By Tom Parker, Policy Director, (Counter) Terrorism and Human Rights
In the past few months I have frequently found myself encountering a new argument when debating those who believe that torture remains an important tool the West’s struggle with Al Qaeda and it cropped up again last Friday in the Washington Post:
One former U.S. official with detailed knowledge of how the interrogations were carried out said [Khalid Sheikh] Mohammed, like several other detainees, seemed to have decided that it was okay to stop resisting after he had endured a certain amount of pressure.
Once the harsher techniques were used on [detainees], they could be viewed as having done their duty to Islam or their cause, and their religious principles would ask no more of them," said the former official, who requested anonymity because the events are still classified. "After that point, they became compliant. Obviously, there was also an interest in being able to later say, 'I was tortured into cooperating.' "
In essence, supporters of coercive interrogation are arguing with twisted logic that when faced with torture members of Al Qaeda are absolved by religious edict from any obligation to remain silent. It therefore follows that we have to use such methods, no matter how distasteful, to enable to them to cooperate - an interesting new spin on having to destroy the village to save it.
I turned to Professor Mohammad Fadel, an expert on Islamic Law at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, to establish if these claims had any basis in fact. Professor Fadel’s response is worth quoting in full:
This is a strange argument: it suggests that torture is OK because it provides the victim a moral excuse to cooperate, thereby justifying the immorality of the torture. In any case, Islam does permit a Muslim, when facing torture and credible threats to his life, to renounce Islam outwardly while maintaining his inner faith (see verse 16:106 (The Bee) in the Quran). I can hardly believe that the US government wishes to associate itself with religious persecutors who quite literally drew-and-quartered early converts to Islam, however: hardly good propaganda for the US. In any case, this is simply a particular instance of the larger concept of necessity as a defense in Islamic law.
Significantly, however, necessity is never a defense to depriving another person of his rights, much less his life, i.e if a criminal threatens to kill me unless I kill you, necessity does not permit me to kill you and save myself. As I understand the propaganda of al-Qa'ida, they believe that that US is engaged in a war against Islam and Muslims. A detainee holding such a belief would believe that by divulging information to the US he is assisting the US in that war. In such a situation, a necessity defense would not apply to him because it results in the death of more Muslims. In short I find it incredible to think that members of al-Qa'ida believe that giving up information under torture -- given their beliefs about the US, its actions and its goals -- could ever be Islamically permissible. I would assume that they believe that in such circumstances they would have a duty to become martyrs.
So once again, we see the level of ignorance, bordering on racism, that seems to have informed many aspects of the coercive interrogation program instituted at CIA black sites and the detention facility in Guantanamo. The use of military dogs to intimidate detainees, justified on the basis that they are considered in Islam to be unclean, was a similar 'innovation'.
There is nothing in Islam to suggest that Muslims are any more or less likely to cooperate when faced with physical abuse. This is simply another baseless assertion trotted out to justify the unjustifiable.