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Showing posts with label AMJA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AMJA. Show all posts

Monday, January 30, 2017

ONLY Refugees that Support U.S. Constitution


John R. Houk
© January 30, 2017

Leo Hohmann has typed an article warning that Homeland chaos is on the way to confront Trump’s campaign promises on illegal immigrants and Muslim refugees. To be honest the article is also a WND promo for Hohmann’s book “STEALTH INVASION: MUSLIM CONQUEST THROUGH IMMIGRATION AND RESETTLEMENT JIHAD”. If the book is as informative as the Hohmann article, it is a must to get a hold of.


I pray political correctness does not pressure President Trump to cave in on his campaign promises on vetting Muslim Refugees. I have noticed the MSM has gone out of its way to highlight so-called peaceful Muslims out of the USA doing business yet now are not allowed back in to see their families residing on American soil.

Off the top of my head (no pun intended), a Muslim Ethiopian who is a British citizen has resided in Oregon for ten years. He communicated to his family in Oregon he may not be back to see them in Oregon for some time because he is a Muslim.

This is an example of crap news coming from the American Left.

ONE: The Trump EO refers to refugees from seven particular nations. NOT Muslims!

TWO: If the Ethiopian is a British citizen residing in Oregon already for ten years, he is not subject to the 7-nation refugee moratorium – HE’S A BRIT.

These kinds of stories are pure poppycock.

On the other hand, I do realize there are already unvetted Muslim refugees on American soil largely due to Obama’s Multiculturalist agenda. These refugees may have expected some family members from the 7-nation refugee moratorium and now there is a freeze for at least 90 days. That doesn’t mean those family members have a radical Muslim agenda against the USA. IT DOES MEAN those family members must be vetted to insure they have no hatred of America or any nefarious designs based on potential hatred. So, protest all you want. The USA has no need for foreign American-hating Muslims that feel they are on a divine Quranic mission.

Yesterday I blogged on some AWESOME vetting technology that President Trump could employ to make the vetting process move faster. The technology is called “COGITO”.

Now back to the Hohmann article.

Hohmann believes there are what he calls three flashpoints that will inspire the “global Islamic movement and its allies on the political left” to “confront” Trump’s policies:

§  Moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem

§  Declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization

§  Restricting Islamic immigration into the U.S.

Trump confront back and I believe he will. BUT – If for some reason the American Left hamstrings President Trump, there is a Second Amendment option for private citizens to organize and confront back on American soil. Begin with confrontational peaceful protest. Then if the American Left and/or Muslims supporting Islamic Salafist ideology ups the ante with violence, be prepared to ante up ourselves.

JRH 1/30/17
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3 'TRIGGERS' FOR ISLAMIC UPRISING UNDER TRUMP PRESIDENCY
Airport protests just the start of 'chaos' planned by Muslim Brotherhood

Updated: 01/29/2017 at 10:52 PM




A former Homeland Security officer who spent years screening Muslim immigrants points to three “triggers” of confrontation between the new administration of Donald Trump and the global Islamic movement.

These three issues will spawn a violent backlash in response to Trump as he attempts to implement what many believe are long-overdue reforms.

And Trump has already bumped head-on into one of the hot-button issues – Muslim immigration.



According to Phillip Haney, a founding member of the Homeland Security Department and author of the book “See Something Say Nothing,” the stars are lining up for a major confrontation with the global Islamic movement and its allies on the political left.

The “flashpoints” to watch going forward are these:

§  Moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem

§  Declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization

§  Restricting Islamic immigration into the U.S.

Trump’s executive orders slapping a 120-day moratorium on refugee resettlement and a 30-day ban on those entering on visas from seven terror-sponsoring countries has been met with protests Sunday at airports in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Detroit and Minneapolis.

In Hamtramck, Michigan, the nation’s first city to elect a Muslim-majority city council, protesters descended on City Hall Sunday with signs that included “Ban Bannon” and “We are all Immigrants.”

There were no such protests when former President Obama restricted Christian refugees from entering the U.S. from Syria, Egypt, Pakistan and other Muslim countries.

