Muslim Group Offers $15,000 for Beheading of ‘Moderate’ Islamic Scholar

A Muslim organization has placed a $15,000 bounty on the head of an Islamic scholar deemed guilty of spreading false teachings about the faith.

Specifically, the All-India Faisan-e-Madina Council has called for the beheading of scholar Tarek Fatah, seen as too “moderate,” and will pay $15,000 to anyone who can do it.

His crime?

From the Hindustan Times:

“‘Tarek Fatah is conspiring to disrupt harmony between Hindus and Muslims. He is as an agent of our enemies. He must be stopped at any cost and our organisation will pay Rs 10,00,786 to any person who will decapitate him,” said Moeen Siddique, head of the council.

“‘He and his programme are being funded by foreign enemies of our country and the government must initiate an inquiry against him,’ Siddique said.”

Fatah is a Canadian national who hails from Pakistan. He holds secular views of many principles of Islam. For instance, Fatah doesn’t believe the burka is required wear for women, the Hindustan Times reported.

“‘In his programme, he claims that it is not required to wear a burqa and terms triple talaq as haram. Muslims must not listen to his advice and come forward against him,’ said Siddique.”

Still, as Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch notes, just because a Muslim group finds Fatah moderate doesn’t make it so.

Spencer writes:

“Tarek Fatah is a paradoxical figure; indeed, he personifies the paradoxes of most moderate Muslims. He speaks out strongly against Muslim Brotherhood organizations and Sharia encroachment in the West, but is extraordinarily concerned at the same to absolve Islam of all responsibility for the crimes done in its name and in accord with its teachings. Around ten years ago I spent a day with him and others in New York, where among other meetings, we met with Roger Ailes and other Fox News officials. Fatah was an amiable fellow, but I began to grow disenchanted when he replied exasperatedly to Nonie Darwish’s pointing out that the Qur’an was full of violent passages with the now-common dodge that the Bible contains violent passages as well — as if the world were as full of Christians screaming “Jesus is Lord” and opening fire on crowds of non-Christians as it is of Muslims screaming “Allahu akbar” as they take out Infidels.

“By the end of that long and eventful day I was extremely skeptical of Fatah’s sincerity. My suspicions were compounded when he attacked the courageous ex-Muslim truth-teller Wafa Sultan, in much the same terms that Leftists and Islamic supremacists use to smear and destroy those whom they fear and hate. He also engaged in sly apologetics to exonerate Islamic texts and teachings of any responsibility for jihad terror, rather than calling for and working for genuine reform. … Fatah soon thereafter began to denounce me as a racist and bigot, which I expect coming from Leftist Alinskyites and Islamic jihad enablers, but was sheer opportunism and jockeying for market share coming from him. …

“And now there is a bounty on his head from the All-India Faisan-e-Madina Council, which only shows that the All-India Faisan-e-Madina Council, in its hatred, bloodlust, and savagery, doesn’t realize who its true friends are. In any case, however, this just illustrates yet again the uphill battle that Islamic reformers, and even pseudo-reformers such as Tarek Fatah, face: when they speak out against Islamic practices that have a foundation in the Qur’an and Sunnah, they’re threatened with death as heretics or apostates. That’s why we don’t see more Islamic reformers, even insincere and opportunistic ones.”