When Muslims
Mutilate Themselves for Allah
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"Infidels," or non-Muslims—or those who are not Muslim enough
or the wrong kinds of Muslims—are often seen as the natural
recipients of Islamic violence as prescribed by Islamic law, or Sharia.
Few, however, are aware that Sharia can cause individual Muslims to do
violence upon themselves.
According to France24,
on January 15, a Muslim boy in Pakistan "cut off his own hand
believing he had committed blasphemy, only to be celebrated by his parents
and neighbours for the act."
After an imam told a mosque gathering after Friday prayers that those
who love Muhammad always say their prayers, he rhetorically asked if anyone
present doesn't pray. Mohammad Anwar, the overly eager 15-year-old boy,
impulsively raised his hand, apparently thinking that the imam was asking
who among the crowd does, as opposed to doesn't, pray.
The response was typical: "The crowd swiftly accused him [the boy]
of blasphemy so he went to his house and cut off the hand he had raised,
put it on a plate, and presented it to the cleric."
Sharia can lead individual Muslims
to do violence upon themselves.
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On his way back to the imam, the boy was "greeted by villagers in
the street as his parents proclaim[ed] their pride" in the young
Mohammad for amputating his blasphemous appendage.
Although this story received some media attention, it is not aberrant.
In 2013, Ali Afifi, then 28-years-old, told
his story, which appeared primarily on Arabic language media. A
practicing Muslim in Egypt, Ali cut off both his hands to punish himself
for, and prevent himself from, stealing. He had been stealing since
childhood and couldn't stop, or, as he put it, couldn't overcome "the
devil's whisperings."
He went to several Islamic clerics asking them to cut off his hand
"in accordance with Islamic Sharia" (normative Islamic law calls
for the amputation of the hands of thieves, see Koran 5:38). They refused,
saying they didn't have the authority and that he should find those
responsible for such issues.
So Ali took matters into his own hands (pun unintended). One day he
placed his left hand on a train track and waited for the locomotive. A
speeding train came and severed his hand. After Ali regained consciousness,
he ran to the townspeople waving his bloodied and handless arm while
yelling, "O People, I was a thief, and praise Allah, he has forgiven
me."
Yet it wasn't long before he returned to stealing with his right hand.
So, in Ali's own words:
I saw that I did not deserve Allah's
mercy unless I amputated my other hand. Shortly before January's revolution
[2011], I myself amputated my right hand using the same method I used for
amputating my left hand [placing it under a speeding train]. I did this
because I discovered that nothing was changing; I cannot repent unless I
amputate my hand. Thus, I became the authority [sultan], judge, and
executioner.... I went to the railroad tracks with joy, placing my right
hand under the wheels of the train, experiencing peace of mind knowing that
I will not steal again. Despite feeling this peace of mind as a result of
my repentance to Allah, my family and neighbors were in shock.
During his 2013 interview, Ali said he prays to become a role model for
every repentant Muslim and that authorities would begin to implement
Islamic Sharia as he applied it to himself.
What does one make of these Muslims who enforce Sharia's draconian punishments
on themselves, in this case, hand chopping? In retrospect, the Pakistani
boy may have acted preemptively: in Pakistan, the blasphemy accusation is
punishable by death, especially when the angry mob (in this case, the
mosque congregation) gets involved. He may have reasoned that personally
cutting his hand off would not only appease the mob but gain him some
praise, as it did.
The alternative could've been murder—such as when Pakistan's Muslim
mobs threw a Christian couple in an oven and, when the husband and his
pregnant wife didn't catch fire, the mob pulled them out, tied flammable
material to them, threw them back in, and watched to cries of "Allahu
Akbar" as the "blasphemers" slowly roasted to death.
At any rate, if a very small minority of Muslims are willing to punish
themselves with extreme severity "according to Islamic Sharia,"
then surely a very large majority of Muslims will only be too happy to
enforce Sharia on non-Muslims, the "infidels"—whom Islam
commands Muslims to hate on principal, and to manifest this hate by abusing,
plundering, enslaving, raping, and slaughtering them.
From here, one can begin to understand the greater part of world history
and current events where Islam is concerned.
Raymond Ibrahim is a Judith
Friedman Rosen fellow at the Middle East Forum and a Shillman fellow at the
David Horowitz Freedom Center.
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