As Trump tries to rein in concessions given to the Muslim Brotherhood by the previous administrations of Clinton, Bush and Obama, he should expect the Brotherhood and its allies on the left to push back with hell’s fury, Haney said.

There will be lawsuits, ugly protests, and an all-out effort to create chaos in the streets of U.S. cities, he predicts.


The reason is simple. This isn’t 1968 or even 1978, when Islam in America consisted primarily of a few thousand Nation of Islam and Black Panther activists.

Islam, particularly the Salafist brand of Sunni Islam promoted by the Muslim Brotherhood, whose stated goal is to spread Shariah throughout the world, has been allowed to establish a major foothold in America.

More than 300 U.S. cities and towns have been stacked with Sharia-compliant Muslims through refugee resettlement and myriad other visa programs that have been expanding for four decades.

Meanwhile, groups that agitate for Muslim “civil rights,” which tend to manifest as special privileges not afforded to Christians, have been empowered. Thanks to the expanded immigration, the U.S. Muslim population has exploded to 3.3 million, the number of mosques has grown exponentially and the Council on American Islamic Relations or CAIR is now a force to be reckoned with despite its ties to extremist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, Haney said.

“There’s this concept of the observant Muslim base, it’s a global observant base, and that’s what the Muslim Brotherhood has done here in America since the 1960s is build up that observant Muslim base,” Haney said.


In a document seized by the FBI and presented at a terror-financing trial in Texas in 2007, the Brotherhood referred to this process as building “settlements” in the U.S. that would eventually subjugate all other religions.  Doubters can read the Brotherhood’s strategy in the Brotherhood’s own words in a document titled the “An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America.”

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Russia have all banned the Muslim Brotherhood for its terrorist connections and seditious strategies.

A bill on Congress, the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act, would do the same thing, declaring CAIR and other Brotherhood-affiliated group as terrorists.

“Now the U.S. has a new president who is considering doing the same thing and CAIR is crying about Islamophobia,” Haney said. “And that’s why they need to be designated as terrorists.”

Trump is already showing a pattern, a trend of behaviors, which indicates he plans to follow through with campaign promises related to Israel, terrorism and immigration, Haney said.

The main school of Islamic jurisprudence in North America, the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America or AMJA, issued a fatwa which it called a “roadmap” for Muslim reaction in the wake of Trump’s election victory.

“They are expecting him to actually do what he said, so the AMJA steps in and provides a Shariah-compliant roadmap on the way that they should respond,” Haney said. “They have set the parameters of the acceptable response based on Shariah law. They included not only 32 Quranic verses woven into the roadmap but several other references to the hadith.

“The AMJA put this statement out and mobilized the observant Muslim base calling on them to be prepared to respond.”

And it’s not just Muslims who will join in this monumental push back against Trump.

As seen at protests in major U.S. airports Sunday, the radical left is eager to take up the crusade of Muslim activism. Haney says it’s not just American Muslims who will join this fight, either, but global Islamic extremists who are invested in destroying Israel, propping up the Muslim Brotherhood, and continuing the flow of Shariah-compliant Muslims from the Middle East into Western democracies.

“These three points will trigger conflict between the global Islamic community and the Trump administration,” he told WND. “There aren’t any other issues that have the volatility to precipitate actions up to and including violence.”

Haney said the three trigger points will affect three different areas: The Israel policy will affect the political arena, the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist declaration will affect law enforcement, and the immigration issue will affect the fabric of American society, halting the process of Islamization and civilization jihad that has been steadily occurring for the last 35 years and which was placed into overdrive under Barack Obama.

“It’s not about Trump. It’s about America,” Haney said. “America has had the audacity to pick someone different from what the world wanted, which was someone who would not be submissive to the global Islamic movement. So America is now going to become the focus of this backlash.”

In fact, the hardcore Islamic extremists affiliated with the Brotherhood and their allies among the hardcore left are already mobilizing a pushback for the cause of Shariah law. These troops have enjoyed complete cooperation from the U.S. government over the last eight years, Haney said, and to an extent for the last 20 years going back to the Bushes and Clintons. All of these administrations reached out to the Muslim Brotherhood-linked organizations for advice and counsel, inviting them to the White House, the State Department, and the departments of Homeland Security and Justice.

