.Bridge-building imam Feisal Abdul Rauf was giving a crash course in Islam for FBI agents in March of 2003. When asked to clarify such terminology as ‘jihad’ and ‘fatwa’, Rauf stated (emphasis mine throughout):

“Jihad can mean holy war to extremists, but it means struggle to the average Muslim. Fatwah has been interpreted to mean a religious mandate approving violence, but is merely a recommendation by a religious leader. Rauf noted that the U.S. response to the Sept. 11 attacks could be considered a jihad, and pointed out that a renowned Islamic scholar had issued a fatwah advising Muslims in the U.S. military it was okay to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan.”

The renowned Islamic scholar that Rauf is referring to is Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi. In a New York Times article one month after 9/11, Rauf was quoted as saying:

“This fatwa is very significant. Yusuf Qaradawi is probably the most well-known legal authority in the whole Muslim world today.”

Question is, was that hollow fatwa (a hotwa as it were) more significant than Qaradawi’s proclamation on Al Jazeera two weeks earlier? Qaradawi stated:

“A Muslim is forbidden from entering into an alliance with a non-Muslim against another Muslim.” He called on Muslims to “fight the American military if we can, and if we cannot, we should fight the U.S. economically and politically.”

Qaradawi elaborated on that non-fatwa fatwa in 2004 when he said of American troops:

“…all of the Americans in Iraq are combatants, there is no difference between civilians and soldiers, and one should fight them, since the American civilians came to Iraq in order to serve the occupation. The abduction and killing of Americans in Iraq is a [religious] obligation so as to cause them to leave Iraq immediately. The mutilation of corpses [however] is forbidden in Islam.”

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