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Chapter 43 - Aḥlām al-Naṣr and the Islamic State’s Justification for Execution by Burning

Bal Aṭʿanā Allāh idh Aḥraqnāhu yā ʿAbīda al-Rafāhiya (2015)

from Part VI - Alternative Sources for Islamic Legal Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2024

Omar Anchassi
Affiliation:
Universität Bern, Switzerland
Robert Gleave
Affiliation:
University of Exeter
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Summary

This chapter discusses the 2015 Islamic State (IS) publication Bal ʾaṭʿanā allāh idh aḥraqanāhu yā ʿabīda al-rafāhiyya (‘Nay, We Obeyed God When We Burned Him, You Slaves of the Luxurious Life’), which justifies the execution by immolation of Jordanian fighter pilot Muʿādh al-Kasāsba. The act prompted widespread criticism, sparking outrage across the Muslim world. This condemnation was even echoed within the Salafī jihādī, including the notorious Abū Muḥammad al-Maqdisī (b. 1959). The author of the piece, Shaymāʾ Haddād (b. 1992), more commonly known by her pseudonym Aḥlām al-Naṣr, exploits juristic disagreements in the medieval scholarly tradition to persuade the reader that immolation was never prohibited by the Prophet Muḥammad. Far from presenting the punishment of immolation as a timeless repetition of Prophetic custom, she claims that immolation is a necessary evil in a modern world where ‘incendiary weaponry’ (al-asliḥa fī hi ḥaraqa) - such as missiles, napalm, and cluster bombs - has become a norm in the conduct of war.

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Chapter
Information
Islamic Law in Context
A Primary Source Reader
, pp. 449 - 460
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

Primary Sources

al-Naṣr, Aḥlām (Shaymāʾ Ḥaddād). Bal Aṭʿanā Allāh idh Aḥraqnāhu yā ʿAbīda al-Rafāhiya (Elghureba Media, 2015), available at https://justpaste.it/je3o.Google Scholar
Ibn Ḥazm, Abū Muḥammad. al-Muḥallā bi-l-Āthār fī Sharḥ al-Mujallā bi-l-Ikhtiṣār (Beirut: Dār Ibn Ḥazm, 2016).Google Scholar
Ibn Qudāma, Muwaffaq al-Dīn. al-Mughnī (Riyadh: Dār ʿĀlam al-Kutub, 2013).Google Scholar
Ibn Rushd, (Averroes, ), Bidāyat al-Mujtahid wa-Nihāyat al-Muqtaṣid (Beirut: Dār Ibn Ḥazm, 1990).Google Scholar

Secondary Sources

Ghyoot, Mathias. ‘“Nay, We Obeyed God When We Burned Him”: Debating Immolation (Taḥrīq) between the Islamic State and al-Qāʿida’, in Violence in Islamic Thought from European Imperialism to the Post-Colonial Era, ed. Gleave, Robert and Baig, Mustafa (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2021), 249–90.Google Scholar
Lange, Christian. ‘Immolation’, in EI3, ed. Fleet, Kate, Krämer, Gudrun, Matringe, Denis, Nawas, John and Stewart, Devin J., available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_ei3_COM_32442.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lange, Christian. Justice, Punishment, and the Medieval Muslim Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marsham, Andrew. ‘Attitudes to the Use of Fire in Executions in Late Antiquity and Early Islam’, in Violence in Islamic Thought: From the Qur’an to the Mongols, ed. Gleave, Robert and Kristó-Nagy, István (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015), 106–27.Google Scholar
Mohamed, Mahfodz. ‘The Concept of Qiṣāṣ in Islamic Law’, Islamic Studies 21 (1982), 7788.Google Scholar
Pierret, Thomas and Cheikh, Mériam. ‘“I Am Very Happy Here”: Female Jihad in Syria as Self-Accomplishment’, Hawwa: Journal of Women of the Middle East and the Islamic World 13 (2015), 241–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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