Trump has signaled a different approach by talking about moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, declaring the Brotherhood a terrorist organization and restricting Muslim immigration while shifting the government’s focus to rescuing Christian refugees. These were three untouchables under previous U.S. administrations and by even talking about these actions Trump must be prepared for a strong reaction, both foreign and domestic, Haney says.

The Brotherhood’s self-avowed goal is to spread Shariah around the globe. In the U.S., it works through a network of alphabet-soup organization that include CAIR, the Muslim Student Association or MSA, the Islamic Society of North America or ISNA, the Islamic Circle of North America or ICNA, and the Muslim American Society or MAS.

These Brotherhood-linked groups work to infiltrate and influence America’s critical institutions –government and law enforcement, the educational system and the nation’s churches and synagogues. The overall goal of this three-pronged attack is to wear down these institutions’ defenses to Shariah concepts, such as the idea that criticism of Islam or its prophet is off limits and makes one an “Islamophobe” worthy of second-class status. Criticism of Christianity continues to be popular sport in American society but criticism of Islam is socially unacceptable in the media, pop culture, business, academia or law enforcement. This is essentially a voluntary implementation of the Islamic blasphemy law – which is the beginning of Shariah – Haney says.

The most important Islamic voice to watch in America is the AMJA – the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America. This is the group of scholars that Muslim clerics look to for guidance on what to teach in America’s mosques, more than 75 percent of which have been funded by Saudi Arabia and 85 percent of which are led by foreign-born imams.

The AMJA issued a fatwa following Trump’s election, offering a “roadmap” forward on how U.S. Muslims should react to the changes Trump might try to implement. This roadmap informed the U.S. Muslim community that the rise of Trump held the potential to be a “calamity” for their future in this country.

While urging them not to panic, the AMJA then dropped the bombshell that the “worst of the worst” in America were those who try to destroy Muslim civil rights organizations, a direct reference to CAIR, ISNA, MSA and their overarching sponsor, the Muslim Brotherhood. The fatwa went on to warn Muslims that they may have to take drastic actions that they don’t want to take but which will please Allah, quoting almost word for word from the Quran.


“It’s all intertwined,” said Haney. “It’s all coming together as we predicted.”

Watch video trailer for “Stealth Invasion,” which former Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is calling “the must-read book of 2017.”


Posted by WNDTV
Published on Dec 21, 2016

Use the PROMO CODE Stealth25 when you order Stealth Invasion from the WND Superstore and you'll receive 25% off your purchase: http://superstore.wnd.com/Stealth-Invasion-Muslim-Conquest-Through-Immigration-and-Resettlement-Jihad-Hardcover  

Civilization jihad calls for changing a nation by changing its people and its values—gradually, over time.

Stealth Invasion blows the lid off a corrupt, fraudulent program that has been secretly dumping Third World refugees, many of them radical, on American cities for three decades.

Americans have been kept largely in the dark about the radical plans to permanently transform their nation. Until now.

After Trump announced the first round of his border security and immigration crackdowns Wednesday, CAIR Director Nihad Awad immediately ramped up his rhetoric. He denounced the administration’s actions as “Islamophobic” and compared refusing Muslim refugees to previous U.S. policies of “slavery” and denying women the vote.

These are fighting words, Haney said, and sure enough CAIR’s chapters in New York and Dallas responded with their own press conferences, tweets and rallies denouncing Trump.

CAIR was also front and center in the protests at American airports Sunday.

This is just the beginning of what will be an ongoing battle of wills between Trump’s administration and the Shariah-supportive Muslim community that feels emboldened by its allies in the media and among what are mainly Marxist and left-leaning professors, lawyers and community organizers, Haney said.

Haney, who co-authored the whistleblower book “See Something Say Nothing” upon leaving DHS, says to watch the three trigger points going forward.

