Practical Sharia - X: summary execution blessed by religious authority.

Update on practical implementation of sharia.

Mufti, Sheikh Akrama Tzabari is the Mufti of Jerusalem. He issues a fatwa that authorizes the Neignboring Entity^[1] to execute 15 Arabs accused of working with Israel.

Here are some of the problems with this:

1. Mr. Tzabari lives in Israel but he purported to speak to a legal matter within the jurisdiction of the Neighboring Entity. Ergo, Islamic legal rulings are not constrained by international boundaries. Whose fatwa would control if an Egyptian mufti also decided to weigh in on the execution of the accused?
2. Everyone in the Neighboring Entity seems to think this guy is qualified to make decisions that permit the summary dispatch of the accused. Apparently attending the Muslim equivalent of Yale Divinity School or Whitewater Bible College is enough to issue death warrants. (Pat Robertson call Strike Headquarters.)
3. "Summary" is the operative word, as there apparently has been no involvement of an independent judiciary in the process of determining guilt. Execution is apparently just an afterthought.
4. The mufti made a life-or-death decision based on no discernible direct involvement in the cases of the accused, but authorized death . . . death, mind you . . . on the mere fact of the Neighboring Entity's decision to arrest the 15. "Executive action" to die for.
5. Legal representation for the accused is apparently not an option for the accused.
6. The Neighboring Entity is 100% clueless about the rule of law and is wedded to the sharia that was state of the art law in the seventh century and possibly, just possibly, a slight improvement over then-extant truly primitive tribal law.^[2]

Lest the above strike you as merely academic concerns consider the following instances of extrajudicial murder:

Israel Police Atty. Rachel Edelsberg informed Hadari that Israeli government sources had turned to the PA on this matter, and that the PA promised not to use the religious ruling issued by the Mufti. The ruling still stands, however. The 15 are still alive, but executions are invariably carried out very suddenly - and informally - in the PA.

In 2004, several such executions were carried out, among them: On July 2, 2004, Fatah terrorists murdered, execution-style, Muhammad Rafiq Abdel Razek, a resident of the Jenin area, before a cheering crowd. Around the same time, a PA policeman threw a hand grenade into the jail cell of an accused Israeli agent in Gaza, injuring seven suspected Israeli agents. In February of 2004, PA taxi driver Tahseen Abu Arkub, 50, was killed, and a month earlier, the same fate met a 27-year-old resident of Shechem (Nablus).^[3]

Note the direct involvement -- inside the jail -- of a Neighboring Entity policeman.

Note too the cheering crowd at the Fatah murder of a man by Fatah terrorists. As the Germans loved Hitler in the 30s, the Arabs love their lawless terrorist.

Again we say the burden of proof has shifted inexorably to Muslims to prove that they have an understanding of civil liberties and human rights and that lose Kanonen in their midst are disgraced and neutralized.

Notes
^[1] Henceforth, this is the Colonels appellation for the so-called "Palestinian" Authority. The Muslims often cannot bring theyselves to refer to Israel as such and so choose the formulation "Zionist Entity." The Colonel applauds all workable political euphemisms and circumlocutions and only wishes there were many more than there are. George Carlin would be proud.
^[2] "Mufti Not Charged With Incitement to Murder." By Hillel Fendel, Arutz Sheva, 9/4/05.
^[3] Lest you think us harsh and focused only on the deficiencies of the sharia, check out the inanities of Anglo Saxon law.