American Society of International Law is collaborating with .docx

American Society of International Law is collaborating with
JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Proceedings of
the Annual Meeting (American Society of International Law).
http://www.jstor.org
The Responsibility to Protect: Rethinking Humanitarian
Intervention
Author(s): Gareth Evans
Source: Proceedings of the Annual Meeting (American Society
of International Law), Vol. 98 (
MARCH 31-APRIL 3, 2004), pp. 78-89
Published by: American Society of International Law
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25659900
Accessed: 10-08-2015 17:17 UTC
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the
Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/
info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars,
researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and
tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of
scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact
[email protected]
This content downloaded from 146.201.208.22 on Mon, 10 Aug
2015 17:17:14 UTC

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=asil
http://www.jstor.org/stable/25659900
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
78 ASIL Proceedings, 2004
Pentagon and is presently an adviser to the Kerry campaign. Mr.
Feinstein is also cochair with
Anne-Marie Slaughter of the ASIL-Council on Foreign
Relations Project on Old Rules, New
Threats and published with Dean Slaughter the article in the
January/February issue of Foreign
Affairs that introduced the concept of "a duty to prevent."3
The Responsibility to Protect: Rethinking Humanitarian
Intervention
by Gareth Evans*
The Policy Challenge
Until terrorism overwhelmed international attention after 9/11,
the really big issue in inter
national relations?the one that must have launched a thousand
Ph.Ds?was the "right of
humanitarian intervention," the question of when, if ever, it is
appropriate for states to take
coercive action, in particular coercive military action, against
another state in order to protect
people at risk in that other state. Man-made internal

catastrophe, and what the international
community should do about it, is what more than anything else
preoccupied international rela
tions practitioners, commentators, and scholars in the decade
after the Cold War.
The cases on which the debate centered are all burnished in our
memory. They are cases both
when intervention happened and when it did not:
The debacle of the international intervention in Somalia in
1993;
The pathetically inadequate response to genocide in Rwanda in
1994;
The utter inability of the UN presence to prevent murderous
ethnic cleansing in Srebrenica
in Bosnia in 1995; and
NATO's intervention, without Security Council approval, in
Kosovo in 1999.
These were not the only the cases. There was northern Iraq,
Liberia, Haiti, and Sierra Leone,
as well as the more marginal situation of East Timor (marginal
because Indonesia, under pres
sure, eventually consented to the Australian-led intervention so
that it was not strictly speaking
"coercive"). But Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Kosovo are the
ones we remember most starkly.
Between them they raised the full range of moral, legal,
political, and operational issues that
the debate on humanitarian intervention is all about.1

The international community handled none of these cases well
or confidently. With Somalia,
Bosnia, and Rwanda, such interventions as did occur were too
little too late, misconceived,
poorly resourced, poorly executed, or all of the above. As for
NATO's intervention in Kosovo,
Security Council members were divided; the legal justification
for action without Security
3
Lee Feinstein and Anne-Marie Slaughter, A Duty to Prevent,
83:1 foreign Aff. (Jan./Feb 2004). *
President, International Crisis Group; Cochair, International
Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty
This paper was originally delivered as the 2002 Wesson Lecture
in International Relations Theory and Practice,
Stanford University, Feb. 27, 2002. For a distillation of the
International Commission on Intervention and State
Sovereignty report, see Gareth Evans and Mohamed Sahnoun,
The Responsibility to Protect, 81:6 foreign Aff. 99
(2002).
1
Since this was written, "humanitarian intervention" has burst
back into prominence in the context of the U.S.-led
invasion of Iraq in 2003. As weapons of mass destruction failed
to turn up, and evidence of Saddam Hussein's links
with terrorists failed to get stronger, defenders of the war were
forced back to supporting it on straightforward
humanitarian intervention grounds: Saddam's gross

mistreatment of his own people, which reached genocidal levels
in his use of chemical weapons against Kurds in the late 1980s
and his massacre of southern Shiites in the early
1990s. Opponents of the Iraq war have responded by saying this
was not the real motive for intervention at the time
and cannot credibly be claimed as such after the event.
Moreover, they say, if it had been the real motive, it
was not
good enough to justify going to war when all other
considerations were taken into account. With opinion
as heated
and divided as ever, it has become necessary all over again to
try to untangle the issues.
2015 17:17:14 UTC
Rethinking Collective Action 79
Council authority was asserted but largely unargued; the moral
or humanitarian justification for
the action, which on the face of it was much stronger, was
clouded by allegations that the inter
vention triggered more carnage than it avoided; and the means
by which the allies waged the
war continue, justly or not, to be much complained of.
Every one of the big cases generated major international
controversy?usually too late to be

useful and never enough to settle the issues of principle once
and for all, especially the role and
responsibility of the United Nations and the nature and limits of
state sovereignty. By the dawn
of the new century the debate remained wholly inconclusive.
Intense disagreement persisted
as to whether there was a right of intervention and if so, how
and when it should have been
exercised, and under whose authority.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is one of those who has tried
hardest to get sense and
coherence into it all. Deeply troubled by the issues and the
inconsistency of the international
response, in 1999 and again in 2000 he challenged the General
Assembly to find a way through
these dilemmas, posing the issue in the starkest of terms: "If
humanitarian intervention is, indeed,
an unacceptable assault on sovereignty, how should we respond
to a Rwanda, to a Srebrenica?
to gross and systematic violations of human rights that affect
every precept of our common
humanity?"2
Annan's own view was clear. "Surely no legal principle?not
even sovereignty?can ever
shield crimes against humanity," he said in 1999.3 As recently
as his Nobel Peace Prize Lecture
in Oslo in December 2001 he was still saying it: "The
sovereignty of states must no longer be
used as a shield for gross violations of human rights."4

In the General Assembly debates of 1999 and 2000 that
followed his initial call, the Secre
tary-General was rewarded for the most part by cantankerous
exchanges in which fervent
supporters of intervention on humanitarian or human rights
grounds and anxious defenders of
state sovereignty dug themselves deeper and deeper into
opposing trenches, from which they
have still not yet emerged.
. The academic debate was not much more helpful. There has
been a great deal of writing,
much of it very thoughtful but none of it very influential. The
best-known studies have probably
been those commissioned by the Danish government through its
think-tank DUPI, the Nether
lands government through its Advisory Council on International
Affairs, and the Swedish
government through its International Commission on Kosovo,
chaired by Richard Goldstone
and Carl Tham. A common theme of these reports, like many
other scholarly analyses, has been
to draw a distinction between "legal" and "legitimate"
interventions. Intellectually comforting
though this taxonomical distinction may be, it does not offer
much guidance to political deci
sion makers about what in practice they should actually do.
Now, to compound the misery for those of us who like
intellectual cleanliness and godliness
in these matters and do not like to see such big issues
unresolved, since 9/11 the debate on all
this has more or less disappeared from public view. The

preoccupation now is with how to cap
ture and punish terrorists and how to mount sustainable
defenses against them and the states
who support them. At least since President Bush's 2004 State of
the Union Address, we are all
now further engaged in trying to understand the nature and
limits of the appropriate response
to those states that threaten others, explicitly or implicitly, by
developing weapons of mass
destruction.
The conceptual issues here are very old ones: What are states
faced with actual or appre
hended attacks on their territory or their own nationals to do by
way of self-defense action
(authorized under Article 51 of the UN Charter) or under the
authority of Chapter VII of the
2
We the Peoples: The Role of the United Nations in the 21st
Century, Millenium Report of the Secretary-General
of the United Nations 48 (Sept. 2000) . 3
Secretary-General's speech to the 54th Session of the General
Assembly, Sept. 20, 1999. 4
The Nobel Lecture given by the Nobel Peace Laureate 2001,
Oslo, Dec. 10, 2001.
2015 17:17:14 UTC

UN Charter (which authorizes the use of force "to maintain or
restore international peace and
security"). These issues, which are hugely important in their
own right, also have many un
resolved loose ends of their own, both in principle and practice,
but they are quite distinct from
those involved in the humanitarian intervention debate. That
debate is about the justification
for intervening forcibly in other states to protect that state's
own nationals, something on which
the UN Charter is quite silent.
Yet the debate about humanitarian intervention has not gone
away; nor will it go away so
long as human nature remains as fallible as it is. Internal
conflict is still the norm when it comes
to serious violence: Of the fifty-six armed conflicts between
1990 and 2000 identified by the
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) as
major, in that they involved more
than a thousand battle-related deaths in one year, fifty-three of
them were intrastate. Intrastate
conflict is a phenomenon that exploded with the end of the Cold
War as the checks and balances

and internal suppression that had maintained uneasy peace for
so long fell away, but it shows,
unhappily, no sign of diminishing.
It can only be a matter of time before reports emerge again,
from Central Africa, Central or
South Asia, the Balkans, or somewhere else, of massacres or
mass starvation, rape or ethnic
cleansing, occurring or apprehended. Then the question will
arise all over again, in the Security
Council, in political capitals, and in the media: What do we do?
This time we must have answers. Few things have done more
harm to our shared ideals that
we are all equal in worth and dignity and that the earth is our
common home than the inability
of the community of states to prevent genocide, massacre, and
ethnic cleansing. The last decade
was not, on any view, a proud one. The beginning of a new
century, here as elsewhere, gives
us the psychological chance to wipe the slate clean?to think
through the issues afresh, to find
new common ground, and to ensure, above all, that there are no
more Rwandas.
The International Commission on Intervention and State
Sovereignty
It was against this background, and to respond to this policy
challenge, that in September