Any one of those three issues will be viewed as part of the “calamity” that the AMJA roadmap fatwa warned was coming under a Trump administration.

Trump will be challenged to find some Muslims who are not affiliated with Brotherhood organizations and give them a voice that offers an alternative to the intolerance and extremism put forth by CAIR, which has direct ties to Hamas and has had nearly a dozen of its current and former leaders investigated and charged with terrorist-related crimes.


Trump comments about moving the embassy to Jerusalem reverberated all the way to the slums of Sadr City in Iraq, where Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr said a U.S. Jerusalem embassy would be tantamount to an all-out war against Islam.

“Just the fact that our ambassador said he will move his residence to Jerusalem is provocative enough,” Haney said. “It’s a declaration of war against the USA, and Sadr is saying the Shia will fill in the void if Sunnis don’t do what they’re supposed to do.”

On the immigration front, Trump said he plans to restrict visa permits for 30 days from seven Islamic countries, Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Sudan and Libya, while pausing all refugee resettlements for four months or until “extreme vetting” practices can be developed.

These would seem to be rather mild responses to the uptick in Islamic terrorism both in Europe and the United States over the last three years. Jihadist attacks on U.S. soil have included the Boston Marathon bombing, the knife attacks at a mall in St. Cloud, Minnesota, and at Ohio State University, the Orlando nightclub mass shooting, the Chattanooga shooting at a Navy recruitment center, the pipe bombing in Manhattan, and the San Bernardino shooting. All of these attacks were carried out by Muslim immigrants or sons of Muslim immigrants.

But the Muslim Brotherhood-linked organizations know the importance of the Islamic principle of al hijra, the Arabic term for “migration.” Their prophet, Muhammad, used it to perfection in his conquering of Medina back in the seventh century and it has been a favorite tactic of Shariah-adherent Muslims ever since.

The prayer by Imam Mohamed Magid at Trump’s inaugural prayer service in the National Cathedral last Saturday amounted to a “a signal flag,” to the Muslim community, Haney said. “The context of the verse he quoted from the Quran just happens to be related to the AMJA roadmap fatwa, so what he did was he waved a signal flag and told the Islamic community, here I am, I’m making a declaration that we should stand up and oppose the calamity of the Trump administration.”

Magid’s Muslim Brotherhood credentials are impressive. He’s past-president of ISNA, he served on Obama’s CVE or “countering violent extremism” steering committee and he is imam of the ADAMS mosque that was at one time under investigation by the federal government for ties to Hamas. And if that’ snot enough, he’s listed on the AMJA website as a shake and a fatwa expert. A shake in Islam is higher than imam.

“That means he’s a trained Shariah specialist,” Haney said. “But here he is at the National Cathedral in Washington delivering an inauguration prayer.”

Haney goes back to the allegory Trump used of draining the water out of the swamp.

“Your work really begins after the water is taken out,” he said. “You have to see what is actually buried down in the muck and mire. And if Trump has experts who are qualified to go in and conduct a forensic analysis, they’re going to find all kinds of stuff there and it will set in motion a whole sequence of events, if they can catch their breath and take a look at it. It will set off a sequence of events that will allow law enforcement and immigration officials to honestly evaluate the status of our current immigration policies and they’re going to find that there are a lot of problems with it, whether it’s the State Department issuing visas to folks they shouldn’t be, the way the USCS process people coming into the country on visas and green cards, all the way to the United Nations itself and how it does the initial selection and vetting of the refugees.

“So this examination, if it is thorough, is going to set off a lot of events that are going to expose the methods of the Obama administration as providing no oversight or protection whatsoever.”
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ONLY Refugees that Support U.S. Constitution
John R. Houk
© January 30, 2017
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3 'TRIGGERS' FOR ISLAMIC UPRISING UNDER TRUMP PRESIDENCY



© Copyright 1997-2017. All Rights Reserved. WND.com.

