Defining resistance

Fatwas issued by Muslim scholars who support the Iraqi resistance seem to be making an impact. Amira Howeidy reports

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Earlier this week Diaa Ali Khedr, head of the Iraqi National Guard (IRG) battalion in Samaraa, resigned from his job, together with 20 IRG soldiers. They said they quit in response to a fatwa issued by the Muslim Clerics Association prohibiting cooperation with the occupation forces in Iraq. While this is not the first time that members of the Iraqi security apparatus have shifted their allegiances -- some of them actually joined the resistance groups in Falluja during the coalition-led onslaught on the town -- these recent resignations may signal a turning point in how resistance to the occupation is perceived both inside and outside Iraq.

Efforts by the US/UK-led occupation to label resistance operations as "terrorism" have been actively supported by video- taped beheadings and indiscriminate killings of Iraqi and foreign hostages. The Iraqi interim government and the occupation authorities have repeatedly attributed operations directly targeting the occupation forces to former Baathists or Saddam Hussein loyalists.

The message is: there is no Iraqi resistance; but there are evil, mostly "foreign" militants, who continue to cross Iraq's borders with the objective of preventing peace and prosperity from flourishing in the country.

While international public opinion had so far been given little reason to believe otherwise -- even if logic dictates that where there is occupation, there will inevitably be resistance -- Muslim scholars in Iraq and across the world are trying to make a point of order amidst the chaos and the intense distortion that is Iraq.

In the past three weeks alone, three groups of prominent Muslim scholars (completely running against the official tide of their respective governments) have issued consecutive statements declaring firm support for the Iraqi resistance and prohibiting any form of cooperation with the occupation. These statements follow hard on the heels of a declaration by Iraq's Sunni Muslim Clerics Association (MCA) which openly defended the Iraqi resistance against occupation as a legitimate right. Three MCA clerics were assassinated last week, and several others have been arrested. On Tuesday, head of the MCA Hareth Al-Dari accused the interim government of being behind the assassinations.

Meanwhile support for the MCA's position is gaining momentum outside Iraq. On 5 November, only three days before the US Marines launched a massive military offensive on the rebel city of Falluja, a group of 26 prominent Saudi scholars and theologians issued a statement addressed to the Iraqi people which described jihad against the occupiers as "a duty".

"The Iraqis must defend their land, honour, oil, present and future against the imperial coalition, just as they resisted British occupation in the past," said the letter. It also warned against seeking to harm the resistance groups.

Two weeks later, the recently formed independent International Association of Muslim Scholars (IAMS) issued a statement supporting the Saudi scholars, but added a list of criteria that define which forms of resistance are acceptable in Islam. These controls measures included prohibiting aggression against non-combatants, even if they are citizens of the hostile party. "Islam does not permit the abduction of non-combatants or taking them as hostages," the IAMS statement declared, "and if they are taken as prisoners, then they are considered prisoners of war and must not be harmed or killed." However, the statement also went on to emphasise that "supporting the Iraqi people's resistance to the foreign occupation armies in order to liberate the land and regain national sovereignty is a legitimate duty for all those who are able, whether inside or outside Iraq."

Moving on to address the occupation forces themselves, the IAMS statement condemned the "unprecedented atrocities, which range from using weapons of mass destruction to scandalous violations of the Geneva Conventions and humanitarian law."

More importantly, the statement warned against attempts to "tarnish the image of Islam and the Iraqi resistance", in reference to hostage taking and decapitations.

"Honourable resistance must expose these crimes for what they are," the IAMS concluded.

On 26 November, a similar statement was issued by 26 Yemeni scholars and clerics.

Although these statements were not coordinated, the proximity of the dates of their release reflects growing and widespread frustration at the deterioration of the situation in Iraq under the occupation.

For one thing, says Mohamed Selim El-Awwa, a prominent Egyptian Islamist and secretary-general of the IAMS, "there is a need to address the Iraqi people on the one hand, and the Arab leaders who have been very passive on the other." More importantly, the IAMS -- an independent association based in Dublin, whose members are prominent scholars and theologians representing the entire Islamic world -- felt that they had to raise their voice on the issue of resistance, which in El-Awwa's words "has a very bad reputation".

"Resistance has its religious constraints," El-Awwa told Al- Ahram Weekly. "If these are transgressed, then resistance crosses the line and becomes a form of aggression. We wanted to warn the resistance against making that transgression." In fact, IAMS's statement went much further than that, charging that the resistance had been infiltrated by "Zionist and international intelligence services".

"This is something we strongly suspect," El-Awwa confirmed. "Islam does not condone these acts, and those who commit them [in the name of resistance] are not part of the resistance. It is no coincidence that decapitations or the brutal killing of innocent hostages always occur just after a scandal exposing the violations of the occupation forces," he argued. According to El-Awwa, within the limits laid down in the IAMS text, any form of resistance against the occupation is acceptable. "The resistance has to be violent, because the occupation itself -- which uses Apaches, bombs, and prohibited weapons -- is violent."

According to the Pentagon, 1,251 US soldiers have been killed in Iraq since the start of the invasion in March 2003. Meanwhile, 17,878 US soldiers from Iraq have been treated at the main overseas US military hospital in Germany, according to figures released by hospital officials this week.

The statements by the Muslim scholars coincided with the three-week long US military offensive on Falluja, which the interim government and US occupation forces claimed had become a safe haven for foreign fighters bent on terrorising the Iraqi people. But only 30 out of approximately 1,600 captured "insurgents" in Falluja were non-Iraqis. Thanks to the ferocity of the fighting, which lasted for weeks despite the daily bombing of the city by US Marines, Falluja has emerged as a symbol of resistance to the occupation. While Arab and international public opinion have both been repelled by the videos of decapitations and other repulsive and brutal treatments, there is little confusion over what Falluja represents. "It is definitely a source of inspiration, and really improved the image of the resistance," says El-Awwa. "It proved that the US is embroiled in a vicious war against an unarmed people."