Is the Ayatullah a Heretic?

Experts say hostage taking is against Muhammad's teachings

The Ayatullah Khomeini is a unique, three-in-one figure: revolutionary, de facto head of state, and spiritual leader. He has made much of his religious role and his rejection of the ways and means of the secular and corrupt Western world. Islam requires the truly dedicated to follow a most detailed ethical system. For Muslims, the present crisis in Iran has raised some perplexing questions. Are good Muslims permitted to indulge in hostage taking? In peacetime, during a jihad (holy war), or not at all? And, depending on the answer, how good a Muslim is the Ayatullah Khomeini?

For guidance in such matters, Muslims usually turn first to the Koran, then to the Hadith, a collection of the teachings and actions of the Prophet Muhammad. They also rely on a legal code that Islamic jurists developed centuries before Europe heard of international law. A TIME survey of Islamic scholars shows that religious justification for holding the U.S. hostages can hardly be found in any of these three sources.

When the Iranians understand the Koran, states Sri Lanka's ascetic M.R. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, a teacher in the mystical Sufi movement, now living in Philadelphia, "they will release the hostages immediately." Muhaiyaddeen has sent Khomeini three fervent epistles, urging him to free the captives and repent of his vengeance lest Islam be further disgraced before the world. Even in Iran, the Ayatullah Kazem Sharietmadari, second only to Khomeini in popularity, privately considers the embassy seizure an "abuse of Islam" and has told a confidant: "I have never been so worried in my life --not only about Iran but also about Islam's image." In places like East Africa, scholars treat Iran as an embarrassment.

Islamic tradition has always extended charity to diplomats and wayfarers. According to the Mishkat-ul-Mas-abih, a standard Hadith text, an enemy courier named Abu Rafi converted to Islam, but Muhammad insisted he return to his tribe so that the Prophet might avoid even a faint suspicion that he had taken Rafi as a hostage. Muhammad declared flatly, "I do not break treaties, nor do I make prisoners of envoys." The Koran 9:6 insists that even a religious enemy be granted asylum and conveyed to safety.

Islamic law holds "unequivocally that the restriction of the physical freedom of any human is forbidden, except where that human is personally involved in crime," Ismail R. al Faruqi wrote last January in the Pakistani Muslim journal Universal Message. "The employees of any embassy do not fall in this category." Envoys who misbehave cannot be imprisoned, only expelled or fined to pay for any property damage. He also says the imprisonment violates the Koran's declaration that "no soul can be charged with the sins of another."

Rules change somewhat in wartime. The Prophet's army took prisoners of war to weaken the enemy or to exchange for his own captured soldiers. But even in war, tradition asserts, hostages must only be taken in the heat of battle, and never by civilians. At the climactic Battle of Badr, Muhammad's troops took 70 hostages and exchanged them for a large ransom. Islam outlaws making war for purposes of revenge or simply to acquire wealth. Commentators explain the Badr ransom by saying that it was a special case. The Prophet was just levying a fine in the form of a ransom in order to punish religious oppressors.

Is the Ayatullah waging a holy war? Mohammed Ahmad Khalafalla, a respected Islamic scholar in Egypt, says the present confrontation with the U.S. is not a holy war, which must be a war against infidels to protect the faith. Despite the fact that the Ayatullah keeps referring to the U.S. as "the great Satan," Khalafalla sees the struggle as a political feud, which makes the hostage imprisonment nothing more than kidnaping, a crime that Islam does not countenance.

The religious doctrines at issue in the hostage dispute theoretically could be settled by a Koranic interpretation from the Supreme Council for Islamic Research at Al Azhar Mosque and University in Cairo. Its rulings are not binding, but they carry the weight of the most influential center of Muslim scholarship. Such a ruling, however, is unlikely. The council now is used mainly to study the application of the Koran to such modern problems as private property vs. the rights of the poor. Besides, though some 50 council members come from about 20 nations, Egypt is now isolated in the Islamic world because of its peace treaty with Israel, and the council could not hear witnesses from all sides.

Many Muslim scholars are reluctant to speak out because of the local appeal of Iran's revolution. Some sympathize with Khomeini. Two weeks ago, after the general chairman of the governing party in Indonesia, which has the biggest Muslim population in the world, publicly denounced Khomeini as a "madman," Indonesia's most influential theologian, Abdul Karim Malik Amrullah, said: "Khomeini may be mad, but revolutions are made with such people. Who am I to condemn a Muslim leader who is only beginning his revolution?" Amrullah added, however, "I cannot understand why he keeps the hostages."

Khomeini offers no answer to challenges from Muslim scholars. His policy is defended by Mohammed Javad Bahonar, a theologian on Iran's Revolutionary Council, who says that both Islam and the U.S. Constitution recognize the right of oppressed people to rebel against a tyrannical government that makes "specious" appeals to law. As for the Prophet Muhammad's explicit command to protect diplomats, another Revolutionary Council member, the Ayatullah Abdul Karim Mousavi Ardebili, thinks the U.S. situation is different: "The envoy to whom the Prophet promised safe conduct was not trying to stab the Islamic community in the back."

A theologian in the Ayatullah Sharietmadari's circle can only shake his head at such arguments. "We criticize the Communists because, we claim, they believe the end justifies the means. By taking the Americans hostage, we have proved we are attached to the same view."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.