2000 the government of Canada, on the initiative of then-
Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy,
with the support of several major U.S. foundations, the
assistance of the UK and Swiss govern
ments, and the cooperation of many others, established the
International Commission
on Inter
vention and State Sovereignty, which I cochaired along with the
Algerian diplomat and UN
Special Adviser Mohamed Sahnoun.
The objectives of the Commission were essentially threefold,
although we
never quite articu
lated them in such stark terms. It was to produce a guide to
action on responses by the inter
national community to internal, man-made, human-rights
violating catastrophe, which
was:
intellectually credible and satisfying, not profoundly offending
either the lawyers
or
philosophers (and hopefully not international relations theorists
either, although
I am not
sure that these days international theory is penetrable enough
for anyone else to know
whether they are being offended or not, or to mind very much if

they did know);
not likely to be rejected out of hand by either North or South,
the permanent
five mem
bers of the Security Council or any other major international
constituency; in other
words, be capable of acceptance in principle by governments
as a framework for action;
and
capable in practice of actually motivating action and mobilizing
support when
a situation
demanding action arises.
2015 17:17:14 UTC
The Commission has now published and presented its final
report,5 and our hope is that we
might just succeed, where others have failed, in adding value in
all three respects. There are
several good reasons why we may not be totally deluding

ourselves.
Firstly, this is by far the most representative and consultative
exercise yet attempted in this
area. The Commission had a high profile and high-quality
membership, evenly divided between
developed and developing countries. From the South there was
Mohamed Sahnoun, Fidel
Ramos, Cyril Ramaphosa, Eduardo Stein, and Ramesh Thakur;
from the North, in addition to
me, there was Lee Hamilton, Gisele Cote-Harper, Michael
Ignatieff, and Klaus Naumann; with,
in addition, Vladimir Lukin from Russia and Cornelio
Sommaruga, the former head of the
International Committee of the Red Cross, whom our Chinese
friends might describe as a North
erner with Southern characteristics. We travelled endlessly and
consulted our heads off: the
Commission met in Asia and Africa as well as North America
and Europe, and held roundtables
and other consultations in Latin America, the Middle East,
Russia, and China.
Secondly, the exercise has been very comprehensive, addressing
not just the legal and moral
dilemmas that have been at the heart of most of the academic
and policy debate about coercive
intervention so far but operational and political issues as well.
It has taken into account and
tried to build upon all the best work done in the past; the report
has attached to it a substantial
volume containing newly commissioned research and an
annotated bibliography of previous

writing.
Thirdly, the whole exercise has had a sharply practical political
focus. None of us want to see
the report disappearing from sight soon after its release, having
no other life than in libraries
and research seminars. We have recommended that its
conclusions be debated in the UN
General Assembly and picked up and adopted by the Security
Council. The Secretary-General,
who has spoken publicly in very warm praise of the report, has
indicated his willingness to take
this forward. Preliminary responses from a number of key
states, both North and South, have
also been positive. That said, no one can have any illusions
about the degree of difficulty in
getting adopted, in either the Assembly or Council, resolutions
or even informal guidelines
drafted with any precision, clarity or teeth.
Above all, fourthly, the hope is that the new Commission's
report would add value by being
innovative?bringing some genuinely new ways of thinking about
the issue into the debate, and
making it possible to bridge the gulf that has characterized state
attitudes so far. The conceptual
starting point in this endeavor has been to turn the whole debate
on its head, recharacterizing
it not as an argument about the "right to intervene" but rather
about the "responsibility to pro
tect"?a responsibility owed by all sovereign states to their own
citizens in the first instance,
but one that must be picked up by the international community
of states if that first-tier respon

sibility is abdicated or cannot be exercised.
How do we make the argument for this international
responsibility to protect? What precisely
is its content? What are the circumstances in which it can and
should be exercised? Does it help
us any more than talk of a "right of humanitarian intervention"
helped in wrestling with the
questions of legitimacy, authority, operational effectiveness,
and political will that have dogged
this whole debate? It is to these questions that I now turn,
starting (as one has to) with just what
is, and is not, involved in the modern notion of sovereignty.
Sovereignty and the RESPONsroiuTY to Protect
The essence of the notion of sovereignty, in the Westphalian
system that has governed interna
tional relations since the seventeenth century, has been control:
the capacity to make authoritative
5
The Responsibility to Protect, Report of the International
Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty
(91pp with CD insert), plus Supplementary Volume, Research,
Bibliography,Background(410 pp), IDRC, Canada,
Dec. 2001. The Report and Supplementary Volume may be
downloaded from the Commission Web site, at
<http://www.iciss-ciise.gc.ca>.
2015 17:17:14 UTC

decisions about the people and resources within the territory of
the state. The principle of sov
ereign equality of states is enshrined in Article 2.1 of the UN
Charter, and the corresponding
norm of nonintervention is enshrined in Article 2.7: A sovereign
state is empowered in inter
national law to exercise exclusive and total jurisdiction within
its territorial borders; other states
have a corresponding duty not to intervene in its internal
affairs. After World War II, member
ship in the United Nations became the final symbol of
independent sovereign statehood and
thus the seal of acceptance into the community of nations. The
UN is an organization dedicated
to maintaining international peace and security through
protecting the territorial integrity,
political independence, and national sovereignty of its member
states.
These verities are now nothing like so clear-cut as they once
seemed. Not only are the over
whelming majority of today's armed conflicts internal, not inter-
state, but the proportion of
civilians to military killed in them increased from about one in
ten at the start of the twentieth
century to around nine in ten by its close. This has presented
the organization with a major

difficulty: how to reconcile its foundational principles of
member state sovereignty and the
accompanying primary mandate to maintain international peace
and security ("to save succeed
ing generations from the scourge of war") with the equally
compelling mission to promote the
interests and welfare of people within those states ("We the
peoples of the United Nations").
The key to meeting this difficulty is to rethink sovereignty in
terms of its essence being not
so much control as responsibility. The Charter of the United
Nations is itself an example of a
set of international obligations voluntarily accepted by member
states. On the one hand, in
granting membership in the United Nations, the international
community welcomes the signa
tory state as a responsible member of the community of nations.
On the other hand, the state
itself, in signing the Charter, accepts the responsibilities of
membership that flow from that
signature.
Thinking of sovereignty as responsibility has a threefold
significance:
It implies that the state authorities are responsible for the
functions of protecting the
safety and lives of citizens and promotion of their welfare.

It suggests that national political authorities are responsible to
their citizens internally,
as well as to the international community through the United
Nations.
It means that the agents of state are responsible for their
actions; that is to say, they are
accountable for their acts of commission and omission.
The case for thinking of sovereignty in these terms is much
strengthened by the ever-increasing
impact of international human rights norms and the increasing
impact in international discourse
of the concept of human security. Sovereignty as responsibility
is being increasingly recognized
in state practice.
The adoption of new standards of conduct for states in
protecting and advancing international
human rights has been one of the great achievements of the
post-World War II era. The Uni
versal Declaration and the Covenants on civil and political and
on economic, social, and cul
tural rights mapped out the international human rights agenda,
set the benchmark for state
con
duct, inspired many national laws and international conventions,
and have led to creation of

national infrastructures for protecting and promoting of human
rights. Accompanying all this
has been a gradual transition from a culture of sovereign
impunity to a culture of national and
international accountability, with the international human rights
norms and instruments being
used as the concrete point of reference against which to judge
state conduct.
Reinforcing this, in the last decade or so there has been an
important shift in international
thinking about what is involved in the concept of security,
extending it beyond states to people:
their physical safety, their economic and social well-being,
respect for their dignity and worth
as human beings, and protection of their human rights and
fundamental freedoms. It is in
creasingly being acknowledged that the fundamental
components of human security?the
2015 17:17:14 UTC
security of people against threats to life, health, livelihood,
personal safety, and human dignity?

can be put at risk not only by external aggression but also by
factors within a country, including
"security" forces. Again the focus has become not so much what
sovereign states are entitled
to do but what they are not entitled to do in the exercise of their
responsibility to their own
people.
It is evident that there has been a large and growing gap
between the codified best practice
of international behavior as articulated in the UN Charter,
whose explicit language emphasizes
the respect owed to state sovereignty, and actual state practice
as it has evolved in the fifty-six
years since the Charter was signed. That gap demonstrates the
limits of sovereignty.
We in the Commission were intrigued, in the course of our
worldwide travels and consul
tations, to find the extent to which that gap was acknowledged.
Defense of state sovereignty
by even its strongest supporters did not raise any claim of the
unlimited power of a state to do
what it wants to its own people; we heard no such claim at any
point. It was acknowledged that
sovereignty implies a dual responsibility: externally, to respect
the sovereignty of other states,
and internally, to respect the dignity and basic rights of all the
people within the state. In inter
national human rights covenants, in UN practice, and in state
practice itself, sovereignty is now
understood as embracing this dual responsibility. Sovereignty as
responsibility has become the
minimum content of good international citizenship.

While there is not yet a sufficiently strong basis to claim the
emergence of something as for
mal as a new principle of customary international law, growing
practice in states and regional
organizations as well as Security Council precedent do suggest
an emerging norm, a guiding
principle, that can usefully be described, in the Commission's
language, as "the responsibility
to protect."
Whatever its foundations in theory and practice, there is good
reason to believe that speaking
of "responsibility to protect" rather than the more familiar
"right to intervene" will be very
useful in the policy debate, helping enormously to "de-prickle"
it and to get state actors in
particular thinking afresh about what the real issues are.
Changing the terminology from "inter
vention" to "protection" allows us, for a start, to get away from
the language of "humanitarian
intervention," which has always enraged humanitarian relief
organizations like the Red Cross,
who hate the association of the word "humanitarian" with
military activity.
Even beyond that, talking about the "responsibility to protect"
rather than the "right to inter
vene" has three big advantages:
The responsibility to protect implies evaluating the issues from
the point of view of
those seeking or needing support, rather than those who may be
considering interven

tion. This terminology refocuses the international searchlight
back where it should
always be: on the duty to protect communities from mass
killing, women from system
atic rape, and children from starvation.
The responsibility to protect acknowledges that the primary
responsibility rests with the
state concerned; only if the state is unable or unwilling to fulfill
this responsibility, or
is itself the perpetrator, does it become the responsibility of the
international community
to act in its place.
The responsibility to protect is an umbrella concept, embracing
not just the "responsi
bility to react" but also the "the responsibility to prevent' and
the "responsibility to
rebuild" Both these dimensions have been much neglected in the
traditional
humanitarian intervention. Bringing them back to center stage
to rank in priority
alongside the issue of reaction should do much to make the
concept of reaction itself
more palatable.
The responsibility to prevent requires addressing both the root
causes and the more direct
and immediate causes of internal conflict and other man-made
crises that put populations at risk,
2015 17:17:14 UTC

using all the complex array of measures available: political and
diplomatic, legal, economic,
and military. The Commission report makes the point, in the
strongest and most explicit terms,
that prevention is the single most important dimension of the
responsibility to protect and that
it is more than high time for both national governments and the
international community to be
closing the gap between rhetorical support for prevention and
tangible commitment.
The responsibility to rebuild means following through after the
event; providing full assis
tance for recovery, reconstruction, and reconciliation; and
addressing in the process the causes
of the harm the intervention was designed to halt or avert. If
military intervention action is
taken?because of a breakdown or an abdication of a state's own
capacity and authority in
discharging its own responsibility to protect?there should be a
genuine commitment to helping
build a durable peace and promoting good governance and
sustainable development.
Principles for Military Intervention
As critical as the dimensions of prevention and rebuilding are,
the core of the debate?and
the most difficult conceptual and political issue?is the issue of

