Religion: Is the Ayatullah a Heretic?

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Experts say hostage taking is against Muhammad's teachings

The Ayatullah Khomeini is a unique, three-in-one figure: revolutionary, de facto head of state, and spiritual leader. He has made much of his religious role and his rejection of the ways and means of the secular and corrupt Western world. Islam requires the truly dedicated to follow a most detailed ethical system. For Muslims, the present crisis in Iran has raised some perplexing questions. Are good Muslims permitted to indulge in hostage taking? In peacetime, during a jihad (holy war), or not at all? And, depending on the answer, how good a Muslim is the Ayatullah Khomeini?

For guidance in such matters, Muslims usually turn first to the Koran, then to the Hadith, a collection of the teachings and actions of the Prophet Muhammad. They also rely on a legal code that Islamic jurists developed centuries before Europe heard of international law. A TIME survey of Islamic scholars shows that religious justification for holding the U.S. hostages can hardly be found in any of these three sources.

When the Iranians understand the Koran, states Sri Lanka's ascetic M.R. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, a teacher in the mystical Sufi movement, now living in Philadelphia, "they will release the hostages immediately." Muhaiyaddeen has sent Khomeini three fervent epistles, urging him to free the captives and repent of his vengeance lest Islam be further disgraced before the world. Even in Iran, the Ayatullah Kazem Sharietmadari, second only to Khomeini in popularity, privately considers the embassy seizure an "abuse of Islam" and has told a confidant: "I have never been so worried in my life —not only about Iran but also about Islam's image." In places like East Africa, scholars treat Iran as an embarrassment.

Islamic tradition has always extended charity to diplomats and wayfarers. According to the Mishkat-ul-Mas-abih, a standard Hadith text, an enemy courier named Abu Rafi converted to Islam, but Muhammad insisted he return to his tribe so that the Prophet might avoid even a faint suspicion that he had taken Rafi as a hostage. Muhammad declared flatly, "I do not break treaties, nor do I make prisoners of envoys." The Koran 9:6 insists that even a religious enemy be granted asylum and conveyed to safety.

Islamic law holds "unequivocally that the restriction of the physical freedom of any human is forbidden, except where that human is personally involved in crime," Ismail R. al Faruqi wrote last January in the Pakistani Muslim journal Universal Message. "The employees of any embassy do not fall in this category." Envoys who misbehave cannot be imprisoned, only expelled or fined to pay for any property damage. He also says the imprisonment violates the Koran's declaration that "no soul can be charged with the sins of another."