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Watching Dr. Farley's bloggingheads discussion with Eli Lake, I was a bit perplexed by Lake's explanation of one of the central tenets of al-Qaeda's ideology:
The thing that binds the Sunni jihadists as well as the followers of Khomeini are notions of what they call on the Sunni side takfir, which is that there are different rules for believing Muslims and then that allows [them] to do everything else from murder to lying to stealing to the people who aren't among the believers.I think Lake goes part of the way, but then takes a seriously wrong turn. The special significance of takfir is not in its sanctioning of violence; there are other extant doctrines which do this, in Islam as in other faiths. Takfir, in its modern form, is significant because it offers religious sanction for one Muslim, regardless of his religious credentials, to declare another Muslim, indeed to declare entire populations of Muslims, to be kafir, apostate, abandoners of Islam, and thus permissible to attack. Lawrence Wright describes it this way in The Looming Tower, which traces the history and development of al-Qaeda:MORE ...
