Here’s an interesting piece in yesterday’s OpinionJournal by Masood Farivar, on the Muslim practice of takfir—accusing other Muslims of heresy: Holier Than Thou.

The international uproar over the case of Abdul Rahman, the Afghan convert to Christianity charged with apostasy, has drawn attention away from a far more common and nefarious practice infecting religious practice in Islam: the accusation of heresy leveled by Muslims against fellow Muslims, a practice known as takfir. Historically, little more than a rhetorical device, takfir has in recent years grown into a deadly weapon in the hands of Muslim extremists bent on purging Islam of just about anyone who does not subscribe to their views. Today jihadist terrorists in Iraq have begun to use takfir as a rallying cry for violence against the Shiites.

The concept of religious censure is not unique to Islam, of course, but under Islamic law the charge of apostasy may not only condemn the person to hell but require his immediate death, if he does not repent. Recognizing the danger of such charges to the peace of the community, the Prophet Muhammad went out of his way to discourage takfir. Muhammad’s recorded sayings, known as hadith, are full of admonitions against takfir. In one famous hadith, the Prophet said: “If a Muslim accuses a fellow Muslim of unbelief, the accuser himself becomes an unbeliever should the accusation prove untrue.”

It’s disturbing, however, to read these references to American Islamic scholar Muzammil Siddiqi without any context:

Most Muslims today take a liberal view of who is a good Muslim and who is not. According to Muzammil Siddiqi, a prominent American Muslim scholar and a critic of takfir culture, it has become widely agreed upon that anyone who has simply declared that “there is no god but God and Muhammad is his Prophet” and who prays facing the holy mosque in Mecca is to be accepted as a Muslim. …

Mainstream Muslim thinkers have also started speaking up. In the U.S., Mr. Siddiqi has led a group of prominent Muslim religious scholars in issuing a fatwa denouncing extremist interpretations of the Koran and hadith. …

The early doctors of Islamic law, according to Mr. Siddiqi, urged Muslims “to be very careful calling any person a heretic.”

All good sentiments on the surface. But the context you’re not getting from this article is contained in these statements by Muzammil Siddiqi, quoted in an LGF post in March 2004: Radical Muslims Still Have Access to US Gov’t.

Among the guests in this afternoon’s panel discussion is Muzammil Siddiqi, who until November 2001 was president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), a leading Wahhabi front organization in the United States. Wahhabism is a radical form of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia and advocated by al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his terrorist leaders.

Siddiqi has accompanied visiting Saudi officials from the Muslim World League on fund-raising tours across America, and is listed on its Website as the organization’s official representative in the United States. Offices of the Muslim World League in Herndon, Va., were raided by a federal antiterrorism task force in March 2002 because of suspected ties to al-Qaeda.

During an anti-Israel rally outside the White House on Oct. 28, 2000, Siddiqi openly threatened the United States with violence if it continued its support of Israel. “America has to learn … if you remain on the side of injustice, the wrath of God will come. Please, all Americans. Do you remember that? … If you continue doing injustice, and tolerate injustice, the wrath of God will come.” By “injustice,” he meant U.S. support for Israel.

Siddiqi also has called for a wider application of sharia law in the United States, and in a 1995 speech praised suicide bombers. “Those who die on the part of justice are alive, and their place is with the Lord, and they receive the highest position, because this is the highest honor,” he was quoted as saying by the Kansas City Star on Jan. 28, 1995.

(From this article by Kenneth Timmerman: Pipes Objects to Fox in the Henhouse.)

Also, according to Steven Emerson’s American Jihad, in a tract titled The Establishment of the Islamic Government in Afghanistan (date unknown) Siddiqi wrote:

I can see there is already some impact of jihad in Afghanistan, in the intifadah movement in Palestine … insha’allah, you will see, in a few years, we will be celebrating, insha’allah, the coming victory of Islam in Palestine … We will be celebrating, insha’allah, the coming of Jerusalem and the whole land of Palestine, insha’allah, and the establishment of the Islamic state throughout that area.

And in an article published by The Message International in February 1991 titled Basic Principles of Involvement in War in Islam, Siddiqi stated that Islam does not allow a Muslim to fight for non-Muslim causes—such as fighting in the US military:

Islam will not allow a Muslim to be drafted by non-Muslims to defend concepts, ideologies and values other than those of Islam…

While Mr. Farivar’s criticism of takfir is laudable, it’s nonethless very troubling to see an article in OpinionJournal misleadingly citing a radical Wahhabist as a “liberal” Muslim.