Islamist Ideology Goes Missing in Post Report

The Washington Post’s “Hezbollah blames Sunni extremists in recent killing of top commander” (May 15, 2016) by reporter Hugh Naylor failed to define an Islamic extremist term central to the news it reported.

Naylor, in a dispatch on fighting between Sunni Muslim terrorist groups, such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and the Lebanese-based, Shiite Muslim terrorist organization Hezbollah, wrote:

“Hezbollah uses ‘takfiri,’ an Arabic word, to describe its extremist Sunni Muslim enemies, including al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.”

But The Post, unjournalistically, doesn’t explain the term “takfiri” for its readers.

Bernard Haykel, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at Princeton University, has noted that takfirism is the practice—often by adherents of the radical Salafist brand of Sunni Islam—of declaring a fellow Muslim to be an infidel, or non-believer. By declaring another Muslim to be a takfir, the Quranic prohibition of a Muslim killing a fellow religious adherent can be sidestepped. Islamic terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda and ISIS have employed the doctrine of takfirism, derived from the teachings of Ibn Taymiyyah, a 13th and 14th century Islamic scholar to justify their killings of countless other Muslims, combatants and non-combatants alike.

Yet, extremist Shi’ite Muslim groups, such as Hezbollah, a U.S.-designated terror movement, also use the term takfiri to describe Sunni Muslims. Fighting between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims dates back to a seventh-century split over who should succeed Mohammed, the founder of Islam. This smoldering intra-Islamic conflict has exploded, once again, across the Middle East in recent years, as is evidenced by fighting in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere.

According to the Council on Foreign Relations, a New York-based think tank:

“Iranian officials, Iraqi politicians, and Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, routinely describe their Sunni opponents as takfiris (referring to the doctrine embraced by al-Qaeda of declaring fellow Muslims apostate) and Wahhabis (referring to the puritanical Saudi sect).”

In labeling their Sunni opponents takfiri, Hezbollah implies its adherents practice true Islam while their rivals amount to heretics.

By failing to define takfirism for readers, The Post, if unintentionally, downplayed a religious element that remains central to understanding fighting between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslim groups in Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East.