So Fargo’s Moslem community has denied home-grown Known Wolf Mohamad Barakat a Mooselimb funeral, strongly implying how very offended they are by his terrorist acts, with which they wish not to be associated in any way. Unexpected? Well, not necessarily, no—not if you’ve read the Koran, the hadith, and the sura. Which, y’know, I have, thanks to the Comparative Religion courses I took in my college daze. Robert Spencer gives us the low-down.
Meanwhile, Fargo’s InForum reported Thursday that “a family member’s request made to local mosque leaders to handle Barakat’s funeral arrangements has been refused, said Sajid Ghauri, an adviser to the Moorhead mosque, known as the Moorhead Fargo Islamic Center.” Ghauri explained: “We have no clue whether he was even Muslim because his action doesn’t show that. So with that being said…we refused to do a funeral or burial in this area. Even if he’s a member, he can’t mess with our community like that.”
That’s super, but the fact that the Muslims in Fargo refused to bury Mohamad Barakat is not the unalloyed good news that it likely appears to be to those who deplore “Islamophobia.” The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) was similarly celebrated and gained worldwide headlines — and praise — for its announcement in 2017 that 130 imams in the United Kingdom were refusing to perform funeral prayers for the London jihad mass murderers.
Now, maybe both the Fargo Muslims and the MCB had the best of intentions, but the fact is that the prophet of Islam, Muhammad himself, is depicted in hadiths as forbidding funeral prayers for martyrs. Islamic law forbids such prayers as well. Withholding funeral prayers is actually an honor that is reserved for those who die while committing jihad. In one hadith, Muhammad ordered two martyrs to be “buried with their blood (on their bodies). Neither was the funeral prayer offered for them, nor were they washed.” One of the martyrs’ sons recalled: “When my father was martyred, I started weeping and uncovering his face. The companions of the Prophet stopped me from doing so but the Prophet did not stop me. Then the Prophet said, ‘(O Jabir), don’t weep over him, for the angels kept on covering him with their wings till his body was carried away (for burial)’” (Bukhari 5.59.406).
The Qur’an says that those who have been killed while fighting for Allah are not dead, but alive: “Do not think of those who are killed in the way of Allah as dead. No, they are living. With their Lord they have provision.” (3:169)
Was Mohamad Barakat engaged in that kind of deceptive operation? Maybe, maybe not. But is the clueless and corrupt FBI even pursuing that as a possibility to be investigated and looking into the many other oddities of this case, or would that be “Islamophobic”?
Oh, I think we already know the answer to that one all too well, Robert.