MUST READ: FOR THE RECORD: THE MENDACITY OF MUSLIM AMERICAN SOCIETY

For The Record: The Mendacity of Muslim American Society
by Steven Emerson

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A recent article by Ohio blogger Patrick Poole reminded us of how Muslim American Society (MAS) Freedom Foundation director Mahdi Bray similarly told a lie while telling the truth. In December 2005, Bray issued a blanket denial that his organization's magazine, The American Muslim, published a fatwa in March 2002 condoning suicide bombings:

There is absolutely no such fatwa in the March 2002 edition of the American Muslim magazine. However, if one reads the fatwa section of our magazine, we have presented differing opinions, both literal and interpretive, by Islamic scholars throughout the world and provide a balanced view from all perspectives. In addition, the magazine carries our disclaimer that the views and opinions presented in the American Muslim magazine do not necessarily reflect the views of the magazine or the Muslim American Society.

Our views on suicide bombing are consistent, clear and unambiguous: We condemn it.
And he was right. The March 2002 printed edition of the American Muslim did not contain the fatwa. The June 2002 issue did.

In a section called "Fatwa Questions About Palestine," Sheikh Faysal Mawlawi was asked by a reader whether suicide bombings "are martyr operations and a kind of striving in Allah's Cause or not?" Mawlawi was deputy chairman of the European Council for Fatwa and Research. He cast suicide bombings as sacrificing one's "life for the Sake of performing a religious duty, which is Jihad against the enemy as scholars say…This means that martyr operations are totally different from the forbidden suicide."

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Pertinent Links:

1) For The Record: The Mendacity of Muslim American Society