reaction. The argument is that
the responsibility to protect, whatever else it encompasses,
implies above all else a responsibil
ity to react to situations of compelling need for human
protection. When preventive measures
fail to resolve or contain the situation and when a state is
unable or unwilling to redress the situ
ation, then intervention by other members of the broader
community of states may be neces
sary. Coercive measures may include political, economic, or
judicial measures, and in
extreme?but only extreme?cases, they may also include military
action.
But what is an extreme case? Where should we draw the line in
determining when military
intervention is primafacie defensible? What other conditions or
restraints, if any, should apply
in determining whether and how intervention should proceed?
Most difficult of all, who makes
all these decisions? Who should have the ultimate authority to
determine whether an intrusion
into a sovereign state, involving the use of deadly force on a
potentially massive scale, should
actually go ahead?
The Commission wrestled long and hard with all these questions
(and the enormous literature

they have generated), but in the event the task was easier than it
appeared. While there are
almost as many different lists of criteria as there are
contributions to the writing and political
debate on this subject, of differing length and terminology, in
reality there is an enormous
amount of common ground on the core issues. All the relevant
decision-making criteria seemed
to us capable of being summarized under the following six
headings:
Just cause (the threshold criteria for action)
Right intention
Last resort
Proportionality
Reasonable prospects (what we called other precautionary
criteria)
Right authority (the critical question of who decides: just the
Security Council,
or
anyone else?)
All this terminology will no doubt sound familiar. It has a long
intellectual pedigree in war
theory alone that goes back to the early Middle Ages. But being
a very PC kind of Commis

sion?claiming to articulate universal values rather than any
particular cultural subset?we
decided that when it came to emphasizing particular Christian
and Eurocentric connections,
discretion was the better part of valor.
2015 17:17:14 UTC
The Just Cause Threshold
The threshold test needs to be set high and tight, for both
conceptual reasons (military inter
vention for human protection purposes must be regarded as an
exceptional and extraordinary
measure) and practical political ones (if intervention is to
happen when it is most necessary, it
cannot be called upon too often). The Commission's judgment
was that military intervention
for human protection purposes is justified in two broad sets of
circumstances, and two only,
namely in order to halt or avert:
large-scale loss of life, actual or apprehended, with or without
genocidal intent, that is
the product either of deliberate state action, state neglect or
inability to act, or a failed
state situation; or

large-scale "ethnic cleansing," actual or apprehended, whether
carried out by killing,
forced expulsion, acts of terror, or rape (where rape is
perpetrated as another form of
terrorism or as a means of changing the ethnic composition of a
group).
While we made no attempt to quantify "large scale," we made it
absolutely clear that military
action can be legitimate as an anticipatory measure in response
to clear evidence of likely large
scale killing or ethnic cleansing. Without this possibility of
anticipatory action, the international
community would be placed in the morally untenable position of
being required to wait until
genocide begins before being able to take action to stop it.
The threshold criteria we articulated are wide enough to cover
not only the deliberate perpe
tration of horrors such as those that occurred or were
anticipated in Bosnia, Rwanda, and
Kosovo, but also situations of state collapse and the resultant
exposure of the population to
mass starvation or civil war (as in Somalia). Also potentially
covered would be overwhelming
natural or environmental catastrophes that are not in themselves
man-made but when the state
concerned is unwilling or unable to cope or call for assistance,
and significant loss of life is
occurring or threatened.
What are not covered by the "just cause" threshold we set are

situations of human rights
violations (such as systematic racial discrimination or political
oppression) that fall short of
outright killing or ethnic cleansing; the overthrow of
democratically elected governments; and
the rescue by a state of its own nationals on foreign territory.
Although eminently deserving of
external action of various kinds?including, in appropriate cases,
political, economic, or mili
tary sanctions?these are not cases that would seem to justify
military action to protect people.
Right Intention
The primary purpose of the intervention, whatever other
motives the intervening states may
have, must be to halt or avert human suffering. Overthrow of
regimes is not as such a legitimate
objective, although disabling a regime's capacity to harm its
own people may be essential to
discharging the mandate of protection (and what is necessary to
achieve that disabling will vary
from case to case). One way of helping to ensure that the "right
intention" criterion is satisfied
is for military intervention to always take place on a collective
or multilateral rather than single
country basis. Another is to look to whether, and to what extent,
the intervention is actually
supported by the people for whose benefit the intervention is
intended. Yet another is to look
to whether, and to what extent, the opinion of other countries in
the region has been taken into

account and is supportive.
Complete disinterestedness?the absence of any narrow self-
interest at all?may be an ideal
that is not likely always to be a reality; mixed motives, in
international relations as everywhere
else, are a fact of life. Moreover, the budgetary cost and risk to
personnel involved in any mili
tary action may in fact make it politically imperative for the
intervening state to be able to claim
some degree of self-interest in the intervention, however
altruistic its primary motive might
actually be.
2015 17:17:14 UTC
To those domestic constituencies who may actually demand of
their governments, when it
comes to intervention for human protection purposes, that they
not be moved by altruistic "right
intention," the best short answer may be that these days good
international citizenship is a
matter of national self-interest. With the world as close and
interdependent as it now is, and
with crises in "faraway countries of which we know little" as
capable as they now are of gen

erating major problems elsewhere (with terrorism, refugee
outflows, health pandemics, nar
cotics trafficking, organized crime, and the like), it is strongly
arguable that it is in every
country's interest to contribute cooperatively to resolving such
problems, quite apart from the
humanitarian imperative to do so.
Last Resort
Every diplomatic and nonmilitary avenue for the prevention or
peaceful resolution of the
humanitarian crisis must have been explored. The responsibility
to react?with military coer
cion?can only be justified when the responsibility to prevent has
been fully discharged. This
does not necessarily mean that every such option must literally
have been tried and failed; often
there will simply not be the time for that process to work itself
out. What it does mean is that
there must be reasonable grounds for believing that, in all the
circumstances, if the measure had
been attempted it would not have succeeded.
Proportional Means
The scale, duration, and intensity of the planned military
intervention should be the minimum
necessary to secure the humanitarian objective in question. The
means must be commensurate

with the ends and with the magnitude of the original
provocation. The effect on the political
system of the country targeted should be limited, again, to what
is strictly necessary to accom
plish the purpose of the intervention. While it may be a matter
for argument in each case what
the precise practical implications of these strictures are, the
principles are clear enough.
Reasonable Prospects
Military action can only be justified if it stands a reasonable
chance of successfully halting
or averting the atrocities or suffering that triggered the
intervention. Military intervention is not
justified if actual protection cannot be achieved, or if the
consequences of embarking upon the
intervention are likely to be worse than if there is no action at
all. In particular, a military action
for limited human protection purposes cannot be justified if in
the process it triggers a larger
conflict. Some human beings simply cannot be rescued except at
unacceptable cost, perhaps
of a larger regional conflagration, involving major military
powers. In such cases, however
painful the reality, coercive military action is no longer
justified.
Applying this precautionary principle would on purely
utilitarian grounds be likely to pre

clude military action against any one of the five permanent
members of the Security Council
even if all the other conditions for intervention described here
were met. It is difficult to imag
ine a major conflict being avoided, or success in the original
objective being achieved, if such
action were mounted against any of them. The same is true of
major powers who are not
permanent members of the Security Council. This raises the
familiar question of double
standards, to which the only answer can be this: The reality that
interventions may not be able to
be mounted in every case where there is justification for them is
no reason for them not to be
mounted in any case.
Right Authority
When it comes to authorizing military intervention for human
protection purposes, the argu
ment is compelling that the United Nations, in particular the
Security Council, should be the
2015 17:17:14 UTC

first port of call. The difficult question?starkly raised by
Kosovo?is whether it should be the
last.
The United Nations is unquestionably the principal institution
for building, consolidating,
and using the authority of the international community. It was
set up to be the linchpin of order
and stability, the framework within which members of the
international system negotiated
agreements on the rules of behavior and the legal norms of
proper conduct in order to preserve
the society of states. Thus, simultaneously, the United Nations
was to be the forum for medi
ating power relationships; for accomplishing political change
that the international community
holds to be just and desirable; for promulgating new norms; and
for conferring the stamp of
collective legitimacy.
The authority of the United Nations is underpinned not by
coercive power but by its role as
the ensurer of legitimacy. The concept of legitimacy acts as the
connecting link between the
exercise of authority and the recourse to power. Attempts to
enforce authority can only be made
by legitimate agents of that authority. Collective intervention
blessed by the United Nations
is regarded as legitimate because it is duly authorized by a
representative international body;
unilateral intervention is seen as illegitimate because it is self-
interested. Those who challenge

or evade the authority of the United Nations as the sole
legitimate guardian of international
peace and security in specific instances run the risk of eroding
its authority in general and also
undermining the principle of a world order based on
international law and universal norms.
There are many reasons to be dissatisfied with thS role the
Security Council has played so
far: its generally uneven performance, its unrepresentative
membership, and its inherent insti
tutional double standards with the Permanent Five veto power.
But the Commission was in
absolutely no doubt that there is no better or more appropriate
body than the Security Council
to deal with issues of military intervention for human
protection. That was the overwhelming
consensus we found in all our consultations around the world.
Quite apart from the force of the
argument in principle, the political reality is that if
international consensus is ever to be reached
about when, where, how, and through whom military
intervention should happen, it is very
clear that the Security Council will have to be at the heart of
that consensus. Viewed this way,
the task is not to find alternatives to the Security Council as a
source of authority but to make
the Security Council work much better than it has.
Hopefully, the report and recommendations of the Commission
will carry their own momen
tum in this respect, including our recommendation (suggested

by one of the P5 foreign min
isters) that the Permanent Five members of the Security Council
should agree not to apply their
veto power in matters where their vital state interests are not
involved to obstruct the passage
of resolutions authorizing military intervention for human
protection purposes for which there
is otherwise majority support.
If the Security Council proves unable or unwilling to act in
circumstances which appear to
cry out for such action, such as another Rwanda or Kosovo-like
situation, the only institutional
solutions that seem available are:
Consideration of the matter by the General Assembly in
Emergency Special Session
under the Uniting for Peace procedure (used as the basis for
operations in Korea in
1950, Egypt in 1956, and the Congo in 1960), which may well
in fact have delivered,
and speedily, a majority recommendation for action in the
Rwanda and especially
Kosovo cases.
Action within their areas of jurisdiction by regional or
subregional organizations under
Chapter VIII of the Charter, subject to their seeking later
authorization from the Security
Council (as happened with the West African interventions in
Liberia in the early 1990s
and Sierra Leone in 1997).
Interventions by ad hoc coalitions (or, even more, individual

states) acting without the
approval of the Security Council, the General Assembly, or a
regional or subregional
2015 17:17:14 UTC
grouping of which the target state is a member, do not?it would
be an understatement
to say?find wide favor. As a matter of political reality, it would
simply be impossible
to find consensus on any proposals for military intervention that
accepted the validity
of any intervention not authorized by the Security Council or
General Assembly.
That may still leave circumstances when the Security Council
fails to discharge its own
responsibility to protect in a conscience-shocking situation
crying out for action. It is a real
question in these circumstances as to which of two evils is the
worse: the damage to interna
tional order if the Security Council is bypassed or the damage to
that order if human beings are
slaughtered while the Security Council stands by.
The Commission responded to this dilemma by articulating two
important messages for the