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

U.S. Muslim Jurists Association Sanctions FGM

ACT for America sent an email highlighting an Andrew Bostom post about the recognized problem of female genital mutilation. The same problem that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has been using Legal Jihad (aka Lawfare) methods to prevent the Honor Diaries to be shown on College Campuses across the American nation AND even has exerted its Legal Jihad muscles to prevent one of the producers (Ayaan Hirsi Ali) of the Honor Diaries from receiving an honorary degree from Brandeis University and prevent from speaking at the same University’s graduation commencement.


JRH 4/16/14
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U.S. Muslim Jurists Association Sanctions FGM

Sent by ACT for America
Sent: 4/15/2014 8:20 AM

Mainstream U.S. Muslim Jurists Association Sanctions Female Genital Mutilation

According to the World Health Organization, more than 125 million girls and women alive today have been subjected to Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).

The African Women’s Health Center of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, report that approximately 228,000 women and girls in the U.S. have either suffered the procedure or are at risk of having it done to them. Many of these young girls are subjected to FGM when they vacation in a country that sanctions the practice. In other cases, circumcisers are brought into the U.S. – even though FGM is illegal in this country.

ACT! for America has been working diligently at the state level to see legislation passed so that no girl ever suffers the horrors of FGM – either on U.S. soil or elsewhere.
___________________
Mainstream U.S. Muslim Jurists Association Sanctions Female Genital Mutilation

By Andrew Bostom
http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2014/04/10/mainstream-u-s-muslim-jurists-association-sanctions-female-genital-mutilation/

The Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America’s (AMJA
[1]’s) mission statement maintains the organization was,

…founded to provide guidance for Muslims living in North America…AMJA is a religious organization that does not exploit religion to achieve any political ends, but instead provides practical solutions within the guidelines of Islam and the nation’s laws to the various challenges experienced by Muslim communities…

A report in The Muslim Observer [2] published October 21, 2010 highlighting AMJA’s “seventh annual American conference of imams,” confirmed that the organization is accepted [2] as such by the mainstream American Muslim community. AMJA and its “training” conference for American imams were described [2] in these banal terms:


The organization AMJA (Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America) has a list of scholars associated with it which stretches from Al-Azhar University to Virginia’s Open University, and back across the ocean to the professors at Saudi universities. Its website, amjaonline.com, provides fatawa on many issues and promises 24-hour access to scholars who can give legal opinions on the issues people face. AMJA focuses on providing fatwas to Americans, and believes it is able to provide culturally appropriate fatwas although many of their scholars are not American–because they have some American scholars and because of the technological ties that bind AMJA’s American scholars with those abroad. AMJA just had, in Houston, its seventh annual American conference of imams, and two local Michigan imams attended, namely Imam Musa of Bloomfield’s Muslim Unity Center, and Imam Ali of MCWS. Mr. Sadiqul Hassan of AMJA explained that “the event was the 7th annual imam workshop…” Mr. Hassan said that AMJA is “a fiqh council basically,” with “scholars who live abroad and inside the US; we have experts in different fields to educate about life in the US–fatawa are based on life in the US.”


AMJA rulings also support the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM), which the United Nations has called [3] “a dangerous and potentially life-threatening procedure that causes unspeakable pain and suffering.” Fatwa #1639 [4] from Dr. Hatem al-Haj justified the horrific practice, by citing the canonical hadith [5] in which Islam’s prophet Muhammad endorsed its practice, stating:


[…] Some extremists from the west and their devout followers in the Muslim world like to brand all circumcision as female genital mutilation (FGM). For those, we say, why is male circumcision not MGM? Male circumcision is widely practiced in the west. Yet it would be considered by the Chinese MGM (Male Genital Mutilation).

The benefits of male circumcision are beginning to be more recognized in the medical societies, even though still contested by a few. Fifty years ago, no one knew that male circumcision has medical benefits. The same could be true with female circumcision. They may figure out the benefits of the practice in fifty or five hundred years. […]

Al-Haj then went on to implicitly sanction [4] the practice of taking a Muslim female outside of her American milieu to have the procedure performed—in violation of the US “TRANSPORT FOR FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION [6]” act.


