Raymond Ibrahim
Investigative Project on Terrorism
Investigative Project on Terrorism
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 Koran 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 author of the new book, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians
(published by Regnery in cooperation with Gatestone Institute, 2013). A Middle East and Islam expert, he is a Shillman Fellow
at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and associate fellow at the Middle East Forum.
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