Security Council. The first is that if the Security Council fails
to discharge its responsibility in
conscience-shocking situations crying out for action, concerned
individual states simply may
not rule out other means to meet their gravity and urgency.
There is a risk then that such
interventions, without the discipline and constraints of UN
authorization, will not be conducted
for the right reasons or with the right commitment to
precautionary principles.
The second message is that if, following the failure of the
Council to act, a military interven
tion is undertaken by an ad hoc coalition or individual state that
does fully observe and respect
all the necessary threshold and precautionary criteria, and if
that intervention is seen by world
public opinion to have been carried through successfully, that
may have enduringly serious
consequences for the stature and credibility of the United
Nations itself. That is really what
happened with the U.S. and NATO intervention in Kosovo, and
the United Nations cannot
afford to drop the ball too many times on that scale.
Conclusion
I am not going to try to summarize, or even to address, all the
issues dealt with in the Com

mission's report?for example, the discussions of operational
principles (how military interven
tions should be planned and carried out) and how to mobilize
political will, both international
and domestic, in support of the "responsibility to protect"
approach. What I have tried to do
is address the key conceptual issues with which the Commission
wrestled and put them in a
sharply real world, political, rather than purely abstract context.
Yet the Commission's contribution may prove in a sense to be
more abstract than anything
else. What our whole report really depends upon is the
acceptance of the central big idea: the
conceptual shift from the right to intervene to the responsibility
to protect. Everything else
follows from that: the emphasis on the primary responsibility of
states themselves, the emphasis
on prevention and rebuilding as well as simply reaction, and the
force of the imperative to act
when the circumstances cry out for it.
It is wrong to be cynical about the power of ideas to influence
the world of government and
intergovernmental action. If well formulated, well argued, and
expressed in language that
can

readily be understood, they can and do have an impact, however
cynical, skeptical,
or indif
ferent to general principles (as distinct from case by case "on
the merits" ad hoccery) the
practitioners of that world may seem, and indeed think
themselves, to be. Ideas do
matter. The
Brundtland Commission, for example, by inventing the concept
of "sustainable development"
created a wholly new basis for constructive dialogue, previously
utterly lacking, between pro
development and pro-environment activists and policy makers
the world
over.
As much as we might hope otherwise, nothing is more certain
than that the international
community will be confronted again by events all too resonant
of the 1990s agonies in the
Balkans, Haiti, Somalia, Sudan, Sierra Leone, East Timor, and
elsewhere?and sooner rather
than later. Reacting to these situations in the ad hoc and often
ineffective or counter-productive
2015 17:17:14 UTC

ways we have to date is no longer the kind of luxury we can
afford as interdependent global
neighbors.
If the Commission's report, with its new emphasis on the
"responsibility to protect" as the
central governing theme, can help bring about a more systematic
and balanced, less ideological,
debate of the main issues by the international community, and
even more if it can provide an
accepted framework for dealing with these matters as they arise
in future in concrete and
positive ways, we will not have wasted our time.
There must be no more Rwandas. The Commission concluded its
report by saying, if we
believe that all human beings are equally entitled to be
protected from acts that shock the
conscience of us all, then we must match rhetoric with reality,
principle with practice. We
cannot be content with reports and declarations. We must, as an
international community, be
prepared to act. We will not be able to live with ourselves if we
do not.
A Duty to Prevent

by Lee Feinstein*
On September 23 before the UN General Assembly, Kofi Annan
gave the speech that George
Bush or, for that matter, the leaders of France, Germany, or any
of the other members of the
Security Council should have delivered.
The Secretary-General restated the familiar and justified
criticisms about the risks to inter
national security posed by the assertion of a right to the
preemptive use of force to prevent the
acquisition of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). He spoke
not only about the dangers to
international security posed by the proliferation of weapons of
mass destruction, he also warned
about the dangers of "proliferation of the unilateral and lawless
use of force with or without
justification."
But Mr. Annan followed up this criticism with another
observation, which I found more com
pelling and, coming from his perspective, bolder and more
interesting. He said,
We have come to a fork in the road ... It is not enough to
denounce unilateralism unless
we also face up squarely to the concerns that make some states
feel uniquely vulnerable,
since it is those concerns that drive them to take unilateral
action.... We must show that
those concerns can and will be addressed effectively through
collective action... and we

must not shy away from questions about the adequacy and
effectiveness of the rules and
instruments at our disposal,... [including] the criteria for an
early authorization of coer
cive measures to address certain types of threats.
In short, what the Secretary-General was saying in the wake of
the dispute over the Iraq war was
that the time had come for the Security Council to face its
nightmare if it was not to relive it.
The Secretary-General also discussed the importance of
responding to genocide and other
massive human rights violations. By discussing the threats
posed by WMD and genocide
together, he implied a link between the pioneering work of
Foreign Minister Evans and his
colleague Mohamed Sahnoun and the need to think again about
the rules for collective re
sponses to deal with proliferation dangers in an age of
catastrophic terrorism.
*
Deputy Director of Studies and Senior Fellow, Council on
Foreign Relations. I want to thank Charlotte Ku, Anne
Marie Slaughter, and ASIL, who have collaborated with the
Council on Foreign Relations over the past year on a
project titled "Old Rules, New Threats," which spawned the
article "A Duty to Prevent" and which is now focusing
its energies on support to the Secretary-General's High-Level
Panel, on which Minister Evans serves. I particularly
want to thank Dean Slaughter, whose creativity, energy, and

brain power can be found on every page of the article
on which this lecture is based.
2015 17:17:14 UTC
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jspArticle
Contentsp. 78p. 79p. 80p. 81p. 82p. 83p. 84p. 85p. 86p. 87p.
88p. 89Issue Table of ContentsProceedings of the Annual
Meeting (American Society of International Law), Vol. 98
(MARCH 31-APRIL 3, 2004) pp. i-xii, 1-416Front MatterAN
INTRODUCTION: MAPPING NEW BOUNDARIES: SHIFTING
NORMS IN INTERNATIONAL LAW [pp. xi-xi]SIXTH
ANNUAL GROTIUS LECTURESIXTH ANNUAL GROTIUS
LECTURE [pp. 1-6]Random Reflections on the Hugo Grotius
Lecture [pp. 7-11]SHIFTING NORMS IN INTERNATIONAL
HEALTH LAW [pp. 13-25]INVESTOR-STATE DISPUTES
AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF INTERNATIONAL LAWThe
Influence of Bilateral Investment Treaties on Customary
International Law [pp. 27-30]INVESTOR-STATE DISPUTES
AND INTERNATIONAL LAW: FROM THE FAR SIDE [pp. 30-
33]Investor-State Disputes and the Development of
International Law Arbitral Lessons from the Private
Correspondence of Queen Victoria and Lenin [pp. 33-36]Some
Comments on Procedural Weaknesses in International Law [pp.
37-39]PREVENTING GENOCIDE AND CRIMES AGAINST
HUMANITY [pp. 41-47]THE ALIEN TORT CLAIMS ACT
UNDER ATTACK [pp. 49-61]CHANGING NORMS IN
INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT FINANCEThrowing a
Spotlight on International Development Finance Institutions
[pp. 63-63]Testing the Frontiers of Their Mandates the
Experience of the Multilateral Development Banks [pp. 64-
69]From "Mission-Creep" to Gestalt-Switch: Justice, Finance,
the IFIs, and the Intended Beneficiaries of Globalization [pp.
69-75]RETHINKING COLLECTIVE ACTION: THE

RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT AND A DUTY TO
PREVENTIntroduction [pp. 77-78]The Responsibility to
Protect: Rethinking Humanitarian Intervention [pp. 78-89]A
Duty to Prevent [pp. 89-94]INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
RIGHTS IN GLOBAL TRADE FRAMEWORK: IP TRENDS IN
DEVELOPING COUNTRIES[Introduction] [pp. 95-99]The
TRIPS Agreement and Intellectual Property Protection In Brazil
[pp. 100-106]THE KURDISH ISSUE AND BEYOND:
TERRITORIAL COMMUNITIES RIVALING THE STATE [pp.
107-115]JUS IN BELLO: OCCUPATION LAW AND THE WAR
IN IRAQ [pp. 117-124]CONCEIVING A JUST WORLD
UNDER LAW [pp. 125-129]PRESIDENTIAL PLENARY
PANEL: AN EXCHANGE WITH FORMER LEGAL ADVISORS
OF THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE [pp. 131-133]THE
JURISDICTION OF THE WORLD TRADE
ORGANIZATION[The Jurisdiction of the WTO is Limited to
Trade] [pp. 135-146]INTELLIGENCE AND THE USE OF
FORCE IN THE WAR ON TERRORISM [pp. 147-158]ISLAM
AND INTERNATIONAL LAW: TOWARD A POSITIVE
MUTUAL ENGAGEMENT TO REALIZE SHARED IDEALS
[pp. 159-168]THE ROLE OF LAW IN COMBATING OFFICIAL
CORRUPTION: Recent U.S. Enforcement and Evolving
International Standards [pp. 169-179]ACCOUNTABILITY FOR
WAR CRIMES: WHAT ROLES FOR NATIONAL,
INTERNATIONAL, AND HYBRID
TRIBUNALS?[Introduction] [pp. 181-182]Folktales of
International Justice [pp. 182-185]Joint Criminal Enterprise and
Contemporary International Criminal Law [pp. 186-189]Truth
Commissions and Courts Working in Parallel: The Sierra Leone
Experience [pp. 189-195]EMPIRICAL WORK IN HUMAN
RIGHTS[Introduction] [pp. 197-198]The Difference Law
Makes: Research Design, Institutional Design, and Human
Rights [pp. 198-206]The New Empiricism in Human Rights:
Insights and Implications [pp. 206-211]THE INTERNATIONAL
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW SYSTEM: NEW ACTORS,
NEW INSTITUTIONS, NEW SOURCES[Introduction] [pp. 213-

