Decapitation in Islamic History While some Islamists might justify murder of prisoners on Quranic prescription, others reinforce their conclusions by drawing analogies to events during the almost 1,400 years of Islamic history. Here beheading of captives is a recurring theme. Both Islamic regimes and their opposition have utilized beheadings as both military and judicial policy. The practice of beheading non-Muslim captives extends back to the Prophet himself. Ibn Ishaq (d. 768 C.E.), the earliest biographer of Muhammad, is recorded as saying that the Prophet ordered the execution by decapitation of 700 men of the Jewish Banu Qurayza tribe in Medina for allegedly plotting against him.[21] Islamic leaders from Muhammads time until today have followed his model. Examples of decapitation, of both the living and the dead, in Islamic history are myriad. Yusuf b. Tashfin (d. 1106) led the Al-Murabit (Almoravid) Empire to conquer from western Sahara to central Spain. After the battle of Zallaqa in 1086, he had 24,000 corpses of the defeated Castilians beheaded and piled them up to make a sort of minaret for the muezzins who, standing on the piles of headless cadavers, sang the praises of Allah.[22] He then had the detached heads sent to all the major cities of North Africa and Spain as an example of Christian impotence. The Al-Murabits were conquered the following century by the Al-Muwahhids (Almohads), under whose rule Castilian Christian enemies were beheaded after any lost battles. The Ottoman Empire was the decapitation state par excellence. Upon the Ottoman victory over Christian Serbs at the battle of Kosovo in 1389, the Muslim army beheaded the Serbian king and scores of Christian prisoners. At the battle of Varna in 1444, the Ottomans beheaded King Ladislaus of Hungary and put his head at the tip of a long pike … and brandished it toward the Poles and Hungarians. Upon the fall of Constantinople, the Ottomans sent the head of the dead Byzantine emperor on tour to major cities in the sultans domains. The Ottomans even beheaded at least one Eastern Orthodox patriarch. In 1456, the sultan allowed the grand mufti of the empire to personally decapitate King Stephen of Bosnia and his sons—even though they had surrendered and, seven decades later, the sultan ordered 2,000 Hungarian prisoners beheaded. In the early nineteenth century, even the British fell victim to the Ottoman scimitar. An 1807 British expedition to Egypt resulted in a few hundred spiked British heads left rotting in the sun outside Rosetta.[23] Decapitation has also been quite common among Muslims whenever orthodoxy confronts Mahdist movements. According to Islamic tradition, the Mahdi, or rightly-guided one will come before the end of time to usher in a worldwide, perfect Islamic state. Every few generations, a charismatic leader emerges claiming to be the Mahdi. Since the Mahdi is the harbinger of just government, then any leader he challenges is by nature corrupt. The fervor of such claims often leads both the orthodoxy and the Mahdists to label the other unbelievers, allowing them to invoke Quranic verse 47:3 and behead captives. A prime example of this occurred 500 years ago in the Gujarati sultanate of western India. Sayyid Muhammad Jawnpuri (d. 1505 C.E.) asserted that he was the Mahdi.[24] His followers, who came to be known as Mahdavis, accused the Gujarati sultans and religious officials of takfir (unbelief). The sultans fought back, often displaying the severed heads of Mahdavi caliphs in order to intimidate would-be followers. The Gujarati brutality served its purpose and, by the end of the sixteenth century, the Mahdavis faded into oblivion. Perhaps the most famous Mahdist movement—and one of very few to gain power[25]—was that led by Muhammad Ahmad of Sudan in the late nineteenth century. In 1880, Muhammad Ahmad declared himself Mahdi and led jihad against the Ottoman Empire, its Egyptian subjects, and their British allies.[26] He and his followers beheaded opponents, Christian and Muslim alike. This Mahdis most famous victim was Charles Gordon, a British general in Sudan on behalf of Anglo-Egyptian forces. Rudolf Slatin, an Austrian taken prisoner by the Mahdist army, later described the Mahdists triumphant reaction to Gordons execution in January 1885. One historian related how: Three black [Mahdist] soldiers were in the lead, one of whom he recognized as a man named Shatta. … Shatta was carrying something wrapped in a bloody cloth. Slatin stood silent as they stopped in front of him, their faces triumphant. With a smile, Shatta undid the cloth while the crowd shouted. Slatin looked: it was Gordons severed head … Is this not the head of your uncle, the unbeliever?[27] While not as graphic as an Al-Qaeda video, the impact on Victorian society was the same. Revenge would take years. Muhammad Ahmad died, probably of typhoid or malaria, in 1885, but his state fell to the British army only in 1898. A half century later, in the years after Mustafa Kemal Atatürk founded the Turkish Republic and imposed secular government, a revolutionary religious leader named Mehmet led a short-lived but violent Mahdist revolt.