By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 9 December 2017

Al-Naba 109, 8 December 2017

The Islamic State responded to President Donald Trump’s announcement, on 6 December 2017, that the United States would move its Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, with an editorial on page 3 of the 109th edition of Al-Naba on 8 December 2017. Below is a very rough translation.

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Jerusalem, None Are Its Allies but the God-Fearing^[1]

Sixty years have passed with Jerusalem in the hands of the Jews, and now the people weep because the Crusaders have declared it their capital today. One does not know the reality of this weeping: is it weeping over a land that was once a qibla for the Muslims, and a centre from among their centres, containing one of their three mosques to which journeys are undertaken? Or is it weeping over a cause they have grown used to crying over at its mere mention, because it summarises all their tragedies in these latter ages? Or is it yet another opportunity for pretenders and opportunists to raise their voices once more, invoking this orphaned cause—one that no taghut from among the tawaghit, and no faction from the factions of disbelief and apostasy in the region, has failed to claim paternity of, or to allege that he is its rightful guardian and the protector of its blood?

Indeed, the people of misguidance have gone so far as to make these empty claims a means of absolving all the crimes of the tawaghit and the mushrikeen [idolaters, polytheists]. It [the Palestine issue] became a popular commodity traded by the tawaghit of the Ba’th Party in Syria and Iraq, by the tawaghit of the Rafida [derog. Shi’is] in Iran and Lebanon, and by the tawaghit of the apostate parties claiming affiliation with Islam in every place [i.e., other Islamists]. It became for them a kind of narcotic with which they inject their followers and their slaves, and a fortified barrier against every call to reform.

They launched their invented slogans, such as “Jerusalem is the foremost cause of the Muslims”, by which they meant that there is no hope in achieving any of their goals before Jerusalem is “liberated.” So, no implementation of the shari’a until the city is freed from the hands of the Jews, and no jihad against any kind of disbelievers or apostates until Al-Aqsa Mosque is returned to Muslim hands.

Some of them modified that slogan to be “Jerusalem is the central cause of the Muslims”, intending by that to make it a magnet to draw supporters and followers. If they called for establishing the deen [lifeway], they made its purpose “the liberation of Jerusalem”. If they called for the restoration of the Caliphate, their aim was to rally the Muslims for the battle to “conquer Jerusalem”. If they called for the implementation of the shari’a, they rushed to announce that this would help in “restoring the plundered Al-Aqsa”. One wonders what justification they would offer for their calls if they were to wake up one day to find Jerusalem was the capital of [a State run by] the apostate Palestinian Authority or the taghut government of HAMAS.

The matter even reached the point where the misguided misleaders [al-dalleen al-mudilleen] would rebuke every mujahid on earth and impugn his jihad against the mushrikeen and his obedience to the command of the Lord of all creation, accusing those who undertook jihad of diverting attention from the “Jerusalem battle”, which [according to them] should be the sole focus of all attention, and that he [the jihadist] is misdirecting the muzzle of the rifle away from the Jews, against whom alone it is lawful for it to be raised.

Many among the people of jihad responded to these doubts, making clear to the people that the liberation of Jerusalem can never be achieved while the armies of the tawaghit encircle it like a bracelet around the wrist, protecting the Jews from the blows of the mujahideen and preventing the Muslims from even thinking of opening a front against the mushrikeen in Bayt al-Maqdis [Jerusalem] and its surroundings.

But the people of truth, those grounded in divine guidance, can never be deceived by the posturing of liars nor the rumours of the munafiqun [hypocrites]. Their standard in every matter is the shari’a of the Lord of the Worlds, and their judgements regarding groups and individuals stem from the Clear Book. The ruling of disbelief is not lifted from an individual or group, no matter how loudly they cry out for the “liberation of Jerusalem”, until they repent from their disbelief in God the Almighty and become like the rest of the Muslims. Nor does the prescribed jihad cease in one land while waiting for the conquest of another, nor against one category of mushrikeen with the excuse that they fight the warring Jews. They continue in their jihad until they establish the rule of God (Exalted is He) in Jerusalem and other lands, and remove shirk [idolatry] from every land over which the sun rises and the night falls.