219]The Institutions of Intellectual Property: New Trends in an
Old Debate [pp. 219-222]CLIMATE JUSTICE: THE
PROSPECTS FOR CLIMATE CHANGE LITIGATIONThe
Exigencies That Drive Potential Causes of Action for Climate
Change Damages at the International Level [pp. 223-227]Human
Rights Litigation to Protect the Peoples of the Arctic [pp. 227-
229]AFRICA: MAPPING NEW BOUNDARIES IN
INTERNATIONAL LAWIntroduction [pp. 231-232]The
OAU/African Union and International Law: Mapping New
Boundaries or Revising Old Terrain? [pp. 232-238]The Cairo-
Arusha Principles on Universal Jurisdiction in Respect of Gross
Human Rights Offenses: An African Perspective [pp. 238-
240]The African Peer Review Mechanism Under the African
Union and its Initiative: the New Partnership for Africa's
Development [pp. 240-249]PROTECTION OR CONTROL:
REGULATING THE MOVEMENT OF PEOPLE IN A
GLOBALIZED WORLD[Introduction] [pp. 251-251]The Need
for Balance [pp. 252-255]Asylum on the Eve of Accession:
European Developments and Perspectives [pp. 255-258]The
Treatment of Asylum Seekers and Migrants in the Context of
the Global "War on Terror" [pp. 258-260]IRAQ: ONE YEAR
LATER[Introduction] [pp. 261-261]The Use of Force in Iraq:
Illegal and Illegitimate [pp. 262-263]The Iraq War and the
Future of International Law [pp. 263-266]The Role of
International Law and the UN After Iraq [pp. 266-269]The End
of Legitimacy [pp. 269-270]The Problems of Legitimacy-Speak
[pp. 271-273]NEW DIRECTIONS IN INTERNATIONAL
ENVIRONMENTAL LAWRules vs. Standards in International
Environmental Law [pp. 275-280]The Displacement of
International Obligations: BITs and the Commodification of the
Environment [pp. 280-283]Science and Risk Assessment in
International Environmental Law: Learning from the WTO SPS
Experience [pp. 283-287][Why Regime Change is (Almost
Always) a Bad Idea (Manley O. Hudson Medal Lecture)] [pp.
289-303]KEYNOTE ADDRESS: FOREIGN LEGAL
AUTHORITY IN THE FEDERAL COURTS [pp. 305-310]DOES

INTERNATIONAL LAW MATTER?[Introduction] [pp. 311-
317]Remarks on the International Business Lawyer's Point of
View [pp. 318-323]THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION
PREEMPTION DOCTRINE AND THE FUTURE OF WORLD
ORDER[Introduction] [pp. 325-325]The Bush Administration
Preemption Doctrine and the United Nations [pp. 326-
331]Preemptive Action in Self-defense [pp. 331-333]The Law
Applicable to the Preemption Doctrine [pp. 333-337]TREATIES
IN U.S. LAW: NEW DEBATES ON OLD IDEASIntroduction:
(Re)Constructing the Treaty Power [pp. 339-341]Federalism and
the Treaty Power [pp. 341-343]Resisting International
Delegations [pp. 343-346]Self-Executing Treaties and Domestic
Judicial Remedies [pp. 346-348]Treaties and International
Regulation [pp. 349-351]HUMAN RIGHTS AND
HUMANITARIAN LAW: ARE THERE SOME INDIVIDUALS
BEREFT OF ALL LEGAL PROTECTION?[Introduction] [pp.
353-358]The Relevance of Paragraph 25 of the ICJ's Advisory
Opinion on Nuclear Weapons [pp. 358-365]WRAP-UP PANEL:
A Summary of Remarks [pp. 367-372]98TH ANNUAL
MEETING PROGRAM [pp. 373-384]ASIL GENERAL
MEETING [pp. 389-395]Back Matter
1
Executive Summary
1- It is forbidden in Islam to issue fatwas without all the
necessary learning requirements. Even
then fatwas must follow Islamic legal theory as defined in the
Classical texts. It is also
forbidden to cite a portion of a verse from the Qur’an—or part

of a verse—to derive a ruling
without looking at everything that the Qur’an and Hadith teach
related to that matter. In other
words, there are strict subjective and objective prerequisites for
fatwas, and one cannot ‘cherry-
pick’ Qur’anic verses for legal arguments without considering
the entire Qur’an and Hadith.
2- It is forbidden in Islam to issue legal rulings about anything
without mastery of the Arabic
language.
3- It is forbidden in Islam to oversimplify Shari’ah matters and
ignore established Islamic
sciences.
4- It is permissible in Islam [for scholars] to differ on any
matter, except those fundamentals of
religion that all Muslims must know.
5- It is forbidden in Islam to ignore the reality of contemporary
times when deriving legal rulings.
6- It is forbidden in Islam to kill the innocent.
7- It is forbidden in Islam to kill emissaries, ambassadors, and
diplomats; hence it is forbidden to
kill journalists and aid workers.

8- Jihad in Islam is defensive war. It is not permissible without
the right cause, the right purpose
and without the right rules of conduct.
9- It is forbidden in Islam to declare people non-Muslim unless
he (or she) openly declares
disbelief.
10- It is forbidden in Islam to harm or mistreat—in any way—
Christians or any ‘People of the
Scripture’.
11- It is obligatory to consider Yazidis as People of the
Scripture.
12- The re-introduction of slavery is forbidden in Islam. It was
abolished by universal consensus.
13- It is forbidden in Islam to force people to convert.
14- It is forbidden in Islam to deny women their rights.
15- It is forbidden in Islam to deny children their rights.
16- It is forbidden in Islam to enact legal punishments (hudud)
without following the correct
procedures that ensure justice and mercy.
17- It is forbidden in Islam to torture people.
18- It is forbidden in Islam to disfigure the dead.

19-
20- It is forbidden in Islam to destroy the graves and shrines of
Prophets and Companions.
21- Armed insurrection is forbidden in Islam for any reason
other than clear disbelief by the ruler
and not allowing people to pray.
22- It is forbidden in Islam to declare a caliphate without
consensus from all Muslims.
23- Loyalty to one’s nation is permissible in Islam.
24-
anyone to emigrate anywhere.
2
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
Praise be to God, Lord of the Worlds,
Peace and Blessings be upon the Seal of the Prophets and
Messengers
By the declining day, Lo! man is a state of loss, Save those who
believe and do good works,
and exhort one another to truth and exhort one another to
endurance. (Al-‘Asr, 103: 1-3)

Open Letter
To Dr. Ibrahim Awwad Al-Badri, alias ‘Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi’,
To the fighters and followers of the self-declared ‘Islamic
State’,
Peace and the mercy of God be upon you.
During your sermon dated 6
th
of Ramadan 1435 AH (4
th
July 2014 CE), you said,
paraphrasing Abu Bakr Al-
do to be true, then assist me, and if
you find what I say and do to be false, then advise me and set
me straight.’ In what follows is a
Religion
is [rectifying] advice
1
.’ Everything
said here below relies completely upon the statements and
actions of followers of the ‘Islamic State’
as they themselves have promulgated in social media—or upon

Muslim eyewitness accounts—and
not upon other media. Every effort has been made to avoid
fabrications and misunderstandings.
Moreover, everything said here consists of synopses written in a
simple style that reflect the
opinions of the overwhelming majority of Sunni scholars over
the course of Islamic history.
In one of his speeches
2
, Abu Muhammad Al-Adnani said: ‘God bless Prophet
Muhammad
who was sent with the sword as a mercy to all worlds.’
3
This statement comprises compounded
confusions and a mistaken paradigm. Yet it is often repeated by
followers of the ‘Islamic State’.
worlds: ‘We did not send you, except as
a mercy to all the worlds.’ (Al-Anbiya’, 22: 107). This is true
was sent as mercy to people, animals, plants, to the heavens and
to subtle beings—no Muslims
disagree about this. It is a general and unconditional statement
taken from the Qur’an itself.
However, the phrase, ‘sent with the sword’ is part of a Hadith

that is specific to a certain time and
place which have since expired. Thus it is forbidden to mix the
Qur’an and Hadith in this way, as it
is forbidden to mix the general and specific, and the conditional
and unconditional.
Moreover, God has prescribed mercy upon Himself: ‘…
Your Lord has prescribed for
Himself mercy …’ (Al-An’am, 6:54). God also states that His
mercy encompasses all things: ‘…
My mercy embraces all things …’ (Al-A’raf, 7:156). In an
‘When God created Creation, He wrote in place above His
throne, with Himself “Truly, My mercy
is greater than My wrath
4
.”’ Accordingly, it is forbidden to equate ‘the sword’—and thus
wrath and
severity—with ‘mercy’. Furthermore, it is forbidden to make the
idea ‘mercy to all worlds’
subordinate to the phrase ‘sent with the sword’, because this
would mean that mercy is dependent
upon the sword, which is simply not true. Besides, how could ‘a
sword’ affect realms where swords
1

Narrated by Muslim in Kitab al-Iman, no. 55.
2
Published by SawarimMedia on YouTube on April 3
rd
, 2014.
3
Ibn Taymiyyah says in Majmu’ Al-Fatawa (Vol. 28, p. 270),
as a
sign of the Final Hour so that none would be worshipped save
God, alone, with no partner. My sustenance has been
placed under the shadow of my spear. Lowliness and
humiliation will come to those who disobey my teachings.
Whosoever imitates people is one of them.” Ahmad narrates this
hadith in his Musnad [Vol. 2, p.50] on the authority
of Ibn Umar, and Bukhari cites it.’ However, the Hadith has a
weak chain of narrators.
4
Narrated by Bukhari in Kitab al-Tawhid, no. 7422, and by
Muslim in Kitab al-Tawbah, no. 2751.
3
have no effect, such as the heavens, subtle beings and plants?
mercy to all the worlds cannot possibly be conditional upon his

having taken up the sword (at one
point in time, for a particular reason and in a particular
context). This point is not merely academic.
Rather, it reveals the essence of much of what is to follow since
it erroneously equates the sword
and Divine mercy.
1. Legal theory (usul al-fiqh) and Qur’anic exegesis: With
regards to Qur’anic exegesis, and the
understanding of Hadith, and issue in legal theory in general,
the methodology set forth by God
consider everything that has been
revealed relating to a particular question in its entirety, without
depending on only parts of it,
and then to judge—if one is qualified—based on all available
‘… What, do you believe in part of the Book, and disbelieve in
part? ...’ (Al-Baqarah, 2:85);
‘… they pervert words from their contexts; and they have
forgotten a portion of what they
were reminded of…’ (Al-Ma’idah, 5:13); ‘… those who have
reduced the Recitation, to parts’
(Al-Hijr, 15:91). Once all relevant scriptural passages have
been gathered, the ‘general’ has to

be distinguished from the ‘specific’, and the ‘conditional’ from
the ‘unconditional’. Also, the
‘unequivocal’ passages have to be distinguished from the
allegorical ones. Moreover, the
reasons and circumstances for revelation (asbab al-nuzul) for all
the passages and verses, in
addition to all the other hermeneutical conditions that the
classical imams have specified, must
be understood. Therefore, it is not permissible to quote a verse,
or part of a verse, without
thoroughly considering and comprehending everything that the
Qur’an and Hadith relate about
that point. The reason behind this is that everything in the
Qur’an is the Truth, and everything in
authentic Hadith is Divinely inspired, so it is not permissible to
ignore any part of it. Indeed it is
imperative to reconcile all texts, as much as possible, or that
there be a clear reason why one
text should outweigh another. This is what Imam Shafi’i
explains in his Al-Risalah, with a
universal consensus among all usul scholars. Imam al-
Haramayn, Al-Juwayni, says in Al-
Burhan fi Usul Al-Fiqh:

