Abdullah al-Muheisini Weighs in on Killing of Alawite Women and Children
▻http://jihadology.net/2015/05/12/guest-post-abdullah-al-muheisini-weighs-in-on-killing-of-alawite-women-a
Yet taken as a whole, al-Muheisini’s verdict should not be considered encouraging, particularly when considered with the coda of tweets he added immediately after (also translated below). In the main ruling, for example, he does not rule out captured Alawite women’s subsequent execution for apostasy. Nor does he rule out the killing of women and children who bear arms, the justification with which Ahrar al-Sham argued against Human Rights Watch’s allegations of massacres of Alawite civilians in an August 2013 Lattakia offensive. Most obviously alarming, though, is his assertion in one of his follow-on tweets that – even though the mujahideen may spare Alawite women and children – “we will exterminate their men.” (Al-Muheisini actually uses the verb أباد/abad, which is frequently used for “exterminating,” to take one example, insects. When modified with the Arabic word for “collective” – جماعي/jama’i – the resulting term, إبادة جماعية/ibadah jama’iyyah, is the common Arabic translation for “genocide.”)
Al-Muheisini, a Saudi now roaming northwest Syria, should not be treated as fringe or irrelevant. Though often seen as close with Jabhat al-Nusrah, he seems to maintain strong relations with an array of Islamist and jihadist factions and to serve as an influential dealmaker. […]
Moreover, al-Muheisini apparently doesn’t even represent the rightmost wing of non-ISIS rebels and jihadists on this issue. Jabhat al-Nusrah shari’ah official “Abu Osama al-Ansari,” for example, replied to al-Muheisini to say that Alawite women have fought or incited against the rebels and should be treated as combatants unless proven otherwise. (He argued, in addition, that al-Muheisini understated the degree of scholarly consensus on the execution of female apostates. His tweets are also translated below.)