The question is not to ban female circumcision because of the position of certain nations, but How do we regulate it as Muslims? What should we -western Muslims- do? For Muslims who live in the west, since it is not mandatory and it is at the same time illegal in the west, and would bring about harm to the people who practice it, I wouldn't advise having it done, as long as you are a resident/citizen of the west. We however should never doubt anything in our religion because of the bad publicity the media creates about it.


A concordant fatwa [7] issued in Arabic (translation by Al-Mutarjim [8]) on the website [9] of the Secretary-General of AMJA and the chief member of its Resident Fatwa Committee, Dr. Salah Al-Sawy, declares that FGM is “an honor” for women, Al-Sawy also acknowledges that the procedure—in accord with a continuum of Islamic rationale [5] from al-Jahiz in the mid-9th century, to former Muslim Papal equivalent, i.e., Al-Azhar University Grand Imam Jad al-Haq through 1996—is explicitly implemented to reduce a woman’s otherwise unbridled “concupiscence,” i.e., lust:


But for the woman, the purpose [of circumcision] is the benefit that it has in lessening her lust, which is a wholesome request. There is no harm in removing it. In short, female circumcision is an honor (which) does not rise to the level of a duty, in clear language. Stated another way, it is neither forbidden nor required.
__________________________
ACT for America is an issues advocacy organization dedicated to effectively organizing and mobilizing the most powerful grassroots citizen action network in America, a grassroots network committed to informed and coordinated civic action that will lead to public policies that promote America’s national security and the defense of American democratic values against the assault of radical Islam. We are only as strong as our supporters, and your volunteer and financial support is essential to our success. Thank you for helping us make America safer and more secure.

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

AMJA Senior Committee Member: Female Genital Mutilation Is 'an Honor' per Islam

Dr. Hatem al-Haj, addressing Islamic Institute of Orange County, 6-2009
So you think some of the honor junk is a regional cultural problem and not a product of Islam? Check out this translated post from the Google Group Translating Jihad. The Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America (AMJA) is not exactly your Moderate Islamic organization yet is billed as a prominent Islamic Cleric organization for dispensing Islamic theology.

JRH 5/1/12

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[Translating Jihad] AMJA Senior Committee Member: Female Genital Mutilation Is 'an Honor' per Islam

4/27/2012 06:48:00 AM

A couple of weeks ago I posted a translation of a paper by Association of Muslim Jurists of America (AMJA) senior committee member Dr. Hatem al-Haj, PhD, MD, in which he warned American Muslims against working in law enforcement in our 'infidel' nation (see here for more details). Now in my latest translation, Dr. al-Haj explains why female circumcision is recommended and even 'an honor' for women. This is the same practice which is popularly known as female genital mutilation (FGM) due to the pain it causes women. The World Health Organization (WHO) asserts that "the procedure has no health benefits for women," and causes a range of health problems including "severe bleeding and problems urinating, and later cysts, infections, infertility as well as complications in childbirth."

Yet Dr. al-Haj, a medical doctor and fellow at the
American Academy of Pediatrics, ignores FGM's detrimental effects on women's health, and instead argues that it is 'an honor' for women. He justifies this position by referring repeatedly to the words of classical Islamic scholars from the four schools of mainstream Sunni Islamic thought, all of which attest to FGM's legitimacy under Islam. He also refers to the words of the Prophet Muhammad himself, who reportedly counselled people in his day on how to perform FGM in a way that would be "more beautiful to behold and better for [the woman's] husband."

Thanks again to the
Center for Security Policy for their assistance and expertise on AMJA.

Below is my excerpted translation of the 41-page Arabic-language paper by Dr. Hatem al-Haj entitled "Circumcision of Girls: Jurisprudence and Medicine" (see the original
here and here
):

The ruling on circumcision: Scholars have differed on the ruling on circumcision. They have agreed on its legitimacy for both sexes, but beyond that they have differed. Some--most famously the Shafi’ites--believe that it is obligatory for both sexes. Some believe it is obligatory for men only, and some believe it is recommended for both. At the very least it can be said that for women it is an honor, and for men it is sunnah [i.e. it is in accord with the tradition of Muhammad].