Regarding the qualities of a mufti and the disciplines that he
must master: … it is
imperative that the mufti must be a scholar of language, for the
Shari’ah is [in] Arabic.
… it is imperative that he be a scholar of syntax and parsing …
it is imperative that he
be a scholar of the Qur’an, for the Qur’an is the basis of all
rulings … Knowledge of
textual abrogation is indispensable; and the science of the
fundamentals of
jurisprudence (usul) is the cornerstone of the whole subject …
He should also know
the various degrees of proofs and arguments … as well as their
histories. [He should
also know] the science of Hadith so that he can distinguish the
authentic from the
weak; and the acceptable from the apocryphal … [He should
also know]
jurisprudence.… Moreover, having ‘legal intuition’ (fiqh al-
nafs) is needed: it is the
capital of anyone who derives legal rulings … scholars have
summarized all this by
saying that a mufti is ‘someone who independently knows all
the texts and arguments

for legal rulings’. ‘Texts’ refers to mastering language,
Qura’nic exegesis and Hadith;
while ‘arguments’ indicates mastering legal theory, analogical
reasoning of the various
kinds, as well as ‘legal intuition’ (fiqh al-nafs).
Al-Ghazali has said similar things in Al-Mustasfa (Vol. 1,
p.342), as did Al-Suyuti in Al-
Itqan fi Ulum Al-Qur’an (Vol. 4, p.213).
2. Language: As mentioned above, one of the most important
pillars of legal theory is the mastery
of the Arabic Language. This means mastering Arabic grammar,
syntax, morphology, rhetoric,
poetry, etymology and Qur’anic exegesis. Without mastery of
these disciplines, error will be likely,
indeed inevitable. Your declaration of what you have termed
‘the Caliphate’ was under the title
‘This is God’s Promise’. The person who phrased this
declaration intended to allude to the verse:
‘God has promised those of you who believe and perform
righteous deeds that He will surely
make them successors in the earth, just as He made those who
were before them successors, and

He will surely establish for them their religion which He has
approved for them, and that He will
4
give them in exchange after their fear security. “They worship
Me, without associating anything
with Me”. And whoever is ungrateful after that, those, they are
the immoral.’ (Al-Nur, 24: 55).
But it is not permissible to invoke a specific verse from the
Qur’an as applying to an event that has
occurred 1400 years after the verse was revealed. How can Abu
Muhammad Al-Adnani say that
‘God’s promise’ is this so-called Caliphate? Even if it were
supposed that his claim is correct, he
should have said: ‘this is of God’s promise’. Moreover, there is
another linguistic error; wherein he
has appropriated the word ‘istikhlaf’ (succession) to refer to the
so-called caliphate. Proof that this
is not the correct usage of the word can be seen in the following
verse: ‘He said, “Perhaps your
Lord will destroy your enemy and make you successors
(yastakhlifakum) in the land, that He
may observe how you shall act”.’ (Al-A’raf, 7:129). Succession

(istikhlaf) means that they have
settled on the land in place of another people. It does not mean
that they are the rulers of a particular
political system. According to Ibn Taymiyyah, there is no
tautology in the Qur’an
5
. There is a
difference between ‘khilafah’ and ‘istikhlaf’. Al-Tabari says in
his exegesis (tafsir) of the Qur’an:
‘make you successors (yastakhlifakum): Meaning He will make
you succeed them in their land after
their destruction; do not fear them or any other people.
6
’ This proves that the meaning of ‘istikhlaf’
here is not rulership but, rather, dwelling on their land.
3. Oversimplification: It is not permissible to constantly speak
of ‘simplifying matters’, or to
cherry-pick an extract from the Qur’an without understanding it
within its full context. It is also not
permissibl
noble Companions were simple, why
complicate Islam?’ This is precisely what Abu Al-Baraa’ Al-
Hindi did in his online video in July
2014. In it he says: ‘Open the Qur’an and read the verses on

jihad and everything will become clear
... all the scholars tell me: “This is a legal obligation (fard), or
that isn’t a legal obligation, and this
is not the time for jihad” ... forget everyone and read the Qur’an
and you will know what jihad is.”’
People
Companions made do with as little
material means as possible, without complicated technology, but
they were greater than all of us in
understanding, jurisprudence and intellect, and yet only a small
number of Companions were
“Are those who know equal with
those who do not know?”...’ (Al-
says: ‘... Ask the People of the
Remembrance if you do not know.’ (Al-Anbiya’, 21: 7); and: ‘...
If they had referred it to the
Messenger and to those in authority among them; those among
them who are able to think it out,
would have known it from them ...’ (Al-Nisa’, 4: 83). Thus,
jurisprudence is no simple matter, and
not just anyone can speak authoritatively on it or issue fatwas
Qur’an: ‘... But only people of cores remember.’ (Al-Ra’d,

said: ‘Whoever speaks about the Qur’an without knowledge
should await his seat in the Fire
7
.’ It is
also high time to stop blithely saying that ‘they are men, and we
are men’; those who say this do not
have the same understanding and discernment as the noble
Companions and the imams of the Pious
Forebears (al-Salaf al-Saleh) to whom they are referring.
4. Difference of Opinion: In regards to difference of opinion,
there are two kinds: blameworthy
and praiseworthy. Regarding blameworthy difference of
those who were given the Scripture did not become divided,
except after the clear proof had come
to them.’ (Al-Bayyinah, 98: 4). As for praiseworthy difference
God guided those who believed to the truth, regarding which
they were at variance, by His leave
...’ (Al-Baqarah, 2: 213). This is the opinion expressed by Al-
Imam Al-Shafi’i in Al-Risalah, the
other three imams and all the scholars for over a thousand
years.

When there is a difference of opinion among eminent scholars,
the more merciful, i.e. the
best, opinion should be chosen. Severity should be avoided, as
should the idea that severity is the
5
Ibn Taymiyyah says in Majmu’ Al-Fatawa (Vol. 13, p. 341),
‘Tautology in [the Arabic] language is rare and in the
Qur’an, it is even rarer or nonexistent.’ Al-Raghib Al-Asfahani
says in Mufradat Al-Qur’an (p. 55), ‘This book is
followed … by a book that informs the use of synonyms and
their subtle differences. By doing so, the uniqueness of
every expression is distinguishable from its synonyms.’
6
Tafsir Al-Tabari (Vol. 9, p. 28).
7
Narrated by Al-Tirmidhi in Tafsir Al-Qur’an, no. 2950.
5
what has
been revealed to you from your
Lord ...’ (Al-Zumar, 39: 55); and: ‘Indulge [people] with
forgiveness, and enjoin kindness, and

turn away from the ignorant.’ (Al-
says: ‘[Those] who listen to the
words [of God] and follow the best [sense] of it. Those, they are
the ones whom God has guided;
and those, they are the people of pith.’ (Al-Zumar, 39: 18). In
an authentic Hadith, it is related that
the Lady Aisha said: ‘Whenever faced by more than once
choice, the Prop
easiest one
8
.’
The more severe opinion should not be considered more pious,
religious or sincere to God
desires ease for you, and desires not hardship for you ...’ (Al-
Baqarah, 2: 185). Moreover, the
severe towards you. A people were
severe with themselves and then God was severe towards them
9
.’ There is delusion and vanity in
severity, because severe people naturally say to themselves: ‘I
am severe. Anyone less severe than
me is deficient’; and thus: ‘I am superior to them.’ Herein lies

an inherent attribution of ill-intention
the Qur’an to make people
miserable. God says: ‘Tā hā. We have
not revealed the Qur’an to you that you should be miserable’.
(Ta Ha, 20: 1-2).
It is worth noting that most of the people who became Muslims
throughout history, did so
through gentle in
to the way of your Lord with
wisdom and fair exhortation, and dispute with them by way of
that which is best. Truly your Lord
knows best those who stray from His way and He knows best
those who are guided.’ (Al-Nahl, 16:
and foul language
10
.’And while Islam
spread politically from Central Asia (Khurasan) to North Africa
due to Islamic conquests, the
majority of the inhabitants of these lands remained Christian for
hundreds of years until some of
them gradually accepted Islam through gentle invitation, and
not through severity and coercion.
Indeed large countries and entire provinces became Muslim

without conquest but through invitation
(da’wah), such as: Indonesia; Malaysia; West and East Africa,
and others. Hence, severity is neither
a measure of piety nor a choice for the spread of Islam.
5. Practical Jurisprudence (fiqh al-waq’i): What is meant by
‘practical jurisprudence’ is the
process of applying Shari’ah rulings and dealing with them
according to the realities and
circumstances that people are living under. This is achieved by
having an insight into the realities
under which people are living and identifying their problems,
struggles, capabilities and what they
are subjected to. Practical jurisprudence (fiqh al-waq’i)
considers the texts that are applicable to
peoples realities at a particular time, and the obligations that
can be postponed until they are able to
be met or delayed based on their capabilities. Imam Ghazali
said: ‘As for practicalities that dictate
necessities, it is not far-fetched that independent reasoning
(ijtihad) may lead to them
[practicalities], even if there is no specific origin for them
11
.’ Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyyah said:

