US Muslim groups won’t move to excommunicate Boko Haram

Notice that the Daily Caller’s Neil Munro repeatedly asks Muslim leaders in the U.S. to offer Islamic counter-arguments to Boko Haram’s claims for Islamic justification for its actions, and they refuse to do so. This is, as I am quoted as saying in this piece, because they can’t.

“US Muslim groups won’t move to excommunicate Boko Haram,” by Neil Munro, Daily Caller, May 12, 2014:

U.S. Islamic leaders won’t try to formally excommunicate the Islamist Boko Haram group unless they can meet with its leadership to debate the religious legitimacy of its actions, a spokesman for a leading mosque told The Daily Caller.

“There is a great reluctance to excommunicate someone by extension. … It would be like convicting someone in absentia,” said Imam Johari Abdul-Malik, the spokesman for the “Home of the Migrants” mosque, or Dar Al Hijrah mosque, in Falls Church Va. If crimes have been committed, the Nigerian government should punish the individuals, he added.

On May 7, Abdul Malik led a group of Muslim advocates at a press conference at the National Press Club, where they denied that Islamic strictures are shaping Boko Haram’s years-long campaign of killing and kidnapping Christians.

“Islam is not the problem,” said Ahmed Bedier, a Florida-based Islamic advocate. “We’re tired of people coming on television and asking where does this ideology come from,” Bedier said. “Well, this ideology comes from nowhere,” he insisted….

At his May 7 event, Abdul-Malik urged Boko Haram to change its view of Islam, even as he declined to challenge its religious claims. “Groups like Boko Haram desire to take us back to a medieval … world where kidnapping of women and girls and enslavement and rape are acceptable,” he said.

“The world has changed … [and] in particular we are saying as modern day Muslims that we now reject all of these acts and that they are contrary to our faith,” he said.

However, Abdul-Malik didn’t promise any religious or political action by U.S. Islamic groups. When pressed May 9 by The DC to cite Islamic texts that contradict Boko Haram’s Islamist arguments, Abdul-Malik quickly ended the phone call….

In a February video, Shekau justified his murder of Christians by quoting the Quran. The verse cited by Shekau, “We have rejected you, and there has arisen, between us and you, enmity and hatred for ever, unless ye believe in Allah and Him alone,” is found in the fourth verse of the Quran’s 60th chapter.

“We wish to reiterate that our [jihad] is not for personal gain; it is meant to ensure the establishment of an Islamic state by liberating all Muslims from the excesses of the infidels,” the group’s spokesman, Abu Qaqa, said in 2012, according to study of the group. “We don’t kill innocent Muslims. The fact is the bottom line of our struggle is to set the Muslims free from enslavement. We only kill the unbelievers,” he said.

The Muslim groups aren’t excommunicating Shekau’s group because his Islamic claims are based on iconic Islamic texts, said Robert Spencer, the author of several best-sellers on Islamic law and traditions.

Slavery is endorsed in several sections of the Koran, where is described as “those whom your right [sword] hands possess,” he said.

The Quran is said by Muslims to be a direct transcription by Muhammad of statements by their god, Allah.

Close. Muhammad didn’t make transcriptions, according to Islamic tradition; his followers did. But in any case the Qur’an is considered to be a perfect transcription of the perfect and eternal book.

So “it is perfectly legitimate for a Muslim to capture a Christian woman and use her for sex,” Spencer said. “This is something that Mohammad did himself,” according to Islamic traditions, Spencer said.

The acid test of opposition to Shekau’s Islamic claims is whether the U.S. Islamic groups will declare that Shekau’s groups and ideas are heretical, said Spencer. But Islamic debates are very legalistic, so any attempted excommunication would require Islamic groups to cite Islamic texts before pronouncing “takfir” on Shekau and his movement, Spencer said.

TheDC asked Abdul-Malik if Americans Muslim groups would pronounce “takfir” on Boko Haram. “There is a great reluctance to excommunicate someone by extension. … It would be like convicting someone in absentia,” he replied.

The groups won’t take that step, Spencer said, because “they know Boko Haram has a perfectly good case based on the Koran … [and] they know that Muslims in their community … would be indignant towards them if they pronounce ‘takfir’ on a group that is following the Koran.”

Numerous U.S. Islamic groups contacted by TheDC declined to offer Islamic counter-arguments against Boko Haram. Instead, they merely said its actions are “unjust” and “un-Islamic.”

Shekau was trained as a Muslim cleric, according to a report by the International Crisis Group. He includes an Islamic title — imam — in his war-name, which is “Imam Abu Mohammen Abubakar bin Muhammad Shekau.” The name is also a salute to one of Islam’s earliest caliphs, Muhammad ibn Abu Bakr….