There are many hadiths on circumcision, some of which will be presented here along with the commentary of some scholars:

From Abi-Hurayra, who attributed it to the Prophet: “Five (acts of) al-fitrah [Islamic law or way of nature] are circumcision, shaving pubic hair, plucking armpit hair, trimming fingernails, and clipping the mustache.” Also from Abi-Hurayra: “The Messenger of Allah said, ‘Abraham was circumcised when he was 80 years old’.”’ Allah said: “So We have taught thee the inspired (Message), Follow the ways of Abraham the True in Faith” [Qur’an 16:123]. Also recorded in a hadith is the saying of (Muhammad) to a man who converted to Islam: “Remove your infidel hair and be circumcised.”

Muhammad also said regarding circumcision: “If you touch the two circumcisions, you must wash.” Here is evidence that women were circumcised, and therefore any of the hadiths on circumcision which do not specify men or women, can be assumed to apply to both.

From Sa’id bin Jabir: “Ibn ‘Abbas was asked, “How old were you when the Prophet (PBUH) died?" He replied, "At that time I had been circumcised. People (in those days) did not circumcise men until they reached puberty.” From the hadith of Umm ‘Atiyah--who used to circumcise girls--the Messenger of Allah said to her, “Reduce it, but do not remove too much, because it is more beautiful to behold and better for her husband.” This is the most explicit evidence in the hadiths of Muhammad for female circumcision being legitimate and even recommended. From Ibn ‘Abbas, attributing it to the Prophet: “Circumcision is sunnah for men and an honor for women.” This was narrated by al-Bayhaqi, and its attribution is weak.

Ibn al-Mundhir narrated from Abi-Barza: “We asked the Messenger of Allah (PBUH) about an uncircumcised man making pilgrimage to the Ka’aba. He replied, ‘No, not until he’s circumcised’.” This was considered a weak hadith by Ibn al-Mundhir and others.

There’s no doubt that among these hadiths there are those which are sound but do not explicitly command or urge women to become circumcised. There are also those which are met with disagreement by scholars, and these hadiths are more explicit in confirming the legitimacy of female circumcision. But the hadiths on the laws of al-fitrah which mention circumcision--and these are sound--do not mean that it is done on men only and not women. It is certain that circumcision includes both men and women, as is clearly stated in the hadith about touching the two circumcisions.

Below are words from scholars on the ruling on circumcision:

The Hanafis: Al-Zayla’i said: “The general ruling is that circumcision is sunnah, and is one of the trademarks of Islam. In fact, if the people of Egypt or some land decided to abandon its practice, the Imam would make war against them, for it cannot be abandoned except by necessity... Female circumcision is not sunnah, but it is an honor for men because it is more pleasing during sex” [ellipses in original].

The Malikites: From al-Kharshi’s brief summary of Khalil: “Its ruling (i.e. circumcision) is that it is sunnah for men, and it cuts off the foreskin. It is recommended for women, and is called khifad [reduction].”

The Shafi’ites: From [Asna al-Mutalib]: “Circumcision is obligatory (at puberty). The reasoning for this is the saying of the Almighty: “So We have taught thee the inspired (Message), Follow the ways of Abraham the True in Faith” [Qur’an 16:123]. In Abraham’s religion, circumcision was present. Also in the two Sahihs: “He was circumcised when he was eighty years old.” In Sahih Ibn Hibban, and in al-Hakim it was said 120 years, and it was also said 70 years. Also it was narrated by Abu-Dawud: “(The Prophet) (PBUH) ordered a man who converted to Islam to be circumcised.” They said that since he cut off a member which could not be replaced, it had to be obligatory like cutting off the hand. Since the man was injured during the process, he feared it. If it were not obligatory for him, then it would not have been permissible. This is unlike the circumcision of little boys, crazy people, and those who cannot endure it, because the first are too young to be required to do anything, and the last are harmed by it.” Al-Nawawi said in al-Majmu’: “Circumcision is obligatory for our men and women. This was stated by many of the salaf, as al-Khatabi relates. Ahmad was one of those who said it was obligatory. Malik and Abu-Hanifa said that it was sunnah for everyone. This was related by al-Rafi’i. He also related that (circumcision) is obligatory for men and sunnah for women. These were the two approaches of Shadhan, and of the sound and famous school of thought which was penned by al-Shafi’i, in which the multitude of scholars declared that circumcision is obligatory for men and women.”

