It’s a religion of peace, all right, just as the political and media elites have insisted for over twenty years now. A senior Shi’ite Muslim cleric in Iran, the 98-year-old Naser Makarem Shirazi, has just issued a fatwa that makes it permissible for Muslims to murder President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. That is, if someone actually did kill one or both of them, the culprit would face no legal penalty in this world, and Allah would not punish him or her in the next one — at least according to Shirazi. In fact, given the hostility toward Trump among the leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the killer would likely be handsomely rewarded.
Iran International reported Sunday that Shirazi “has declared US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as ‘mohareb’ (enemies of God) over what he described as their threats against Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.” This followed a post on X from Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, telling Trump to stop behaving so insolently toward the top dog: “If President Trump is genuine about wanting a deal, he should put aside the disrespectful and unacceptable tone towards Iran's Supreme Leader, Grand Ayatollah Khamenei, and stop hurting his millions of heartfelt followers.”
Or else. Calling Trump and Netanyahu “enemies of Allah” is not simply a matter of an elderly Muslim cleric being overcome with patriotism and indulging in a bit of blistering rhetoric. Moharebeh, or the state of being an enemy of Allah, is a serious crime in the Islamic Republic of Iran. In fact, it carries the death penalty, and the Islamic regime has executed numerous dissidents and freedom protesters after charging them with this supposed crime.
This statute of the Islamic Republic is based on the Qur’an, which tells Muslims to “make ready for them all that you can of force and of warhorses, so that by them you may strike terror in the enemy of Allah and your enemy…” (Qur’an 8:60) Those who are enemies of Allah are to be put to death in one of several gruesome manners: “The only reward for those who make war upon Allah and his messenger and struggle to sow corruption on earth will be that they will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet cut off on opposite sides, or be expelled from the land. Such will be their degradation in this world, and in the hereafter, theirs will be an awful doom.” (Qur’an 5:33)
And so Shirazi promised that any Muslim who killed Trump or Netanyahu would find the killing to be his ticket to paradise: “If anyone suffers hardship or loss in this path, they will receive the reward of a warrior in the way of God.”
This isn’t the near-centenarian cleric’s first controversial fatwa. Back in 2006, when Shirazi was a callow 79 years old, he issued a fatwa declaring it was perfectly fine from an Islamic standpoint for me to beat their wives. Shirazi explained on his website that “the Qur’an first of all advises a man to try and convince his wife to obey to him in a polite way and through advice, then by refusing to have sexual relations with her and, finally, if all this will have failed to make her reason, with physical punishment.”
Here again, Shirazi was working straight from the Qur’an, which states: “Men are in charge of women, because Allah has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend of their property. So good women are obedient, guarding in secret what Allah has guarded. As for those from whom you fear disobedience, give them a warning and banish them to separate beds, and beat them. Then if they obey you, do not seek a way against them. Indeed, Allah is always high, exalted, great.” (4:34)
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Note that a woman need not actually disobey her husband. He just has to “fear disobedience” from her. Then, as Shirazi says, the Qur’an first tells men to issue these possibly wayward women a warning, and then send her to a separate bed, and only then to resort to beating. Shirazi told men to be gentle: the punishment “must be light and considered an exceptional event, like surgery in case of a serious illness.” He warned against against “physical punishment which leaves signs and wounds.”
This was the way women wanted it, according to Shirazi. He explained that women were “masochistic and sometimes they have a crisis and need light physical punishment to get back to normal.”
This is a respected senior cleric in the Islamic Republic of Iran, who has now green-lighted the killing of Trump and Netanyahu. Should someone succeed in killing them, the response from the U.S. and Israel will likely be such that many Iranians may end up wondering if Shirazi was “masochistic” and having a crisis.
