Collective Punishment Under Islam "Wherever You Can Reach Them"

December 8, 2011

by Raymond Ibrahim

During a recent altercation in Egypt, a Christian inadvertently killed a Muslim. This incident, according to an AINA report, "turned into collective punishment of all Copts in the majority Christian village." Two Christians "not party to the altercation" were killed; others were stabbed and critically wounded. As usual, "after killing the Copts, Muslims went on a rampage, looting and burning Christian owned homes and businesses." Despite all this, "Muslims insist they have not yet avenged" the death of their slain co-religionist; there are fears of "a wholesale massacre of Copts."

Many Christians have fled their homes or are in hiding. Collectively punishing dhimmis—non-Muslims who refused to convert after their lands were seized by Muslims, and who are treated as infidels, or "second-class" citizens—for the crimes of the individual is standard under Islam. In this instance, dhimmis are forbidden to strike—let alone kill—Muslims, even if Muslims perpetrate the conflict. Prior to the fight that killed him, the Muslim in question had, through the help of radical Salafis, burned down the Christian's home and was threatening him over a property dispute.

Still, non-Muslims are forbidden to raise their hands to Muslims, even in self defense. Collective punishment for Egypt's Christians is common. Earlier this year, when a Christian was accused of dating a Muslim woman, 22 Christian homes were set ablaze to cries of "Allahu Akbar" ["Allah is Greater"]; when Muslims made false accusations against another Christian, one was killed, ten hospitalized, an old woman thrown out of her second floor balcony, and homes and properties were plundered and torched, as documented in a report aptly titled "Collective Punishment of Egyptian Christians."

Nor are such examples limited to Egypt: when Muhammad cartoons deemed blasphemous by Muslims were published in Europe, Christians in faraway Muslim countries such as Nigeria were killed; when Pope Benedict quoted history deemed unflattering by Muslims, anti-Christian riots around the Muslim world ensued, churches were burned, and a nun was murdered in Somalia. Months ago, when an American pastor from a fringe group burned a Koran, dozens of U.N. aid workers were killed by Muslims in Afghanistan; some were beheaded.

This practice of attacking one set of Christians as retribution for the acts of another set has roots in Islamic law. The Pact of Omar, a foundational text for Islam's treatment of dhimmis, makes clear that the consequences of breaking any of the debilitating and humiliating conditions non-Muslims are made to accept -- such as to be granted a degree of unguaranteed safety by the Muslim state -- were stark:

"If we in any way violate these undertakings … we forfeit our covenant, and we become liable to the penalties for contumacy and sedition"—penalties that include enslavement, rape, and death. As Mark Durie points out in The Third Choice, a book on dhimmitude, Even a breach by a single individual dhimmi could result in jihad being enacted against the whole community.

Muslim jurists have made this principle explicit, for example, the Yemeni jurist al-Murtada wrote that "The agreement will be canceled if all or some of them break it" and the Moroccan al-Maghili taught "The fact that one individual (or one group) among them has broken the statute is enough to invalidate it for all of them." This approach applies to all non-Muslim groups —Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, etc.—living among Muslim majorities. Yet, because Christians are the most visible infidel minority in the Islamic world, most examples relate to them.

The Copts, for instance, are especially targeted because they comprise the largest Christian bloc in the Middle East. (Centuries before the Muslim conquests, Egypt was a major center of Christianity, and Alexandria arguably equal to Rome in authority. The result is, after centuries of persecution, there is still a viable Christian presence in Egypt—much to the Islamists' chagrin.)

Today, however, as the world shrinks—and as Muslims conflate the West with "Christianity"—the reasons to persecute Islam's Christians grow: ethnicity and geography no longer matter; shared religion, even if nominal, makes all "Christians" liable for each other. Consider Iraq: its persecuted Christians are being targeted in part "over their religious ties with the West." Last year's Baghdad church attack, when over 50 Christians were butchered, was initiated in "retaliation" to absurd accusations against the Egyptian Coptic Church.

Just as the Copts today are cited as the reason behind the massacre of Iraqi Christians, nearly a millennium ago, so Copts were massacred when their Western coreligionists—the Crusaders—made inroads into Islam's domains.

The logic was clear: we will punish these Christians (Copts), because we can, in response to those Christians (Crusaders). It is in this context that one can understand the rationale of the jihadists behind the Baghdad church attack, when they went so far as to threaten all Christians around the world as "legitimate targets for the mujahedeen [holy warriors] wherever they can reach them." Bold as that seems, "wherever they can reach them" simply means that it is the Islamic world's accessible, vulnerable non-Muslims—Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus—not their Western counterparts, who will continue to be targeted, even as the West looks the other way.

Raymond Ibrahim, an Islam and Middle East specialist, is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum.