Muruna: Violating Sharia to Fool the West

The Sunni doctrine of muruna takes taqiyya a step further

By Walid Shoebat

Westerners who understand Islamic deception often refer to “taqiyya” as being the tactic of lying in order to guard the faith. Sunni Muslim apologists counter that taqiyya is a Shiite doctrine, while accusing Shiites of being rabblerousers who sanction “mut’a” (pleasure marriage), which is nothing more than prostitution.

Shiites can easily find equivalents to taqiyya and mut’a in the Sunni Muslim world. They are called “misyar”and “muruna.”

While Westerners cringe at the thought of religiously sanctioned prostitution like mut’a, they are less familiar with the Sunni-sanctioned misyar, which literally means “the traveler’s marriage.” It was established to assist with the sexual needs of travelers — a Sunni Muslim male may enter into a contract with a woman in order to gain sexual gratification without the financial obligation necessary to maintain a wife.

As a consequence, the sin of adultery never takes place because the sex contract is an official marriage license. An abundance ofmisyar “middlemen” can seal these interim deals. For internet savvy travelers, there are countless websites like Mesiaronline that allow men to arrange these marriages globally, including in the United States, from the comfort of their hotel rooms.

Misyar was first made legal in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Sunnis who approve of misyar may condemn the Shiite practice of mut’a, which does not require two witnesses as misyar does. Shiites argue that Allah and the Qur’an are the only two witnesses they need.

Arabic translations reveal that Sunnis and Shiites have much more in common than just sanctioned prostitution. Few Westerners are familiar with the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood revival of the doctrine of muruna, which literally means “stealth” or “flexibility.” It is far worse than taqiyya, since it sanctions all prohibitions that block Muslim interests, even blasphemous ones.

Muruna allows Muslims to sow division and confusion in the Western world. In a recent sermon, this doctrine was exercised by General Guide of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Muhammad Badei, who laid out his vision for the post-revolutionary era while revealing aspects of a strategy followers should use to deal with secularism in the meantime:

Do not fight the ways of the world because they are overpowering but try to overcome and use them, change their course, and pit some of them against others.

When Badei says to “overcome and use” the “ways of the world”, he is instructing Muslims worldwide on how to overcome Western secularism. It was precisely this purpose for which muruna was prescribed by Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the main Muslim Brotherhood intellect who initiated it in December 1989 while in the United States during the annual conference of the Association of Muslim Youth Forums. He was with Mohammed Hamadi, a leading rebel in Libya who participated heavily in the “Arab Spring.” Hamadi is also the head of the Muslim Brotherhood in Mauritania.

This doctrine and long-term plan should be of great interest to Westerners. In what the forum termed “The Priorities of The Islamic Movement in The Next Three Decades” (from 1990 to 2020), they planned to attain what they described as “the goals of the Islamic Movement.” The plan confirms Badei’s utopian hope for the “establishment of an Islamic state, governed according to Qur’anic law — first in Egypt and eventually in the entire world.” Accordingly, muruna calls for “organized, popular work to return to Islam in order to lead society, all of society … to bring back the caliphate … to announce Jihad either by arms, by pen, or by heart.”

Muruna was designed to catapult and advance Sharia by using Western means. If one thinks that Sharia, with its harsh code, is problematic enough, how about the elimination of the kinder, gentler laws? Muruna is literally accomplished by permitting behavior normally so eschewed by Sharia that Westerners logically assume a more moderate version of Islam when such prohibitions are suddenly permitted. Westerners’ eyes are, in fact, deceiving them. Muruna is about going to great lengths to gain interests through a much deeper level of deception while simultaneously lowering the guard and gaining the support of the infidels.

Note the following quote taken from the series titled Preparing the Atmosphere under the title The Workings of Al-Si’a and Muruna:

Sharia’s ability to be flexible and inclusive is that it cares for their needs while excusing the burdens Muslims have to endure. For the sake of their destiny, it was made lawful for them to have exceptions from the law that are appropriate for them since these exceptions match their general goals to make it easy for humanity by removing the chains of [Sharia] rules they were made to adhere to in previous Sharia rulings.