[28] Mehmet was a Sufi—an Islamic mystic—of the Naqshabandi order. Mehmet and his six disciples adopted the identities of the Seven Sleepers of the Quran: seven Christian youth who fell asleep in a cave during the time of Roman persecution of Christians in the third century C.E. and emerged, unscathed, over a century later when Rome had joined the faith.[29] By such identification, Mehmet and his Mahdist disciples sought to invoke the Quranic imagery of the small band of true believers standing against state idolatry. From Manisa, in west-central Turkey, Mehmet and his followers trekked to Menemen on the Aegean coast where, in the main mosque, Mehmet declared himself the Mahdi and called for the reestablishment of Islamic law canceled by Atatürk. Mehmets enthusiastic supporters overwhelmed the local Turkish army garrison. They killed the commander and put his severed head on a pole and paraded it around town. The uprising was short-lived, though. The Turkish army rallied its forces and crushed the revolt, executing all involved. Beheading has particular prominence in Saudi Arabia. In 2003 alone, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia beheaded more than fifty people.[30] This number included both Muslim and non-Muslim workers. Over the past two decades, the Saudis have decapitated at least 1,100 for alleged crimes ranging from drug running to witchcraft and apostasy.[31] The Saudi government not only uses beheadings to punish criminals but also to terrorize potential opponents. One famous example involved a Saudi national guardsman named Juhayman al-Utaybi. In late 1979, the start of the fifteenth century in the Islamic calendar, Utaybi declared his brother-in-law Muhammad bin Abd Allah al-Qahtani to be the Mahdi. They seized control of the holy mosque in Mecca and called on all Saudis to rise up against the government in Riyadh.[32] The house of Saud responded forcibly with a shock-and-awe campaign. After a bloody battle, they regained control of the holy mosque. Within weeks, they had hunted down and either killed or captured the Mahdists. In early 1980, the Saudi government publicly beheaded Utaybi and his imprisoned followers. While outsiders may consider the Saudi practice barbaric, most Saudi executions are swift, completed in one sword blow. Zarqawi and his followers have chosen a slow, torturous sawing method to terrorize the Western audience. All these various justifications contribute to the rash of beheadings in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. Because Zarqawi and his followers consider the Iraqi and Saudi governments to be illegitimate, they find no injunction within Islamic law that would prohibit execution of prisoners. Indeed, Zarqawi has commented that he would accept comments from ulema regarding whether his killing operations are permitted or forbidden according to Islam—provided that the ulema are not connected to a regime and are offering opinions out of personal conviction, and not to please their rulers[33] Islamist beheadings may be condemned by the imam of the great mosque of Mecca and by religious leaders in Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon,[34] but like self-styled mahdis throughout Islamic history, Zarqawi and Islamist terrorists simply dismiss these fatwas (religious rulings) as empty rhetoric from lackey regimes. Osama bin Ladens Al-Qaeda is also on record as supporting beheadings, including that of at least one Egyptian worker in Iraq whom they classified as a nonbeliever by virtue of his citizenship in an apostate regime, as well as his presumed approval of the U.S. actions in Iraq.[35] Increasingly, Islamist groups conflate unbelievers, combatants, and prisoners of war, which, coupled with their claim to Islamic legitimacy, provides them with a license to decapitate. Conclusion Islamic civilization is not a historical anomaly in its sanction of decapitation.[36] The Roman Empire beheaded citizens (such as the Christian Saint Paul) while they crucified noncitizens (such as Jesus Christ). French revolutionaries employed the guillotine to decapitate opponents. Nevertheless, Islam is the only major world religion today that is cited by both state and non-state actors to legitimize beheadings. And two major aspects of decapitation in an Islamic context should be noted: first, the practice has both Quranic and historical sanction. It is not the product of a fabricated tradition. Second, in contradiction to the assertions of apologists, both Muslim and non-Muslim, these beheadings are not simply a brutal method of drawing attention to the Islamist political agenda and weakening opponents will to fight. Zarqawi and other Islamists who practice decapitation believe that God has ordained them to obliterate their enemies in this manner. Islam is, for this determined minority of Muslims, anything but a religion of peace. It is, rather, a religion of the sword with the blade forever at the throat of the unbeliever.
Posted on: Thu, 08 Jan 2015 05:04:09 +0000
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