The Hanbalis: From Ibn Muflih’s Furu’ [body of rules and regulations for man’s behavior]: “(According to Ahmad), circumcision is obligatory on all but women, for whom it is recommended. Our Shaykh said, ‘It is obligatory because cleanliness and prayer are obligatory’.” Ibn Qudama said: “Circumcision is a duty for men, and for women it is an honor, but it is not obligatory. This has been stated by many scholars.” Ahmad said: “The man is more difficult, because if the man is not circumcised, then the skin dangles over the [penis] and cannot be cleaned. But the woman is easier.”

The al-Mawsu’a al-Fiqhia (“The Encyclopedia of Jurisprudence”) summarizes scholars’ opinions on circumcision as follows:

“The ruling on circumcision: Scholars differ on circumcision as follows: First, the Hanafis and Malikites--and very rarely the Shafi’ites--hold to the opinion of what Ahmad said, that circumcision is sunnah for men but not a duty. It is one of the acts of al-fitrah, and one of the rituals of Islam. If the people of a particular land decided together to abandon its practice, the Imam would make war against them, just like if they abandoned the call to prayer. This also represents what the Malikites think about circumcision of women. Hanafis and Hanbalis consider female circumcision to be an honor and not sunnah. It is said by some Hanafis that it is also sunnah for [women], and some say that it is recommended. … Second, the Shafi’ites and Hanbalis, as is also stated by Sahnoun from the Malikites, believe that circumcision is a duty for both men and women. … Third, this is written by Ibn Qudama in al-Mughni, that circumcision is a duty for men, and for women it is an honor but not a duty” [ellipses in original].

Assessment

It appears that for male circumcision the most correct view is that it is obligatory, owing to the saying of Muhammad to the man who converted to Islam: “Remove your infidel hair and be circumcised.” This was obligatory--there was no alternative.

Regarding women, perhaps the most correct view is that it is recommended, however there is consensus that it is (at least) legitimate. Muhammad also endorsed it, as was narrated in the hadith of Umm ‘Atiyah, who used to circumcise girls. He said to her: “Reduce it, but do not remove too much, because it is more beautiful to behold and better for her husband.” He also said, “If you touch the two circumcisions, you must wash.” This shows that female circumcision was prevalent during his day, and he did not repudiate it. Nor did he stipulate anything else regarding female circumcision.

Perhaps the saying that it is (only) recommended is due to the pain women must go through to carry out the acts of al-fitrah, such as circumcision, as stated in the sound hadith. But as we mentioned, this is not evidence of it being confined only to men. The term circumcision was used for both men and women during Muhammad’s time. But it is clear that performing circumcision must be preferable to not performing it, especially when one considers that circumcision includes both pain and revealing one’s nakedness. Thus if there was no benefit to it, the Messenger of Allah would not have agreed to it. However there is still no evidence for making it obligatory. The fact that the Messenger of Allah agreed to it despite the pain and discovering one’s nakedness is not evidence for making it obligatory. Instead, this is evidence for preferring the action over not doing it, as we stated. (Muhammad’s) command to Umm ‘Atiyah is not a command to all women to (be circumcised), but rather he was regulating its practice. He was not telling her not to do it, he was telling her not to go too far and injure the women.

His command to the man who converted to Islam does not apply to women. Even though the principle is that “women are men’s sisters”, and women are often included when addressing men and vice versa, that only applies when there is no reason to differentiate between them. Here the issue is different for men and women. The man’s foreskin could trap urine at the end of it and affect his cleanliness. The issue is not the same for women. Therefore it is appropriate for this to be stressed more for men, and this is apparent in the words of scholars and the works of the ummah.

I have summed up the words of Muhammad and of scholars to show that circumcision is legitimate, and that the principal issue in the study is the limits of circumcision.
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