By reversing Islamic law, muruna concludes an amazing doctrine that permits all prohibitions:

When evil and harm conflict as necessities demand, we must then choose the least of the two evils or harms. This is what the experts in jurisprudence decided … if interests and harms/evils conflict, or benefits conflict with evils, what is then to be decided is to review each benefit and each harm and its consequences, so the minor evils are forgiven for the sake of the greater long-term benefit. The evil is also accepted even if that evil is extreme and normally considered deplorable.

Consider the example of Huma Abedin, a practicing Muslim who married Jewish former Congressman Anthony Weiner. Qaradawi has used muruna to sanction such marriages.

What was once forbidden by Shariah — from major crimes like Muslims killing Muslims, to issues of interest banking that include alliances with infidels — was made “temporarily” kosher by muruna:

Is it permissible, then, to have alliances with powers that are non-Muslim? Can Muslims work in banks that practice usury? … For the young Muslims they should not leave their jobs in banks and insurance agencies despite their work being evil, since their experience in these agencies would gain experience for what would benefit the Muslim commerce … whoever examines the issues in light of the Doctrine of Balance would find that entry into these arenas is not merely a project, but a preference and a duty.

Qaradawi unequivocally states without apology that “necessities justify prohibitions,” and “coercion” alongside “times of weakness and disability” for the Muslims is reason to break Sharia law. It is a tactical maneuver meant to deceive the West into thinking that the Muslim Brotherhood is acquiring western modernity. In reality, that perceived modernity is a shroud that helps the Brotherhood establish a narrative that the story of the “Arab Spring” is simply a human rights issue that mandates the toppling of dictators.

Muruna even allows for the acceptance of tribal laws that are inconsistent with Sharia. Even the Sufi cleric, Ground Zero Mosque Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf of the Cordova Initiative, stated in Arabic:

If Sharia is not carried out then we have tribal laws.

However, in order for muruna to explain away certain Sharia prohibitions, it needed to bring authority from the Qur’an itself. For that, Qaradawi provides the issue of “al-Nasekh wal-Mansookh,” or “abrogation” in Islam. The doctrine takes an approach different from what has been understood:

There are no abrogated verses or verses that abrogate other verses, but to each verse is a condition and a time to use it … one is used in a time of weakness and the other in time of strength, so on and so forth.

In short, anything goes as long as you can justify a higher calling:

Verses that call for peace, forgiveness, sparing the unbelievers and things that the interpreters say were abrogated by the Verse of the Sword. But the truth I say is that such verses have their time and place; the Verse of the Sword has its time and its place.

Qaradawi mentions another definition called “Al-Munsa” (forgotten verses) in which he quotes the Qur’an:

None of Our revelations do We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, but We substitute something better or similar: Knowest thou not that Allah Hath power over all things?

The term “forgotten” is not meant to be abrogation; it is meant to be literally forgotten, out of memory temporarily until the time is right. Qaradawi strengthens this view by quoting Al-Syuti, one of Islam’s greatest sources of jurisprudence:

Abrogation occurs at different levels. We have the first, the second and the third; that is a verse has a purpose, then the purpose is finished such as in being weak and few in number, to have peace and forgiveness with the enemy then is abrogated by the commands of war. This is not abrogation, but under the section of forgotten verses as Allah said ‘we made forgotten’ what is forgotten here is the order to fight, until the Muslims are strong, while they are weak the ruling is to be patient.

Even the individual right to life can be eliminated under muruna. Under the section titled “the necessities of the group,” Qaradawi explains that:

As Sharia considers the individual needs, it permitted many prohibitions and considers the necessities of the community.

Qaradawi is not short of examples and even commands the “killing of Muslims whom the unbelievers use as shields”:

Leaving these unbelievers is a danger to the Muslims, so it is permissible to kill these unbelievers even if they killed Muslims with them in the process.

Death, mayhem, and prostitution; it’s the sanctioning of all prohibitions in the name of Allah.

Walid Shoebat is the author of For God or Tyranny. Ben Barrack is a talk show host on KTEM 1400 in Texas, and maintains benbarrack.com.