RAYMOND IBRAHIM
June 25, 2013
News emerged
a few weeks ago in Arabic media that yet another fatwa had called on
practicing Muslim women to travel to Syria and offer their sexual
services to the jihadis fighting to overthrow the secularist Assad
government and install Islamic law. Reports attribute the fatwa to Saudi
sheikh Muhammad al-'Arifi, who, along with other Muslim clerics earlier
permitted jihadis to rape Syrian women.
Muslim women prostituting themselves in this case is being considered
a legitimate jihad because such women are making sacrifices-their
chastity, their dignity-in order to help apparently sexually-frustrated
jihadis better focus on the war to empower Islam in Syria.
And it is prostitution-for they are promised payment, albeit in the afterlife. The Quran declares that "Allah has
purchased of the believers
their persons
[their bodies] and their goods; for theirs (in return) is the garden
(of Paradise): they fight in His cause, and slay and are slain (Yusuf
Ali trans. 9:111).
On the basis of this fatwa, several young Tunisian Muslim girls
traveled to Syria to be "sex-jihadis." Video interviews of distraught
parents bemoaning their daughters' fates are on the Internet,
including one
of a father and mother holding a picture of their daughter: "She's only
16-she's only 16! They brainwashed her!" pleads the father.
Most recently, the Egyptian-based news service
Masrawy
published a video interview with "Aisha," one of the Tunisian Muslim
girls who went sex-jihading in Syria, only to regret her actions. While
in Tunisia, Aisha said she met a Muslim woman who began talking to her
about the importance of piety, including wearing the hijab; she then
went on to talk about traveling to Syria to help the jihadis "fight and
kill infidels" and make Allah's word supreme, adding that "women who die
would do so in the way of Allah and become martyrs and enter paradise."
(According to mainstream Islamic teaching, dying in jihad is the only
guaranteed way to avoid hell.)
Aisha eventually came to the conclusion that she was being exploited in the name of religion and left.
While news that Muslim girls in hijabs are prostituting themselves in
the name of Islam may surprise some, Islamic clerics regularly issue
fatwas permitting forbidden things-so long as they help the jihad. For
instance, not only did the original "underwear bomber" Abdullah Hassan
al-Asiri hide explosives in his rectum to assassinate Saudi Prince
Muhammad bin Nayef-they met in 2009 after the 22-year-old Asiri "
feigned repentance for his jihadi views"-but,
according to Shi'ite talk-show host Abdullah Al-Khallaf, he had fellow
jihadis sodomize him to "widen" his anus to fit more explosives.
Al-Khallaf
read the fatwa that purportedly justified such actions during a 2012 Fadak TV episode.
After praising Allah and declaring that sodomy is forbidden in Islam, the fatwa asserted:
However, jihad comes first, for it is the pinnacle of Islam, and if
the pinnacle of Islam can only be achieved through sodomy, then there is
no wrong in it. For the overarching rule of [Islamic] jurisprudence
asserts that "necessity makes permissible the prohibited." And if
obligatory matters can only be achieved by performing the prohibited,
then it becomes obligatory to perform the prohibited, and there is no
greater duty than jihad. After he sodomizes you, you must ask Allah for
forgiveness and praise him all the more. And know that Allah will reward
the jihadis on the Day of Resurrection, according to their
intentions-and your intention, Allah willing, is for the victory of
Islam, and we ask that Allah accept it of you.
While all these sex-fatwas may seem bizarre, they highlight two
important (though little known in the West) points. First, that jihad is
the "pinnacle" of Islam-for it makes Islam supreme; and second, the
idea that "necessity makes permissible the prohibited." Because making
Islam supreme through jihad is the greatest priority, anything and
everything that is otherwise banned becomes permissible. All that comes
to matter is one's intention, or
niyya (see Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi's discussion
along these lines).
As for the intersection between sex and violence (jihad), it was once explored by the Arabic satellite program
Daring Question,
which aired various clips of young jihadis giddily singing about their
forthcoming deaths and subsequent sexual escapades in heaven. After
documenting various anecdotes indicative of jihadi obsession with sex,
Egyptian human rights activist Magdi Khalil concluded that "absolutely
everything [jihad, suicide operations, etc.] revolves around sex in
paradise," adding, "if you look at the whole of Islamic history, you
come up with two words: sex and violence."
Indeed, Islam's prophet Muhammad maintained that death during jihad
not only blots out all sins-including sexual ones-but it actually
gratifies them:
The martyr is special to Allah. He is forgiven [of all sins] from the
first drop of blood [that he sheds]. He sees his throne in paradise,
where he will be adorned in ornaments of faith. He will wed the 'Aynhour
[a.k.a. "voluptuous women"] and will not know the torments of the grave, and safeguards against the greater terror [hell]. ... And he will copulate with 72 'Aynhour (see The Al Qaeda Reader, p. 143).
This goes to one of the many seeming contradictions in Islam: Muslim
women must chastely be covered head-to-toe-yet, in the service of jihad,
they are allowed to prostitute themselves. Lying is forbidden-but
permissible
to empower Islam. Intentionally killing women and children is
forbidden-but permissible during the jihad. Suicide is forbidden-but
permissible during the jihad-when it is called "martyrdom."
One may therefore expect anything from would-be
jihadis, regardless of how un-Islamic the means may otherwise seem.
Even so, this uncompromising mentality, which is prevalent throughout
the Islamic world, especially along the frontlines of the jihad, is the
same mentality that many Western leaders and politicians think can be
appeased with just a bit more respect, well-wishing, and concessions
from the West.
Such are the great, and disastrous, disconnects of our time.
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum
Read more:
Family Security Matters http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-sex-jihad?f=must_reads#ixzz2XFzlUymy
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