Four Egyptian men are at the heart of attempts by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to find religious justification for its bloody attempts to forge a new “caliphate,” a number of experts on fundamentalist movements told Asharq Al-Awsat on Saturday.

The sources said the four men formed the “core” of the group’s ideological leadership, and oversaw its attempts to administer its own brand of Islamic justice in areas under its control, despite having little education in mainstream Islamic scholarship.

They are Helmi Hashim (known as “Abdul Rahman Shakir Naamallah”), who hails from Upper Egypt and is the group’s main jurisprudential authority; ISIS’s head Shari’a judge Abu Muslim Al-Masri; another man bearing the same name, who is now believed to have been killed and who was the group’s main Shari’a judge in Aleppo; and Aboul Harith Al-Masri.

Hashim, the most influential on the list, is regarded as ISIS’s chief ideologue, and is the author of a book, The People of Cessation between Doubt and Certainty. In this work, he argues that since all “abodes” around the world, including Muslim-majority countries, are not truly “Islamic,” they are legitimate targets for armed violence, and the practice of takfir (declaring others, including other Muslims, to be infidels) should continue.

Hashism therefore declares those who have “ceased” in declaring others infidels and fail to spread the message of Islam are also infidels. ISIS, like other modern extremist takfirist groups, regularly labels other Muslims who do not follow its own doctrines infidels, including fellow Sunni extremists not fighting alongside them, such as the Al-Nusra Front, and followers of other Islamic sects, such as Shi’ites.

Sirri is adamant, however, that these four men should not be regarded as genuine religious scholars.

“The problem with these people is that they did not take their knowledge from those who actually have it [i.e. respected scholars]; they merely browsed a number of books and then went and declared some fatwas—without the proper knowledge. So they went astray [from Islam] and led others along with them,” he said.
   »»» ASHARQ AL-AWSAT (London, U.K.)

In the Amman Message as amended in June 2006, over 200 Muslim scholars who signed it declared that “takfir” (declaring other Muslims as unbelievers) is forbidden. They said:

“It is neither possible nor permissible to declare as apostates any other group of Muslims who believes in God, Glorified and Exalted be He, and His Messenger (may peace and blessings be upon him), the pillars of faith (Iman), and the five pillars of Islam, and does not deny any necessarily self-evident tenet of religion.”

There are “good” Muslims and “bad” Muslims according to their degree of righteousness or sinfulness, but no one who does not knowingly violate the precepts of the Qur’an or the Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be on him) can be declared an appostate or unbeliever. The practice of ISIS in declaring fellow Muslims to be unbelievers and apostates who may be killed, is contrary to the laws of God (Qur’an) and the traditions of the Prophet (Sunna). Such a practice places the people of ISIS in the camp of the heretics, renegades and blasphemers.

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