‘Indeed, [a jurist] must understand people’s propensity for
plotting, deception and fraud, in addition
to their customs and traditions. Religious edicts (fatwas) change
with the change of time, place,
customs and circumstances, and all of this is from the religion
of God, as already elucidated.
12
’
not slay the soul [whose life]
God has made inviolable, except with due cause ...’ (Al-Isra’,
17: 33); and ‘Say: “Come, I will
recite that which your Lord has made a sacred duty for you: that
you associate nothing with Him,
that you be dutiful to parents, and that you do not slay your
children, because of poverty - We will
provide for you and them - and that you do not draw near any
acts of lewdness, whether it be
manifest or concealed, and that you do not slay the life which
God has made sacred, except
rightfully. This is what He has charged you with that perhaps
you will understand.”’ (Al-An’am,
6: 151). The slaying of a soul—any soul—is haraam (forbidden

and inviolable under Islamic Law),
8
Narrated by Bukhari in Kitab al-Hudud, no. 6786, and by
Muslim in Kitab al-Fada’il, no. 2327.
9
Narrated by Abu Dawood in Kitab Al-Adab, no. 4904.
10
Narrated by Al-Bukhari in Kitab al-Adab, no. 6030.
11
Al-Ghazali, Al-Mustasfa fi Usul Al-Fiqh, (Vol. 1, p. 420).
12
Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyyah, I’lam Al-Muqi’een ‘an Rabbil-
‘Alamin, (Vol. 4, p. 157).
6
says in the Qur’an: ‘Because of that,
We decreed for the Children of Israel that whoever slays a soul
for other than a soul, or for
corruption in the land, it shall be as if he had slain mankind
altogether; and whoever saves the
life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind.
Our messengers have already

come to them with clear proofs, but after that many of them still
commit excesses in the land.’
(Al-Ma’idah, 5: 32). You have killed many innocents who were
neither combatants nor armed, just
because they disagree with your opinions
13
.
7. Killing Emissaries: It is known that all religions forbid the
killing of emissaries. What is meant
by emissaries here are people who are sent from one group of
people to another to perform a noble
task such as reconciliation or the delivery of a message.
Emissaries have a special inviolability. Ibn
Masoud said: ‘The Sunnah continues that emissaries are never
killed
14
.’ Journalists—if they are
honest and of course are not spies—are emissaries of truth,
because their job is to expose the truth
to people in general. You have mercilessly killed the journalists
James Foley and Steven Sotloff,
even after Sotloff’s mother pleaded with you and begged for
mercy. Aid workers are also emissaries

of mercy and kindness, yet you killed the aid worker David
Haines. What you have done is
unquestionably forbidden (haraam).
8. Jihad: All Muslims see
‘O you who believe, what is wrong
with you that, when it is said to you, “Go forth in the way of
God', you sink down heavily to the
ground”’ (Al-Tawbah, 9: 38); and: ‘And fight in the way of God
with those who fight against you,
but aggress not; God loves not the aggressors.’ (Al-Baqarah, 2:
190); and many other verses.
Imam Shafi’i, the other three imams, and indeed all the scholars
see that jihad is a communal
obligation (fard kifayah) and not an individual obligation (fard
each God has promised the goodly reward, and God has
preferred those who struggle over the
ones who sit at home with a great reward’ (Al-Nisa’, 4: 95). The
word ‘jihad’ is an Islamic term
that cannot be applied to armed conflict against any other
Muslim; this much is a firmly established
principle. Furthermore, all scholars agree that jihad is
conditional upon the consent of one’s parents.

king
him to permit him to perform jihad,
to which he replied: ‘Yes.’ And the
[serving] them.
15
’ Moreover, there are
two kinds of jihad in Islam: the greater jihad, which is the jihad
(struggle) against one’s ego; and the
lesser jihad, the jihad (struggle) against the enemy. In regards
said: ‘We have returned from the lesser jihad to the greater
jihad
16
.’ If you say that this Hadith is
weak or apocryphal, the answer is that evidence for this concept
is in the Qur’an itself: ‘So do not
obey the disbelievers, but struggle against them therewith with
a great endeavour [lit. a great
jihad].’ (Al-Furqan, 25:52). ‘Therewith’ in this verse refers to
the Qur’an, which is ‘a healing for
what is in the breasts’ (Yunus, 10: 57). This is clearly
understood from the Hadith in which the

deeds, the
best act of piety in the eyes of your
Lord which will elevate your status in the Hereafter and is
better for you than spending gold and
paper and better than going up in arms against your enemy and
striking their necks and their
striking
“Remembrance of God.
17
”’ Thus, the
greater jihad is the jihad against the ego and its weapon is
remembrance of God and purification of
between the two kinds of jihad in
another verse: ‘O you who believe, when you meet a host, then
stand firm and remember God
much, that you may succeed.’ (Al-Anfal, 8: 45). Thus, standing
firm is the lesser jihad and is
13
him, nor did he permit that they be killed.
Muhammad killed his companions.’ Narrated by

Bukhari in Kitab Tafsir al-Qur’an, no. 4907, and by Muslim in
Kitab al-Birr wal-Silah, no. 2584.
14
Narrated by Imam Ahmad in his Musnad, (Vol. 6, p. 306).
15
Narrated by Al-Bukhari in Kitab al-Jihad, no. 3004.
16
Narrated by Al-Bayhaqi in Kitab al-Zuhd, (Vol. 2, p. 165), and
by Al-Khatib Al-Baghdadi in Tarikh Baghdad, (Vol.
3, p. 523).
17
Narrated by Imam Malik in Al-Muwatta’; Kitab al-Nida’
Lissalah, no. 490, also narrated by Al-Tirmidhi in Kitab al-
Da’awat, and by Ibn Majah in Kitab al-Adab, no. 3790, and
corrected by Al-Hakim in Al-Mustadrak (Vol. 1, p. 673).
7
dependent on the greater jihad which is the jihad against the ego
through the remembrance of God
and purification of the soul. In any case, jihad is a means to
peace, safety and security, and not an
end in itself. This is clear from God’s words: ‘Fight them till
there is no sedition, and the religion

is for God; then if they desist, there shall be no enmity, save
against evildoers.’ (Al-Baqarah, 2:
193). In your speech of July 4
th
, 2014, you said: ‘There is no life without jihad’. Perhaps this
was
based on Al-Qurtubi’s exegesis of the verse: ‘O you who
believe, respond to God and the
Messenger, when He calls you to that which will give you life
…’ (Al-Anfal, 8: 24). True jihad
enlivens the heart. However, there can be life without jihad,
because Muslims may face
circumstances where combat is not called for, or where jihad is
not required, and Islamic history is
replete with examples of this.
In truth, it is clear that you and your fighters are fearless and
are ready to sacrifice in your
intent for jihad. No truthful person following events—friend or
foe—can deny this. However, jihad
without legitimate cause, legitimate goals, legitimate purpose,
legitimate methodology and
legitimate intention is not jihad at all, but rather, warmongering
and criminality.

have only what he [himself]
strives for’ (Al-Najm, 53: 39). Prophetic Tradition relates that
on the authority of Abu Musa Al-
fight out of zeal, out of bravery or out
replied: ‘Whoever fights for the
Word of God to be supreme is in the path of God
18
on the Day of Resurrection is the man who died as a martyr. He
will be brought forth and [God]
will make His favours known to him, which he will recognize.
He will be asked: “What did you do
with them?” to which the man will reply: “I fought for your
sake until I was killed.” He [i.e. God]
will say: “You have lied. You fought so that it would be said
that you are bold, and so it was said.”
He will then be ordered to be dragged on his face and flung into
the Fire …
19
’.
b. The Reason behind Jihad: The reason behind jihad for
Muslims is to fight those who fight them,

not to fight anyone who does not fight them, nor to transgress
against anyone who has not
transgressed against them. God’s words in permitting jihad are:
‘Permission is granted to those
who fight because they have been wronged. And God is truly
able to help them; those who were
expelled from their homes without right, only because they said:
“Our Lord is God”. Were it not
for God's causing some people to drive back others, destruction
would have befallen the
monasteries, and churches, and synagogues, and mosques in
which God's Name is mentioned
greatly. Assuredly God will help those who help Him. God is
truly Strong, Mighty.’ (Al-Hajj, 22:
39-40). Thus, jihad is tied to safety, freedom of religion, having
been wronged, and eviction from
and his companions suffered
torture, murder, and persecution for thirteen years at the hands
of the idolaters. Hence, there is no
such thing as offensive, aggressive jihad just because people
have different religions or opinions.
This is the position of Abu Hanifa, the Imams Malik and Ahmad
and all other scholars including
Ibn Taymiyyah, with the exception of some scholars of the

Shafi’i school
20
.
c. The Goal of Jihad: Scholars are in agreement regarding the
‘Fight them till there is no sedition, and the religion is for God;
then if they desist, there shall be
no enmity, save against evildoers.’ (Al-Baqarah, 2: 193). The
ordered to fight people until they say: “There is no god but
God”, so whoever says: “There is no
god but God” is safe in himself and his wealth except as
permitted by law, and his reckoning is with
God
21
.’ This is the goal of jihad once war has been waged on
Muslims. These texts specify what
victory looks like in the case that Muslims are victorious, and
that the reason for jihad must not be
confused with the goal of jihad; all scholars are in agreement on
this matter. The Hadith above
refers to an event that has already taken place and is conditional
upon God’s words: ‘It is He Who
18

Narrated by Al-Bukhari in Kitab al-Tawhid, no. 7458, and by
Muslim in Kitab al-Imarah, no. 1904.
19
Narrated by Muslim in Kitab Al-Imarah, no. 1905.
20
Cf. Wahbi Al-Zuhayli’s Ahkam al-Harb fil-Islam.
21
8
has sent His Messenger with guidance and the religion of truth,
that He may make it prevail over
all religion. And God suffices as witness.’ (Al-Fath, 48: 28). It
took place in the Arabian Peninsula
may warn the Mother of Towns [Um
al-Qura] and those around it ...’ (Al-An’am, 6: 92); and: ‘O you
who believe, fight those of the
disbelievers who are near to you ...’ (Al-Tawbah, 9: 123). The
idolaters from the Arabian Peninsula.
22

with the guidance and the religion
of truth, that He may make it prevail over all [other] religions,
though the disbelievers be averse.’
(Al-Saff, 61: 9). What is meant here must be the Arabian
Peninsula since this is what happened
f the commanders
of jihad see that it is in the best
interest of Muslims, it is permissible for them to cease combat,
even if this goal has not been
shall be no enmity, save against
evildoers.’ (Al-Baqarah, 2: 193). The circumstances and events
of Sulh al-Hudaybiyah are proof of
this.
d. The Rules of Conduct of Jihad: The rules of conduct of jihad
are summarized in the words of the
do not
be treacherous, do not mutilate or
kill children ...
23
‘Those retreating

are not to be killed, nor are the injured to be harmed, and
whoever shuts his door is safe
24
.’
Similarly, when Abu Bakr Al-
sent it to the Levant, he said: ‘You
will find people who have devoted themselves to monasteries,
leave them to their devotions. You
will also find others whose heads are seats for devils (i.e. armed
deacons
25
), so strike their necks.
However, do not kill the old and decrepit, women or children;
do not destroy buildings; do not cut
down trees or harm livestock without good cause; do not burn or
drown palms; do not be
treacherous; do not mutilate; do not be cowardly; and do not
loot. And truly God will support those
who support Him and His Messengers while not seeing Him.
Truly, God is Strong, Mighty
26
.’
As for killing prisoners, it is forbidden in Islamic Law. Yet
you have killed many prisoners

including the 1700 captives at Camp Speicher in Tikrit in June,
2014; the 200 captives at the Sha’er
gas field in July, 2014; the 700 captives of the Sha’etat tribe in
Deir el-Zor (600 of whom were
unarmed civilians); the 250 captives at the Tabqah air base in
Al-Raqqah in August, 2014; Kurdish
and Lebanese soldiers, and many untold others whom God
knows. These are heinous war crimes.
some battles, then the answer is that he
only ordered that two captives be killed at the Battle of Badr:
Uqbah ibn Abi Mu’ayt and Nadr ibn
Al-Harith. They were leaders of war and war criminals, and the
execution of war criminals is
permissible if the ruler orders it. This is also what Saladin did
upon conquering Jerusalem, and what
the Allies did during the Nuremberg trials after World War II.
As for the tens of thousands of
span of ten years and 29 battles, he
did not execute a single regular soldier; rather, he entrusted that
they be treated with kindness
27
. The

