Front cover of "A bundle of twigs is not a tree"
Back cover of "A bundle of twigs is not a tree"
This volume focuses twenty-one excerpts from the works of famous and respected mediaeval Muslim scholars, including Imam al-Shafi‘i, Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Ibn Qudamah, Ibn Rushd, Ibn Taymiyah, al-Nawawi,
al-Qurtubi, al-Tabari, Ibn Hazm, Ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani, Ibn Hajar al-‘Asqalani. Each excerpt contains
an extremist soundbite that falls into one of two main themes:
1. the killing of hostile disbelievers, and
2. the lack of criminal or civil penalty in the Sharia for doing so.
It is not difficult to work out the intention of the propagandists of the so-called Islamic State / Daesh / ISIS /
ISIL / IS in choosing words from the books of scholars from all Sunni schools of law for dissemination to their supporters. It is to make the vulnerable untrained reader think that the indiscriminate killing of non-Muslims is not part of a warped extremist political ideology but is – and always has been – a wholly justified aspect of
jihad, a core tenet of Islam.
The purpose of placing these soundbites back in their proper context is to help not only fellow Muslims, but
others also, better to understand why extremism is so named, at least in relation to Islam. Going through the
excerpts, most from complex mediaeval works of jurisprudence, one may well ask:
• Why do those scholars quoted so often contradict the extremist message?
• Are the errors in the propagandists’ translations deliberate or not?
• Did the original authors ever intend for their works to plundered in this way by propagandists and
disseminated to Muslims with no formal Islamic education to turn their anger and frustration at the
injustices into violence?
• Why is it that those soundbites that most read like legal axioms on jihad are not found in the specific
chapters on the laws of war but elsewhere?
"A bundle of twigs is not a tree"
Contextualising 21 soundbites drawn from mediæval texts by so-called #IslamicState / #Daesh / #ISIL / #ISIS propagandists to dupe zealous but gullible Muslims into believing indiscriminate killing is #Islamic.
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