Abuz Zubair

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Abuz Zubair (also known as Abu Zubair) is a London-based Islamic fundamentalist. He is one of the owners of the website Islamic Awakening[1] and posts on its forum under the name "Expergefactionist".[2]

In 2011, Zubair became involved in a dispute with Usama Hasan, a London imam who defended the theory of evolution. A creationist, Zubair argued that belief in evolution is a form of apostasy and quoted the late Saudi scholar Muhammad ibn al-Uthaymeen as saying, in regards to a teacher who promotes evolution in a classroom, "If there is absolutely no other way of stopping this person except execution, then this person should be executed because he is an apostate". Neatly avoiding any legal ramifications that could have arisen from these statements, Zubair also made it clear that such executions should only be carried out by imams in Muslim countries, and that "it is not up to individuals to take the law into their own hands and contemplate executing Usama Hasan".[1]

Zubair later stated that he regretted bringing up al-Uthaymeen's comments on execution as it put his point of view in a bad light. "[W]e lost a winning battle, at least in the media", he said. "This could have gone even further to foment support for Usama Hasan's Imamship up and down the country just because of the 'execution' bit, but Allah decided to distract the news media away by causing the Tsanami [sic] in Japan."[3]

Zubair has also advocated the execution of people who make fun of Allah or Mohammed:

Anybody who mocks Allah or his messenger or anyone or any aspect of religion which is known from the deen [religion], by necessity is a kaffir and a murtad [apostate] and is subject to execution because the prophet said "execute the one who changes his religion".[1]

On 18 January 2012, Zubair delivered a talk at the Queen Mary, University of London[note 1] on the subject of "traditional Islam".[4][5] The talk appears to have gone without interruption, unlike Ann Marie Waters' talk on the incompatibility of sharia with human rights, which was to have been held at the same university two days earlier but cancelled after a man ran into the room, filmed the audience, and threatened to "hunt down" anyone who insulted Mohammed.[6] Zubair denounced this act and defended Waters' views on the grounds that sharia is incompatible with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — which he's fine with, as he feels that Muslims don't need to follow Europeans' idea of human rights anyway.[7]

Notes[edit]

  1. Yeah, the comma's an official part of the name. A little awkward, but there we go.

References[edit]