Taha Abdul-Basser, the Harvard Islamic Chaplain, has been previously discussed here because if his answers to a Muslim student who wanted to know -- perhaps he was thinking of leaving Islam himself -- what was the correct punishment for apostasy under Islam. Taha Abdul-Basser makes clear that according to Muslim authorities the punishment for public apoostasy, regarded as treason, is death.
You can read the full articlehere.
And you can read, again, a telling excerpt from Taha Abdul-Basser’s reply to the inquiring student, below:
“Some contemporary thought leaders have emphasized the differing views (i.e. not capital punishment) that a few fuqaha’ in the last few centuries apparently held on this issue, including reportedly the senior Ottoman religious authority during the Tanzimat period and Al-Azhar in the modern period. Still others go further and attempt to elaborate on the argument that the indicants (such as the hadith: (whoever changes his religion, execute him) used to build the traditional position apply only to treason in the political sense and therefore in the absence of a political reality in which apostasy is both forsaking the community and akin to political treasons in the modern sense, the indicants do not indicate capital punishment.
I am not aware of ‘Allama Taqiy al-Din Ibn Taymiya’s position on this issue but much is attributed to him by both detractors and supporters so one should be wary of accepting things attributed to him without asking experts. Perhaps you can ask Ustadh Sharif el-Tobgui or Shaykh Yasir Qadhi (I am copying both), both of whom are Ibn Taymiya specialists.”
So, he was “copying both” -- sending copies of the query, to see if the possibly more experienced masters of Taqiyya, Sharif el-Tobqui and Shaykh Yasir Qadhi (“shaikh” being an honorific expressing respect) have a better way of cleverly dealing with the question, know ing that there was a possiblity of being overheard by Infidels,including authorities at Harvard. When Abdul-Basser copied Yasir Qadhi on the query, and referred to him as a “specialist” on Ibn Taymiya, he could not have been unaware of what Yasir Qadhi routinely rants about Jews.
And this very year, this very spring, Yasir Qadhi was in Cambrdige to address a meeting of the Islamic Society of Boston in Cambridge, a meeting at which Taha Abdul-Basser was surely present. A group monitoring the louche matters surrounding the building, on city-owned land sold in a secret sweetheart deal, arranged by a Muslim employee of the Boston Redevelopment Authority, had this to say about that meeting:
“We also are very troubled by a recent sermon given by a visiting preacher, Sheikh Yasir
Qadhi, at the ISB’s Cambridge center. Sheikh Yasir Qadhi has previously denied the
Holocaust, claimed that Jews want to destroy Muslims, and called all non-Muslims
(including Jews and Christians) a “spiritually filthy substance” whose lives and property
hold no value and are forfeit to Muslims during Jihad.”
Does Taha Abdul-Basser, who obvioiusly regards the man he refers to as an authority to whom he defers, and gives him the honorific of respect “Sheikh,” know any of this about Yasir Qadhi? I think he does. What do you think?
Remember, if you donate to Harvard you are paying the salary of Taha Abdul-Basser ’96. and you are endorsing those who not only hired him but, even today, after his carefully-delivered judgement that Islam does indeed require capital punishment for apostates who make public their apostasy (and thus can be considered “traitors to Islam”), have allowed him to retain his post, long after he revealed himself to endorse murder, as religiously-sanctioned by Islam, for the exercise of freedom of conscience.
Do you not wish to make known your thoughts on this, to the President’s Office at Harvad and, of course, to the very heart of the university, the Development Office at Harvard? Do you want to make known to the university your intention never to donate again to a university that persists in employing a man wbo as the Harvard Islamic Chaplain, serenely passes on, qua spiritual adviser, the glad news that apostates who make publicly known their apostasy (and thus bring harm to Islam) indeed should be killed but that for more, please contact the man he is copying on the query, “Sheikh Yasir Qadhi.” And Sheik Yasir Qadhi, whom he, Taha Abdul-Basser, so admires, is someone who regards Jews and Christians as a “spiritually filthy substance” whose “lives and properties” -- according to the statement issued by the APT in Boston -- “hold no value and are foreit during Jihad.”
Could you forgive yourself if you did not express your fury to the university, and did not tell them thnat the apparent endorsement by Harvard Islamic Chaplain Taha Abdul-Basser, Harvard ’96, makes him unfit to be the spiritual adviser at Harvard, just as would be the case of a Nazi sympathizer hired, say, as a professor of German history in 1941.
Of course no moral or intellectual appeal will have any effect. The only way to get results is to withhold donations yourself, and do what you can to persuade as many others as you can to do the same.
