A recent “religious edict”, or fatwa, issued by the Islamic Action Front has accused the government of apostasy. Naturally, this has not gone over well with the state, which issued a broad public rejection of the fatwa that evidently included a press release an editorial in the Jordan Times.
A statement issued by the Islamic Action Front (IAF) in Jordan was criticised by the Jordanian government who described it as ‘offensive’. The MB offshoot issued a non binding edict barring Muslims from assisting US and NATO troops in Afghanistan where they stressed sending troops to help NATO and America in Afghanistan or any other Muslim country is forbidden.
The government rejected the fatwa stressing it slighted the important role of armed forces in providing medical and
humanitarian aid to the Afghan people. It added that in turn it also helped preserve Jordan’s security and stability.…According to the IAF, the MB’s political arm, Muslims are not allowed to support non-Muslims in their aggression against
other Muslims and Afghanistan is a Muslim country. A government spokesman, however, insisted that Jordan will persist in assisting all brothers, including the Afghan people, in facing challenges. He added that such remarks were irresponsible and would tarnish Jordan’s role and the role of its armed forces. [source]
Ammon has the full text of the actual fatwa in Arabic.
The context for this fatwa seems a bit ambiguous to me, if not completely out of place. The last time Jordan’s role in the “war on terror” – a role it traditionally denied publicly – was brought to public attention was nearly a year ago with the Balawi fiasco in Afghanistan exposed Jordan’s cooperation with the CIA. So why is the IAF so keen on issuing a fatwa on this subject now? Moreover, why is the political arm of the organization, the IAF, issuing the fatwa?
The Muslim Brotherhood has not had a great year all together. Boycotting the elections aside, they’ve been drowning in internal conflicts – one that was made all the more apparent after several members broke from the official boycott and ran for elections, something the IAF is still dealing with several weeks later. The hawks and the doves of the organization have been having closed-door meetings in an effort to resolve differences over key wedge issues.
I’m wondering if the fatwa was issued to distract attention from the brotherhood’s current status-quo; one of an organization that has shut itself off from any political presence in parliament, and must deal with the gaping realities of its own internal structure, all the while energizing its base.
Fatwas tend to come in handy for that.
Oh sweet, but i just need to step back a bit. I found the usage of apostasy weird in this context because its unprecedented in it being used to describe a group of people and muslim are generally hesitant about even using it to describe individuals so after reading the arabic i found out that apostate is not used in the Fatwa. What they said is that any individual aligning himself with a foreign entity in a struggle against another muslim removes himself, not an entire country, from the house of islam and places himself into the house of war.
That has no reflection on his religious standing, since many muslims that are generally accepted as muslims have been placed in the house of war (Ismaili’s, Fatimids, Muatazilla, the safavid to name a few) and its not unheard of for muslims to enlist or align themselves with foreigners/christians to fight those muslims (French, British and Prussians in the case of the Safavid empire).
But it’s nice to seem them shooting themselves in the foot this way, and it’s just in time for the holiday season.
Maybe it was an opportunity? Why should the timing be suspicious? I don’t actually remember if it was Wikileaks that recently revealed Jordan had planned to send more troops or was it just a press release? Could that have sparked the whole thing?
About the Balawi CIA incident, we all know had they said anything during that extremely sensitive time for the royals, it would have been the end of the IAF. It could be highly unethical as well. That period was actually a very very sensitive time for all Jordanians and anyone that would have dared to say anything about Jordanians fighting there(including the king’s late relative) and how it’s in their opinion “haram”( WHICH IS NOT OF COURSE) would have entered in a non ending loop of trouble.
Anyway, it’s a stupid Fatwa. When these terrorists blow another wedding that is actually an IAF’s member ceremony, I am sure the situation will change very much! They say the fatwa means Muslims should not fight other Muslims in Afghanistan. They should know that the so called “Muslim” terrorists in Afghanistan have nothing to do with Islam. Their Fatwa stands true but unfortunately, IAF members can’t even interpret the words that come out of their mouths right!
Everybody knows that the Jordanians are one of the strongest Arab influences in the war against ‘Terror’ in Afghanistan/Iraq. Just because they got exposed, doesn’t mean they stopped.
Muhammad Walid Haji, the Sudanese Gitmo prisoner, said that there were Arab detectives present in Guantanamo, guess from what country? Yes, Jordan, and there’s no party without the Egyptians as they say.