Le Statut des Moines is a short French translation of

Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...

jurist A jurist is a person with expert knowledge of law; someone who analyses and comments on law. This person is usually a specialist legal scholar, mostly (but not always) with a formal qualification in law and often a legal practitioner. In the Uni ...

Ibn Taymiyyah Ibn Taymiyyah (January 22, 1263 – September 26, 1328; ar, ابن تيمية), birth name Taqī ad-Dīn ʾAḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm ibn ʿAbd al-Salām al-Numayrī al-Ḥarrānī ( ar, تقي الدين أحمد بن عبد الحليم � ...

's Mardin fatwa by Yahyah Michot, published in 1997, under the pseudonym of Nasreddin Lebatelier. The translation is considered a misprint and a gross misinterpretation of the original. In 1996, the Algerian ''Groupe Islamique Armé'' (

Armed Islamic Group The Armed Islamic Group (GIA, from french: Groupe Islamique Armé; ar, الجماعة الإسلامية المسلّحة, al-Jamāʿa l-ʾIslāmiyya l-Musallaḥa) was one of the two main Islamist insurgent groups that fought the Algerian gove ...

or GIA) published an announcement that it considered lawful to murder seven Trappist monks in Tibhirine, under the fatwa.

History

In the misprint of a short fatwa on monks, Ibn Taymiyya is said to have argued that those in the

religious order A religious order is a lineage of communities and organizations of people who live in some way set apart from society in accordance with their specific religious devotion, usually characterized by the principles of its founder's religious practi ...

s who were found outside their

monasteries A monastery is a building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in communities or alone (hermits). A monastery generally includes a place reserved for prayer which ...

might in certain circumstances be killed; they might also be killed if they had dealings with people outside their monastic community. However, in 2010, investigation proved that this fatwa was attributed to a misprint in 1909 edition of the fatwa which originally read "dealt with" instead of "killed."

Modern use

Nearly seven hundred years after it was written by Ibn Taymiyya, this tract was reprinted in 1997 in Beirut by Nasreddin Lebatelier (a pen name of Yahya Michot) under the title ''Le Statut des Moines'', with an introduction which discussed the Groupe Islamique Armé's Communiqué no 43. To the justifications given by the killers, Michot opposed the consensus (ijmâ‘) of the Muslim community which clearly condemned them and he endorsed this consensus. He was nevertheless accused by Catholic authorities and media to have condoned the killing of the seven Trappists. Michot negotiated his departure from the University of Louvain, which paid him a financial indemnity, including 50% of his lawyer's fees. Once appointed as the first Muslim lecturer of Islamic theology in Oxford, Michot faced renewed Catholic hostility, notably in various articles by Margaret Hebblethwaite in The Tablet (22 and 29 August 1998; 12 September 1998) and in an interview of the same activist on BBC 4, Sunday program (27 September 1998). Oxford nevertheless confirmed his appointment.Oxford University Gazette, 23 September 1999 In 2010, when new evidence emerged that the killings of the fatwa of Mardin were based on a 1909 misprint, that resulted him writing the erroneous translation ''Le Statut des Moines'', he distanced himself from condoning any killings by

jihadist Jihadism is a neologism which is used in reference to "militant Islamic movements that are perceived as existentially threatening to the West" and "rooted in political Islam."Compare: Appearing earlier in the Pakistani and Indian media, Wes ...

groups and denied ever having condoned the actions.

History

Modern use

References

Further reading