Author: Dean E. Murphy
Publication: The New York Times
Date: June 30, 2001
A radical Muslim cleric in Jordan
has issued a religious opinion that advocates the death of a Muslim scholar
in the United States in punishment for a book he wrote about Islam.
The cleric, Sheik Abdel Moneim Abu
Zant, declared the author, Khalid Duran, an apostate and called on Muslims
in the United States "to unify against him," a Jordanian newspaper aligned
with the cleric reported. The paper also reported that Mr. Abu Zant urged
two prominent Sunni Islamic religious institutions to issue judgments of
apostasy against Mr. Duran, the equivalent of a death sentence.
The book, "Children of Abraham,"
an introduction to Islam, was commissioned by the American Jewish Committee
as part of a project to promote better understanding between Jews and Muslims.
It was reported to be offensive for "distorting Islam" by focusing too
much on issues like female circumcision, the relationship between men and
woman, whether Ramadan observances decreased productivity and whether head
scarves contributed to marital infidelity.
The edict was reported on June 6
in the weekly Arabic newspaper Al- Shahed, or The Observer, which is aligned
with the Islamic Action Front, the party of the Muslim Brotherhood, to
which Mr. Abu Zant belongs. It is the main political opposition party in
Jordan.
The newspaper reported that the
book's publication was "evidence of an evil intention to besmear the image
of Islam in the United States." The intended result of the edict was that
Mr. Duran's "blood will be shed," the newspaper said.
Michael J. Wildes, Mr. Duran's lawyer,
said that Mr. Duran, 61, had been moved from his suburban Washington home
and was being provided 24-hour private security.
The American Jewish Committee condemned
the threat but said it had no plans to withdraw the book, which is for
sale on the Internet and will be in bookstores soon.
"In a free society no one should
tolerate the threat to kill an author," said David A. Harris, executive
director of the Jewish group, which is also publishing a book about Judaism
for Muslims. "All Americans, not least Muslims, should immediately speak
out against this outrage and assault on democratic society."
Mr. Duran, who was born in Germany
and moved to the United States in the 1980's, said yesterday that he had
received death threats over the years because of writings that criticize
extremist Islamic groups. But he had never been the target of a religious
edict.
He said the edict surprised him
because unlike much of his academic and journalistic work, "Children of
Abraham" was meant to have no particular point of view. Its aim was to
present a variety of opinions.
"One thing is clear: He has not
read the book," Mr. Duran said of Mr. Abu Zant. "I hear every day from
other Muslims who have read the book that they like the book."
David Schenker, a research fellow
at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said the edict by Mr.
Abu Zant did not carry the same religious authority as the one against
Salman Rushdie, which was issued in 1989 by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Mr. Schenker described Mr. Abu Zant as more of a populist religious figure
than an accomplished Islamic religious scholar.
Even before its publication, the
book and its author were criticized by some Muslims in the United States,
including the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, an advocacy
group in Washington that often sides with Muslim hard-liners on Middle
East issues. The groups questioned Mr. Duran's credentials and suggested
that the book sensationalized some issues, like the treatment of women
in Islamic societies.
Officials at the American Jewish
Committee said that attacks by CAIR most likely laid the foundation for
Mr. Abu Zant's edict, particularly since the article in Al-Shahed mentioned
the American group.
But Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman
for CAIR, said the Jewish organization was making too much of the Al- Shahed
article. Mr. Hooper described the article as "an editorial in a party newspaper
that nobody ever heard of." He said that Mr. Abu Zant was making a recommendation
to the Sunni religious authorities, not issuing a death sentence of his
own.
"Even if he said what the American
Jewish Committee says he said, it is not a fatwa, it is just some guy in
a party newspaper in Jordan," Mr. Hooper said. "This isn't about a death
edict, it is about the American Jewish Committee going around pressing
Islamaphobic hot bottons trying to get publicity for their deceitful book."
But Reuven Paz, academic director
of the International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism, near Tel Aviv,
said that Sheik Abu Zant's declaration was serious. "What Abu Zant said
literally is that his blood is `permissible,' " he said. "Though there
is no direct translation of that in English, it means that any Muslim can
and should kill Duran."
Mr. Abu Zant, a former member of
the Jordanian parliament, was jailed in 1999 for denouncing his government's
decision to close the Amman office of the militant Islamic movement Hamas.
Last year he issued a religious threat against a Jordanian poet and he
has joined other clerics in denouncing Pokemon as a Jewish plot against
Islam.
