Watermelon Fatwas: Speaking for God and Martyrdom, and Against Barbie
“We tell the kins of those who died to rejoice; your dead will be trated as martyrs on judgment day........”
It is always good to comfort the family of a victim. I know that a family and a relative could always use some solidarity and comfort......but I have never heard of this good shaikh (actually I don’t know many good shaikhs), and I just hope he is authorized by God to speak on his behalf. Of course one question springs to my scheming mind: what if one or two of the dead are Christians, Jews (okay, unfortunately not many of those left around there anymore), Hindus, or others? Will they be equal in martyrdom?
I will give the shaikh the benefit of the doubt and assume that he was sincere, as anybody in this situation will be. I will not cynically think that he jumped the gun just to get an edge over other competing shaikhs that the local university spawns by the thousands every year. No sir, I won’t do that.
The same applies to the Saudi shaikh who fatwad a week or so ago that anyone who dies of the Swine Flu will be considered a martyr. At the time I suggested on this site that al-Qaeda types might want to volunteer in hospitals to help the sick and that they may end up martyrs that way instead of blowing up innocent people in the heathen West and in the heathen (Shi’a) districts of Iraq. (I wonder: do the Egyptian soldiers who die in Mr. Mubarak’s ongoing War on Pigs become martyrs? I have not seen any fatwa on this, which is surprising).
It has always been common by shaikhs in Arab countries to issue fatwas supporting whatever policies the oligarchy in power advocates.
I recall one ‘shaikh’, a Dean of the College of Shari’a Theology at the university back home where I was teaching a course (in economics not theology) fatwad that Barbie Doll should be banned. He did not mention anything about Ken, though, which some women may have thought was sexist. Oddly, the oligarchy had never been known to be publicly hostile to Barbie, at least as far as I know.
Cheers
mhg
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