They believe that every step in their jihad brings them closer to God’s promise of fighting the Jews in Bayt al-Maqdis and killing them upon its soil, until the slave of God, Isa ibn Maryam [Jesus] (peace be upon him), kills their Dajjal [lit. “the Deceiver”, Islam’s “Antichrist”]. And there is no doubt that all of this will only come at the hands of the victorious group [al-ta’ifa al-mansura] of the muwahideen [(strict) monotheists], those who remained patient through trials, stood firm in the epic battles, were not harmed by those who opposed them, nor by those who let them down, until the command of their Lord, Glorified and Exalted is He, came to them while they were in that state. The men of this pious group are the allies of Bayt al-Maqdis and its people from among the Muslims, and they are the true allies of al-Masjid al-Aqsa [the Farthest Mosque]—not the tawaghit, nor their mushrik slaves, nor the secularists, the democrats, and their apostate brethren, those who deviate from the path of God and wage war against the law of God. Their abode is Hell, and what an evil destination, just as God the Exalted said: “And why should God not punish them while they hinder [believers] from al-Masjid al-Haram, though they are not its fitting guardians? Its only guardians are the God-fearing [al-muttaqun], but most of them know not” [Qur’an 8:34].^[2]

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Notes

[1] “Bayt al-Maqdis” is the phrased used for “Jerusalem”, as is always the case with jihadists. “God-fearing” is a translation of “Al-Muttaqun”.

[2] Al-Masjid al-Haram (“The Sacred Mosque”) is believed by Muslims to refer to the structure in Mecca, which is regarded as the holiest site in Islam. The Mecca mosque is more widely known around the world as the Grand Mosque, and is perhaps most famous to non-Muslims for the episode when it was seized by the apocalyptic cult, al-Jama’a al-Salafiyya al-Muhtasiba (JSM, The Salafi Group for Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong), on 20 November 1979. Led by Juhayman al-Utaybi, JSM had become convinced that End Times had arrived and proclaimed a mahdi (lit. “guided one”) upon seizing the mosque. These eschatological miscalculations put JSM at a disadvantage when the Hour did not arrive but French special forces did. The siege was ended on 4 December 1979, and Juhayman and sixty-two of his followers were taken out into public squares in eight cities in Saudi Arabia on 9 January 1980 and executed by beheading.

The second most holy site in Islam is also in Saudi Arabia, al-Masjid al-Nabawi (The Prophet’s Mosque), in Medina. Al-Masjid al-Aqsa is believed by Muslims to refer to the mosque built over the ruins of the Jewish Second Temple in Jerusalem, and this mosque is sometimes called the third holiest site in Islam, though even within the faith this is controversial—or was before the re-establishment of Israel—because some Islamic scholars saw Jerusalem as so obviously the Holy Land of the Jews and then Christians that to incorporate the belief that Jerusalem has any special significance into Islam was to import the superstition of superseded creeds.

More seriously, there is the problem of the divergence between the exegetical Tradition of Islam as it has existed since the ninth century AD and the historical evidence about what the text of the Qur’an actually meant when it was written. (When, how, and where the Qur’an came into being is a mystery of its own.) The short version is that it is overwhelmingly probable that al-Masjid al-Haram does not refer to a site in the modern Saudi capital, but to a sanctuary or shrine much further to the north, near the Negev, and the evidence is even clearer that al-Masjid al-Aqsa—the site to which the Prophet Muhammad supposedly made his Isra (Night Journey) and from which his Mi’raj (Ascension) to heaven occurred—was not located in Jerusalem. Indeed, it is doubtful “farthest mosque” referred to a specific geographical site at all to the authors of the Qur’an.