A highly controversial fatwa calling for resistance attacks against all Americans in Iraq -- including civilians -- has sparked a heated debate among Islamic scholars and Arab pundits. Gihan Shahine investigates Qatar-based Egyptian Islamic scholar , who heads the European Council on Fatwa and Research, has finally cleared up the controversy surrounding his recent fatwa (religious edict), which appeared to allow the killing of US civilians in Iraq, while condemning -- at the same time -- the abduction of innocent journalists and the mutilation of dead bodies as blasphemous. El-Qaradawi, a scholar known both for his strong stance against the 9/11 attacks (when he also urged Muslims worldwide to donate blood to help the victims) and his anti- terrorist writings, explained to a press conference in Doha this week that "Islam only allows killing those engaged in combat, and definitely not civilians." But, for El-Qaradawi, whether there are actually "any innocent US civilians in Iraq" remains an open question. El-Qaradawi arrived at his initial edict, which he pronounced during a seminar at Cairo's Press Syndicate two weeks ago, based on the idea that "all Americans present in Iraq are combatants, and so, it is a religious obligation to fight them until they leave the country." While explaining that Islam prohibits killing innocent civilians, El- Qaradawi speculated that, "there is no difference between US military personnel and civilians in Iraq since both have come to invade the country," and since "civilians are actually there to serve the US occupying forces." Perhaps realising that such an absolute generalisation could lead to the wrongful death of a non-combatant, El-Qaradawi quickly retracted his fatwa this week, saying that "in case it is difficult to make a distinction between military personnel and civilians, [people] should take caution not to kill a person unless they have definite proof this person is actually engaged in military action, because human life is sacred." El-Qaradawi also repeated his call for the immediate release of the two French journalists who had been kidnapped in Iraq by a group called the Islamic Army on 20 August. "If those kidnappers care about Islam's reputation, then they should free the two French journalists," he told the audience at the Cairo Press Syndicate seminar. El-Qaradawi explained that the French journalists played an important role in helping the Iraqi cause by "breaking the American monopoly on relaying information and facts [on the situation in Iraq] to the outside world." El-Qaradawi also mentioned France's foreign policy dealings with the Islamic and Arab worlds, "which could serve as a model for other countries." It was El-Qaradawi's initial statement, however, that immediately provoked a heated public debate. Considered one of contemporary Islam's foremost scholars, many people were worried that Islamist groups would blindly follow El-Qaradawi's fatwa. The Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR), for one, was quick to slam the fatwa as "granting legitimacy for the abduction and killing of innocent civilians, as well as [impoverished] Arab and Egyptian workers in Iraq," who may be seen as falling into the category of extending services to the US occupying forces. The EOHR also called upon Al-Azhar and Sunni Islamic clerics to rule against the killing and abduction of civilians, including journalists and workers. Many Islamic scholars were equally immediate in their reactions, opposing El-Qaradawi's perception of all US civilians in Iraq as combatants, while some Iraqi intellectuals told Al- Ahram Weekly they were worried about El-Qaradawi's fatwa being misinterpreted by some Islamic groups, thus encouraging the abduction and killing of more innocent civilians in Iraq, and driving the Iraqi resistance away from more legitimate military targets. "In Islam, we cannot kill on speculative grounds," argued Abdel- Mo'eti Bayoumi, member of the Islamic Research Academy (IRA) and deputy head of Parliament's Religious Affairs Committee. "I mean, we cannot tell for sure that every single US civilian in Iraq is engaged in combat or serving the coalition forces." Bayoumi told the Weekly that, "only when a civilian proves to be serving the occupying forces in any way -- providing food, petrol or information, for instance -- should he be resisted in the same way invaders are." Shiekh Gamal Qotb, former Head of Al-Azhar's Fatwa Council, would rather put it this way: "The occupying forces, regardless of why they came to Iraq, are considered aggressors, and fighting them is a religious duty." According to Qotb, the same rule applies "to whoever serves those aggressors and helps prolong their presence in Iraq, whether he is an American or non-American, civilian or military personnel." But those who do not help the occupying power, Qotb insists, "should remain safe inside and outside Iraq". Bayoumi argues, however, that "there may be a US civilian who is not serving the occupation in any way -- journalists and the like. Even if those innocent civilians only account for one in a thousand, we should still take them into account when issuing a fatwa, because human life is sacred," Bayoumi said. According to Iraqi political analyst Nazem Abdel-Wahed Jassour, there are many US civilians in Iraq who have nothing to do with the occupation forces, including doctors, media and relief aid personnel, and engineers working on the construction of Iraqi infrastructure. According to Jassour, there are also American anti-war campaigners who stage demonstrations in Iraq that call for the termination of the US occupation. "We should focus our targets on military personnel," Jassour told the Weekly. "Otherwise, we would be marring the image of the Iraqi resistance, conveying a wrong message about Islam, and diverting our efforts away from our main target." Jassour said he was relieved that El-Qaradawi had retracted his fatwa because "many Iraqis are already mixing cards, and are seriously failing to define their real enemy." Unofficial sources estimate that up to 40 foreigners have been kidnapped during a spate of abductions that began in early April when US forces laid siege to the Sunni town of Fallujah and fought a Shia uprising in the south. Although most of the hostages were ultimately released, several were slain, including 12 Nepalese workers and an Egyptian named Mohamed Metwalli, who was alleged to have been spying for US forces. The EOHR says that Egypt has, thus far, received the dead bodies of 28 Egyptian workers, whose corpses displayed marks of torture and murder. The organisation concludes that those workers were probably victims of Iraqi resistance, which targeted them on the grounds that they worked for Saudi and Kuwaiti companies, which are thought to be serving the coalition forces. For his part, Iraqi academic Wameed Nazmi condemns the abduction and murder of "journalists and impoverished labourers" as acts of terrorism. "It would be enough to just target a van carrying supplies for the coalition forces, rather than abducting impoverished drivers who are working for bread," Nazmi said. "We are against the abduction of journalists who help convey our message to the outside world. This is terrorism, not resistance." The abductions of foreigners, however, seem to be continuing at a steady rate, and, as Canon White, an adviser to the US-run Coalition Provisional Authority, told The Christian Science Monitor, "kidnappings are becoming more organised and structured" and are almost impossible to trace, since the kidnappers probably sell their foreign hostages to Islamic militant groups. One solution, proposed by an Anglican church envoy spearheading a search for hostages in Iraq, was for senior Sunni and Shia clerics to issue a joint fatwa, forbidding kidnapping. Bayoumi seemed to be doing just that when he told the Weekly that it was sacrilegious to abduct an innocent civilian in order to send a message to his native country, as has been the case with the kidnapping of the French journalists. "Even in times of war, Islam prohibits terrorising civilians, killing women, children and elderly people, cutting or burning trees, disturbing monks in their caverns, merchants in their shops, or farmers on their lands."
