries of "Allahu Akbar!"—or, "God
is great!"—the man holding the knife to the apostate's throat begins to
slice away, even as the victim appears calmly mouthing a prayer. It
takes nearly two minutes of graphic knife-carving to sever the
Christian's head, which is then held aloft to more Islamic cries and
slogans of victory.
Visibly distraught, Tawfiq Okasha, the host, asked: "Is this Islam?
Does Islam call for this? How is Islam related to this matter?...These
are the images that are disseminated throughout the electronic media in
Europe and America…. Can you imagine?" Then, in reference to Egypt's
Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis, whose political influence has grown
tremendously, he asked, "How are such people supposed to govern?"
In fact, only the other day a top Egyptian Salafi leader openly stated that no Muslim has the right to apostatize,
or leave Islam, based on the canonical hadiths, including Muhammad's
command, "Whoever leaves his religion, kill him." Islam's most
authoritative legal manuals make crystal clear that apostasy is a
capital crime, punishable by death.
The first "righteous caliph," a paragon of
Muslim piety and virtue, had tens of thousands of people
slaughtered—including by burning, beheading, and crucifixion—simply
because they tried to break away from Islam. According to the Encyclopaedia of Islam,
the most authoritative reference work on Islam in the English language,
"there is unanimity that the male apostate must be put to death."
Finally, a word on the "prayers" or
supplications to Allah made by the Muslim executioners in the video:
these are standard and formulaic. It is not just masked, anonymous
butchers who supplicate Allah as they engage in acts of evil; rather,
top-ranking Muslim leaders openly invoke such hate-filled prayers.
See here
for examples of prominent Muslims supplicating Allah to strike infidels
with cancer and disease "till they pray for death and do not receive
it," and even formalized prayers in Mecca, blasted on megaphones as
Muslims pilgrimage and circumambulate the Ka'ba, supplicating Allah to
make the lives of Christians and Jews "hostage to misery; drape them
with endless despair, unrelenting pain and unremitting ailment; fill
their lives with sorrow and pain and end their lives in humiliation and
oppression."
"Is this Islam?" You decide.
Raymond Ibrahim is an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
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