Fiqh Council of North America - Fatwa

Fatwa

• Terrorism: In July 2005, the Council issued a fatwa stating Islam's condemnation of certain terrorism and religious extremism. The fatwa said: 1) all acts of terrorism targeting civilians are haram (forbidden), 2) Muslims are forbidden to cooperate with any individual involved in terrorism or violence, and 3) Muslims must cooperate with law enforcement authorities to protect the lives of civilians.

The fatwa did not specifically address terrorism against military targets during a war such as in Iraq, and there is no mechanism for civil enforcement of the fatwa. Furthermore, it did not define "terrorism" or "civilians".

• Capital Punishment: The Council has issued a fatwa calling for a moratorium on Capital Punishment in the United States, based on the fact that several of the presupposed requirements for the carrying out of the law, according to Sharia, are not being met in most cases:

Islam is a complete, comprehensive, inter-related and inter-dependent way of living. As such, criminal law is only one aspect of it, aiming at protecting individual and society. It pre-supposes the full implementation of its other aspects. Before meting punishments for crimes, Islamic law requires the removal of the causes of such crimes. For example, social and economic justice is means of crime prevention, as they remove the causes and motives of many crimes. Even when this is done, due process of Islamic Law must be followed, including strict rules of evidence and the absence of any doubt or extenuating circumstances (shubuhaat) surrounding the crime. Furthermore, Islamic law recognizes the rights of the heirs of the victim to demand punishment or forgive the murderer with or without monetary compensation (a feature which is lacking in current secular Western criminal laws). Numerous reports point out to the presence of biases and inequalities in the implementation of capital punishment in the USA (especially due to racism). Therefore the FCNA (an affiliate of ISNA) supports an interim moratorium on capital punishment in cases where there is no coerced confession or in the absence of any shubuhaat in the Islamic legal sense (Fiqh). Meanwhile, all measures must be taken to deal with the problem of the roots by removing such inequities and biases.