Sheikh Al-Tayeb Archives - Dr. Rich Swier

Pope Francis and the Grand Sheikh of al-Azhar, Ahmed el-Tayeb, early this year published “A Document On Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together,” and it’s as filled with falsehoods and wishful thinking as one would expect coming from a practiced deceiver such as el-Tayeb and someone so eager to be deceived as Pope Francis. Here’s one:

Terrorism is deplorable and threatens the security of people, be they in the East or the West, the North or the South, and disseminates panic, terror and pessimism, but this is not due to religion, even when terrorists instrumentalize it. It is due, rather, to an accumulation of incorrect interpretations of religious texts and to policies linked to hunger, poverty, injustice, oppression and pride. This is why it is so necessary to stop supporting terrorist movements fuelled by financing, the provision of weapons and strategy, and by attempts to justify these movements even using the media. All these must be regarded as international crimes that threaten security and world peace. Such terrorism must be condemned in all its forms and expressions…

Terrorism is due to “an accumulation of incorrect interpretations of religious texts and to policies linked to hunger, poverty, injustice, oppression and pride.”

So are the authoritative sources in Sunni Islam, the schools of Sunni jurisprudence (madhahib), all incorrect in their interpretations of the Qur’an and Sunnah? Here is what they say about jihad warfare against non-Muslims:

Shafi’i school: A Shafi’i manual of Islamic law that was certified in 1991 by the clerics at Al-Azhar University, one of the leading authorities in the Islamic world, as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy, stipulates about jihad that “the caliph makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians…until they become Muslim or pay the non-Muslim poll tax.” It adds a comment by Sheikh Nuh Ali Salman, a Jordanian expert on Islamic jurisprudence: the caliph wages this war only “provided that he has first invited [Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians] to enter Islam in faith and practice, and if they will not, then invited them to enter the social order of Islam by paying the non-Muslim poll tax (jizya)…while remaining in their ancestral religions.” (‘Umdat al-Salik, o9.8).

Of course, there is no caliph today, and hence the oft-repeated claim that Osama et al are waging jihad illegitimately, as no state authority has authorized their jihad. But they explain their actions in terms of defensive jihad, which needs no state authority to call it, and becomes “obligatory for everyone” (‘Umdat al-Salik, o9.3) if a Muslim land is attacked. The end of the defensive jihad, however, is not peaceful coexistence with non-Muslims as equals: ‘Umdat al-Salik specifies that the warfare against non-Muslims must continue until “the final descent of Jesus.” After that, “nothing but Islam will be accepted from them, for taking the poll tax is only effective until Jesus’ descent” (o9.8).

Hanafi school: A Hanafi manual of Islamic law repeats the same injunctions. It insists that people must be called to embrace Islam before being fought, “because the Prophet so instructed his commanders, directing them to call the infidels to the faith.” It emphasizes that jihad must not be waged for economic gain, but solely for religious reasons: from the call to Islam “the people will hence perceive that they are attacked for the sake of religion, and not for the sake of taking their property, or making slaves of their children, and on this consideration it is possible that they may be induced to agree to the call, in order to save themselves from the troubles of war.”

However, “if the infidels, upon receiving the call, neither consent to it nor agree to pay capitation tax [jizya], it is then incumbent on the Muslims to call upon God for assistance, and to make war upon them, because God is the assistant of those who serve Him, and the destroyer of His enemies, the infidels, and it is necessary to implore His aid upon every occasion; the Prophet, moreover, commands us so to do.” (Al-Hidayah, II.140)

Maliki school: Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), a pioneering historian and philosopher, was also a Maliki legal theorist. In his renowned Muqaddimah, the first work of historical theory, he notes that “in the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and (the obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force.” In Islam, the person in charge of religious affairs is concerned with “power politics,” because Islam is “under obligation to gain power over other nations.”

Hanbali school: The great medieval theorist of what is commonly known today as radical or fundamentalist Islam, Ibn Taymiyya (Taqi al-Din Ahmad Ibn Taymiyya, 1263-1328), was a Hanbali jurist. He directed that “since lawful warfare is essentially jihad and since its aim is that the religion is God’s entirely and God’s word is uppermost, therefore according to all Muslims, those who stand in the way of this aim must be fought.”

“Leave them; they are blind guides. And if a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.” (Matthew 15:14)

“Pope Embraces Anti-Semitic Imam Who Wants Christian Converts Killed,” by Jules Gomes, Church Militant, November 18, 2019:

Hours before Pope Francis called for the abolition of capital punishment on Friday, he warmly embraced Grand Imam Al-Tayeb, who has expressed his desire that Muslims who convert to Christianity should be executed.

The world’s best-known Muslim leader has also called homosexuality a disease, dismissed the idea of human rights as “ticking time-bombs” and has endorsed suicide attacks against Jewish men, women and children.

Earlier that day in the pontiff’s address to the International Association of Penal Law, Pope Francis compared the rhetoric of conservative politicians who oppose the homosexual agenda to speeches made by Adolf Hitler.

“These are actions that are typical of Nazism, that with its persecution of Jews, gypsies, people with homosexual orientation, represent an excellent model of the throwaway culture and culture of hatred,” he said.

When speaking to al-Tayeb, however, the Holy Father discussed the objectives in the document “Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together,” which he co-signed with the Grand Imam in February.

The two religious leaders engaged in “cordial discussions,” according to the Vatican, talking about the protection of minors in the digital world and goals achieved since Pope Francis’ recent visit to the United Arab Emirates.

In 2016, Al-Tayeb called for “unrepentant apostates” from Islam to be killed. “The four schools of law all concur that apostasy is a crime, that an apostate should be asked to repent, and that if he does not, he should be killed,” he said in an interview in Arabic on television, explaining:

There are two verses in the Quran that clearly mention apostasy, but they did not define a specific punishment. They left the punishment for the Hereafter, for Allah to punish them as He sees fit. But there are two hadiths [on apostasy]. According to the more reliable of the two, a Muslim can only be killed in one of three cases, one of which is abandoning his religion and leaving the community.

Sheikh Al-Tayeb continued:

We must examine these two expressions: “Abandoning religion” is described as “leaving the community.” All the early jurisprudents understood that this applies to someone who leaves his religion, regardless of whether he left and opposed his community or not. All the early jurisprudents said that such a person should be killed, regardless of whether it is a man or a woman — with the exception of the Hanafi School, which says that a female apostate should not be killed.

Asked about the exception for the female apostate, the Muslim theologian responded: “Because it is inconceivable that a woman would rebel against her community.”

The global leader of Sunni Islam, which constitutes the majority of the world’s Muslim population, also dismissed the concept of human rights as “full of ticking time-bombs” and insisted that “the [Islamic and Western] civilizations are different.”

“Our civilization is based on religion and moral values, whereas their [Western] civilization is based more on personal liberties and some moral values,” he told his interviewer.

The Grand Imam’s most severe condemnation was reserved for homosexuality: “My opinion was — and I said this [in the West] — that no Muslim society could ever consider sexual liberty, homosexuality and so on to be a personal right. Muslim societies consider these things to be diseases, which must be fought and treated.”…