Boreal

The Man Who Made the Murder

of Priests a Priority

The Muslim 100 - The Lives, Thoughts and Achievements of the Most Influential Muslims in History by Muhammad Mojlum Khan is a well-written, deceptively amateurish, powerful convincing argument to convert to Islam. The author, an Imam to Her Majesty’s Prison Service, in the following excerpt from his panegyric, lauds Ibn Taymiyyah (b. 1263 - d.1328) as "the Muslim world's greatest thinker, ideologue and warrior."

Back to the Qur'an and Sunnah is a famous slogan which has been used by Muslim scholars and reformers throughout Islamic history to summon wayward Muslim rulers and the masses back to the original, pristine Islam as promulgated by the Prophet Muhammad.

The call, more often than not, worked due to the Muslim belief that the Qur'an is God's final communication to mankind, while the normative practice (sunnah) of the Prophet provides a powerful and pertinent commentary on the Divine revelation. In other words, these two sources combined provide a potent methodology for living a truly Islamic life.

Ibn Taymiyyah was an extraordinary scholar and reformer whose religious idea and thoughts have continued to exert a powerful influence on scholars and reformers to this day…

It is not possible to exaggerate Ibn Taymiyyah's influence and greatness.

Widely considered to be one of the Muslim world's greatest thinker, ideologue and warrior, his religious ideas and thoughts have inspired generations of outstanding Islamic scholars, thinkers and reformers.

It is a testament to how far we have regressed in our humanity that the doctrine espoused by Taymiyyah, his Muslim contemporaries found so offensive that they threw him in jail on a number of occasions, and that is where he died, in a Damascus prison in 1328.

Today, the teachings of the man who made the murder of priests and monks a priority is being taught in British prisons.

It is thanks to an article in Le Point (France's Time Magazine equivalent), How Islamists Justify their Killing of Priests, July 16, 2016, that I got to know the real Ibn Taymiyyah. Following are pertinent excerpts (my translation) from the pages of Le Point:

Specializing in strategic analysis, the Swiss company JMF Research and Analysis has found postings on social networks that attempt to differentiate between the killing of monks and priests. Quoting jurist Muhammad Amin Ibn Abidin, who died in 1836

"The monk in his monastery should not be killed nor the people of churches that do not interact with people outside the church. But if they intermingle, then they are killed as a priest."

That is how some Islamists during the Algerian civil war justified the killing of the monks of Tibhirine. Even if they did not proselytize, they interacted with the villagers [outside the walls of the monastery] going as far as to provide medical care.

If the monks remain cloistered in their monastery, they do not pose a threat to Islam. Not so for priests like Jacques Hamel who "minister to the faithful" and therefore are considered "leaders of the miscreants" say the jihadists.

Taqi ad-Din Ahmad Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328) goes further, making the murder of priests a priority in times of war.

Islamic State considers itself at war with the "crusaders" and the Jews.

The salafist theologian Taymiyya was largely forgotten until he became the darling of Saudi Wahhabis and later militants groups seeking to justify their violence.

For JMF Research and Analysis, it is clear that supporters of Islamic State are trying to "justify the murder of a priest to as wide a Muslim audience as possible, and prepare it for similar attacks."

[In the] July 2016 issue of Dabiq, Islamic State's magazine, entitled "Break the cross" it is not only about fighting the Christians and the Jews and striking them "behind enemy lines" you have to hate them!

In an article entitled: "Why do we hate* and why we are fighting" the primary reason for this hatred has nothing to do with the foreign policy of Western countries, but simply because Christians and Jews, not being Muslim, break the unity of Allah, an unforgivable crime

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* They hate because they are told to:

"Allah has warned us in the Koran, do not befriend the kuffar, do not align yourself with the kuffar (Arabic word for unbelievers, now mainly used as a derogatory term for Christians and Jews); the verses are so many and so numerous I can’t recite every one of them.”

From an exhortation made to students from a British madrassa by Abu Yusuf Riyadh-ul-Haq, an Islamic scholar based in the United Kingdom, not to associate with Christians and Jews.

BBC documentary, British Schools, Islamic Rules

Bernard Payeur August 17, 2016