6-17-04
A new internet use: putting Al Qaeda on notice that killing Paul Johnson will be a breach of Islamic law. 

Post Script:  June 18, 2004. Paul Johnson’s abductors have carried out their threat and murdered him today, dumping his body on the outskirts of Riyadh. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Washington-based Islamic civil rights and advocacy group, issued an immediate statement that speaks for thinking Muslims everywhere:  “We condemn this act of senseless violence and repudiate all those who believe such murderous behavior benefits the faith of Islam or the Muslim people. We call for the swift apprehension and prosecution of the perpetrators.”

You Are In My Tent. You Are Under My Protection.

A new internet use: putting Al Qaeda on notice that killing Paul Johnson will be a breach of Islamic law.  Originally published at http://www.beliefnet.com/story/147/story_14796_1.html

In another transparent attempt to discredit the Saudi regime, Al-Qaeda operatives have kidnapped an American citizen from his apartment in Riyadh, posted his picture on the Internet, and threatened to kill him unless their demands are met. The demands include the release of Al-Qaeda prisoners from Saudi jails and the departure of all “westerners” from the Arabian Peninsula. The Saudi authorities have already replied: they won’t negotiate with terrorists.

Just as the stage is being set for another Web-hosted beheading, a Saudi colleague of the abducted American Paul Johnson has now gone Al Qaeda one better, by countering their bogus use of Muhammad’s teachings to underwrite mayhem. Saad Al-Mumen, a Saudi citizen and one of Johnson’s co-workers, has written them a letter, also posted on the Internet, with a prophetic quotation of his own. (The letter accompanies an interview with al-Mu’men, posted on Al-Arabiya news channel’s website.)

In the letter, Al-Mumen not only pledges to protect Paul Johnson. He notes that he is doing so as a Muslim, in the context of traditional Islam. In this way, he is putting Al Qaeda on notice that killing Johnson will be a breach of Islamic law. The murderous Mullahs may not fall into a quandary over this— their self-serving interpretations of Islam tend to be as crude and one-sided as the brays of a blind donkey—but for others looking on, the chances are good that a lot of Muslims will be horrified by the treachery, should it actually be carried out.

Why? Because Muslim tradition all the way back to the Prophet Muhammad (who Al Qaeda is so anxious to call their own), upholds the laws of sanctuary on universal grounds. This applies to all people, not only to Muslims. Al-Mu’men even cites a traditional saying of Muhammad’s: “If they were granted protection (by a Muslim), then killing or taking their money or harming them is forbidden.”

Al-Mumen has addressed his letter to the kidnappers. He has warned them that he had already extended his friend a Muslim’s protection. He is demanding that Al Qaeda follow Islamic teaching, about which they are always sounding off, and “respect God’s law rather than their own personal interests.”

We pray nothing will happen to Mr. Johnson. If and when it does, a lot of Muslims should raise a ruckus, because Al Qaeda will have hoisted itself on its own petard, claiming to be the holiest of the holy, while behaving like sociopaths.

The outcome is very uncertain. It does not bode well that Saad Al-Mumen is a pseudonym and that Johnson’s friend has had to disguise his true identity in order to make his claim.

Michael Wolfe