A Merger of Mosque and State

Is suicide bombing allowed? The meaning of the Quran can depend more on politics than on scholarship

Newsweek/October 15, 2001
By Alan Zarembo

Sheik Muhammad Rafaat Othman is a lonely man. Though he teaches Islamic law at the most prestigious Islamic school in the Middle East, Cairo's Al-Azhar University, he has no congregation to preach to.

The soft-spoken professor, who wears thick, dark glasses, is one of the few clerics in Egypt who insist that the Quran unconditionally bans suicide, even as a tactic in a legitimate holy war. "As I interpret our religion, I don't see any evidence of exceptions to this rule," he says. "You can expose yourself to a situation where you might get killed. But you can't knowingly take your life." That is not the only problem Sheik Muhammad sees with suicide bombings: "Attacking innocent, unarmed people is forbidden. Prophet Muhammad demanded that we not kill women, children or the elderly. Attacks should be against soldiers and armed civilians."

Sheik Muhammad is a rare voice of intellectual honesty in the Muslim clerical world. One of the less-noted pitfalls of merging mosque and state is that interpreting the Quran often has more to do with politics than genuine scholarship. This is especially true in countries like Egypt, which keep a firm grip on the official version of religion in an attempt to marginalize those who want to replace the secular state with an Islamic one. Fatwas, or religious decrees, almost never challenge the government. So the response of most clerics after Sept. 11 was unsurprising. Like their U.S.-friendly governments, most condemned the terrorist attacks; they told the devout that any attempt to use the Quran to justify the killings was a perversion of Islam. But in the next breath many sheiks pointed out that exceptions can be made for Palestinian suicide bombers. Why? Because the official position of most Arab governments is that Israel is the enemy.

Voicing Doubts

Other clerics have been occasionally brave enough to voice their doubts even about that. In May, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Sheik Abdulaziz bin Abdallah al-Sheik, told a newspaper: "Jihad for God's sake is one of the best acts in Islam, but killing oneself in the midst of the enemy, or suicidal acts, I don't know whether this is endorsed by Sharia [Islamic law] or whether it is considered jihad for God. I'm afraid it could be suicide." Clerics throughout the Middle East quickly dismissed his opinion or claimed he was quoted out of context. Last month Sheik Muhammad Sayed Tantawi, one of Egypt's top religious figures, also publicly condemned the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings as "acts of terror directed against innocent people." But he, too, was quick to point out: "There is a very big difference between terrorists and those who defend their land. We are in solidarity with the Palestinian people because they are right."

And those are the moderates talking. All of which helps to explain why Sheik Muhammad is not especially outspoken about his view of suicide bombings. He also believes in the Egyptian government's version of Islam, even if it means occasionally banning books, declaring some groups illegal and closely monitoring clerics. And he believes in the Palestinian struggle. But he has searched the Quran and concluded that "there are no verses that say you can kill yourself for any reason. Suicide attackers would say that this is the only way to serve Allah. But Allah does not ask you to do it. You can serve him in other ways." Sheik Muhammad says that he knows of no other Islamic scholar in Egypt who shares his view. And though he occasionally fills in as preacher for the imam in his village in the Nile delta, he doesn't seem to be getting the word out.

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