Divine Decree regarding captives and prisoners of war is in
[set them free] by grace or by ransom …’ (Muhammad, 47: 4).
prisoners of war be treated with dignity and respect: ‘And they
give food, despite [their] love of it to
the needy, and the orphan, and the prisoner.’ (Al-Insan, 76: 8).
Indeed, the true Sunnah of the
regarding captives is pardon and amnesty, as was
demonstrated during the Conquest of
said: “There shall be no reproach on
you this day”. Go, for you are free!
28
’
22
Narrated by Bukhari in his Sahih, Kitab al-Jihad, no. 3053, and
by Muslim in Kitab al-Wasiyyah, no.1637.
23
Narrated by Muslim in Kitab al-Jihad, no. 1731, and by Al-
Tirmidhi in Kitab al-Diyyat, no. 1408.
24
Narrated by Ibn Abi Shayba in Al-Musannaf (Vol. 6, p. 498).
25

The deacons were armed, combatant priests.
26
Narrated by Al-Bayhaqi in Al-Sunan Al-Kubra, (Vol. 9, p. 90),
and by Al-Marwazi in Musnad Abi Bakr, no. 21.
27
Narrated by Ibn Abdullah in Al-Isti’ab (Vol. 2, p. 812), and by
Al-Qurtubi in his Tafsir (Vol. 19, p. 129): ‘Qatada
said: “God ordered that prisoners be treated well.”’
28
Narrated by Al-Bayhaqi in Al-Sunan Al-Kubra, (Vol. 9, p.
118); Cf Fayd Al-Qadeer Sharh al-Jami’ al-Sagheer, (Vol.
5, p. 171).
9
Finally, one of the most important principles when it comes to
the manner of jihad is that only
combatants may be killed; their families and non-combatants
may not be killed intentionally. If you
ask about the instance wh
bystanders and women being killed
with idolaters and he said: ‘They are from them
29

’, this Hadith refers to the killing of innocents by
accident and in no way indicates that the intentional killing of
innocents—such as in bombings—is
…’ (Al-Tawbah, 9: 73); and: ‘…
and let them find harshness in you …’ (Al-Tawbah, 9: 123), this
is during war, not after it.
9. Declaring People Non-Muslim (takfir): Some
misunderstandings about takfir are a result of the
exaggeration of some Salafi scholars in matters of takfir
(declaring people non-Muslim), and in
their exceeding of what Ibn Taymiyyah and Ibn Al-Qayyim have
said in many important aspects. In
brief, takfir can be summarised correctly as follows:
a. Quintessentially in Islam, anyone who says: ‘There is no god
but God; Muhammad is the
Messenger of God’ is a Muslim and cannot be declared a non-
believe, when you are going forth in the way of God, be
discriminating and do not say to him who
offers you peace: 'You are not a believer, desiring the transient
goods of the life of this world.
With God are plenteous spoils. So you were formerly, but God
has been gracious to you. So be

discriminating. Surely God is ever Aware of what you do.’ (Al-
Nisa’, 4: 94). The meaning of ‘be
discriminating’ in the above verse is to ask them: ‘Are you
Muslims?’ The answer is to be taken at
face-value without questioning or testing their faith. Moreover,
‘Woe to you! Look! After I die, do no return to being non-
believers, striking each other’s necks
30
.’
but God” saves himself and his
wealth except as permitted by law, and his reckoning is with
God.
31
’ Ibn Omar and the Lady Aisha
also said: ‘Declaring the people of the Qiblah as non-Muslim is
not permissible
32
.’
b. This issue is of the utmost importance because it is used to
justify the spilling of Muslim
blood, violating their sanctity, and usurping their wealth and

slays a believer deliberately, his requital is Hell, abiding
therein, and God is wroth with him and
has cursed him, and has prepared for him a mighty
chastisement.’ (Al-Nisa’, 4: 93). Moreover,
disbeliever”, it will certainly be true of one of
them
33
anyone who verbally declares his
Islam: ‘… And so if they stay away from you and do not fight
you, and offer you peace, then God
does not allow you any way against them.’ (Al-Nisa’, 4: 90).
accusing people of polytheism and of taking up the sword
against them; he said: ‘The person I fear
for you the most is the man who has read the Qur’an … cast it
off and thrown it behind him, and
taken up the sword against his neighbour and accused him of
polytheism
34
.’
It is not permissible to kill any Muslim, (nor indeed any human

being), who is unarmed and
a non-combatant. Usamah Ibn Zayd narrated that, after he killed
a man who had said: ‘There is no
but God’ and you killed him?!” I
replied: “O Messenger of God, he only said it out of fear of
[our] arms.” He said: “Did you see
inside his heart to know whether or not he meant it?
35
”’
Recently, Shaker Wahib—who was affiliated with what was
known at the time as the
Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)—appeared in a
YouTube video where he stopped
unarmed civilians who said they were Muslims. He then
proceeded to ask them the number of
29
Narrated by Muslim in Kitab al-Jihad, no. 1745.
30
Narrated by Al-Bukhari in Kitab al-Maghazi, no. 4403, and by
Muslim in Kitab al-Iman, no. 66.
31

32
As related in Al-Hafiz Al-Haythami’s Majma’ Al-Zawa’id,
(Vol. 1, p. 106).
33
Narrated by Al-Bukhari in Kitab al-Adab, no. 6104.
34
Narrated by Ibn Habban in his Sahih, (Vol. 1, p. 282).
35
Narrated by Muslim in Kitab al-Iman, no. 96. Another narration
reads: ‘“Did you kill him after he said: ‘There is no
god but God”. I said: “He was trying to save himself”. [The
Prophet] kept repeating his words ...’. Narrated by Al-
Bukhari in Kitab al-Maghazi, no. 4369.
10
prostrations (rak’ahs) in specific prayers. When they answered
incorrectly, he killed them
36
. This is
absolutely forbidden under Islamic Law and is a heinous crime.
c. Peoples’ deeds are tied to the intent behind those deeds. The

but by intention, and every person will have what they intended
…
37
‘When the hypocrites come to you they say: ‘We bear witness
that you are indeed the Messenger
of God’. And God knows that you are indeed His Messenger,
and God bears witness that the
hypocrites truly are liars.’ (Al-
describes the words of the hypocrites
regarding the Prophet’s message—an indisputable fact—as lies,
because their intention when saying
it was to lie even though it is true in itself. It is a lie because
they uttered with their tongues a truth
requires the intention of disbelief,
and not just absentminded words or deeds. It is not permissible
to accuse anyone of disbelief
without proof of the intention of disbelief. Nor is it permissible
to accuse anyone of being a non-
Muslim without ascertaining that intention. It is, after all,
possible that the person was coerced,
ignorant, insane or did not mean it. It is also possible that he
misunderstood a particular issue. God
faith—except for him who is

compelled, while his heart is at rest in faith—but he who opens
up his breast to unbelief, upon
such shall be wrath from God, and there is a great chastisement
for them.’ (Al-Nahl, 16: 106).
It is forbidden to interpret the implications of a person’s deeds;
only the person himself or herself
may interpret their own deeds—particularly when there is a
difference of opinion among Muslims
regarding that particular deed. It is also forbidden to declare
others non-Muslim (takfir) based on
any matter in which there is a difference of opinion among
Muslim scholars. It is forbidden to
declare an entire group of people non-Muslim. Disbelief applies
only to individuals depending on
another’s load.’ (Al-Zumar, 39:
7). Finally, it is forbidden to declare people who do not doubt
the disbelief of others, or refuse to
declare them non-Muslim, as non-Muslim.
The reason this point has been discussed in such detail is
because you distributed the books of
Muhammad bin Abdel-Wahhab as soon as you reached Mosul
and Aleppo. In any case, scholars—

including Ibn Taymiyyah and Ibn Al-Qayyim Al-Jawziyyah—
distinguish between the actions of a
disbeliever (kafir) and declaring people non-Muslim (takfir).
Even if a person performs a deed that
has elements of disbelief, this does not necessitate that that
person be judged as a disbeliever for the
reasons presented earlier. Al-Dhahabi
38
related that his teacher, Ibn Taymiyyah, used to say near the
end of his life: ‘I do not declare any member of the ummah non-
“Anyone who maintains his ablution is a believer”, so whoever
observes the prescribed prayers with
ablution is a Muslim.’
associating partners with God]
is when a man stands to pray and embellishes his prayer for an
onlooker
39
.’ He thereby described
ostentation in prayer as ‘subtle shirk’, which is minor shirk.
This minor shirk, which some
worshippers fall into, is not considered major shirk and cannot
lead to takfir or to being cast out of

the fold of Islam. For other than prophets and messengers,
says: ‘They measured not God
with His true measure …’ (Al-An’am, 6: 91); and: ‘And they
will question you concerning the
Spirit. Say: “The Spirit is of the command of my Lord. And of
knowledge you have not been
given except a little”.’ (Al-
accepts such worship. And people
like Him ...’ (Al-Shura, 42: 11);
and: ‘Vision cannot attain Him, but He attains [all] vision ...’
(Al-An’am, 6:103). Nothing is
revelation (al-wahy) or He imparted to
the Spirit of His
command upon whomever He will of
His servants …’ (Ghafir, 40: 15). So how can anyone take up a
sword against others just because
36
YouTube video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yrVPE_-
f9I , June, 2014.
37

American Society of International Law is collaborating with .docx

American Society of International Law is collaborating with .docx

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

More from ShiraPrater50

More from ShiraPrater50 (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

American Society of International Law is collaborating with .docx