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Shari’a and Violence in American Mosques

About 80% of mosques are found to be teaching jihad warfare and Islamic supremacism.

by Mordechai Kedar and David Yerushalmi


Root Causes and Enabling Mechanisms


A comprehensive study of the relationship between Shari’a adherence and incitement to violence in American mosques found that mosques that segregated men from women during prayer service were more likely to contain violence-positive materials than those where men and women were not segregated.





Another item that may help to understand the growth of modern jihadism appears in Marc Sageman’s 2004 study, which found that 97 percent of jihadists studied had become increasingly devoted to forms of Salafist Islam highly adherent to Shari’a (Islamic law) while on their path to radicalization, despite many coming from less rigorous devotional levels during their youths. This increase in devotion to Salafist Islam was measured by outwardly observable behaviors such as wearing traditional Arabic, Pakistani, or Afghan clothing or growing a beard.[6]


That the mosque is a societal apparatus that might serve as a support mechanism for violent jihad may seem self-evident, but for it to be a useful means for measuring radicalization requires empirical evidence. A 2007 study by the New York city police department noted that, in the context of the mosque, high levels of Shari’a adherence, termed “Salafi ideology” by the authors of the report, may relate to support for violent jihad. Specifically, it found that highly Shari’a-adherent mosques have played a prominent role in radicalization.[7] Another study found a relationship between frequency of mosque attendance and a predilection for supporting suicide attacks but discovered no empirical evidence linking support for suicide bombings to some measure of religious devotion (defined and measured by frequency of prayer).[8]

However, the study suffers from a major methodological flaw, namely, reliance on self- reporting of prayer frequency. Muslims would be under social and psychological pressure to report greater prayer frequency because their status as good or pious believers is linked to whether they fulfill the religious obligation to pray five times a day.[9] This piety is not dependent on regular mosque attendance as Muslims are permitted to pray outside of a mosque environment whenever necessary.[10] Hence, the pressure to over-report exists for self-reporting of prayer frequency but is not present in self-reporting of frequency of mosque attendance, which is a measure of both coalitional or group commitment and religious devotion.


Identifying Shari’a-Adherent Behaviors

Shari’a is the Islamic system of law based primarily on two sources held by Muslims to be respectively direct revelation from God and divinely inspired: the Qur’an and the Sunna (sayings, actions, and traditions of Muhammad). There are other jurisprudential sources for Shari’a derived from the legal rulings of Islamic scholars. These scholars, in turn, may be adherents of differing schools of Islamic jurisprudence. Notwithstanding those differences, the divergence at the level of actual law is, given the fullness of thecorpus juris, confined to relatively few marginal issues. Thus, there is general unity and agreement across the Sunni-Shiite divide and across the various Sunni madh’habs (jurisprudential schools) on core normative behaviors.[11]



The normative importance of a woman’s hair covering is evidenced by two central texts, discussed at length below, Reliance of the Traveller and Fiqh as-Sunna (Law of the Sunna), both of which express agreement on the obligation of a woman to wear the hijab:

There is no such dispute over what constitutes a woman’s aurah [private parts/nakedness]. It is stated that her entire body is aurah and must be covered, except her hands and face … God does not accept the prayer of an adult woman unless she is wearing a head covering (khimar,hijab).[12]

The nakedness of a woman (even if a young girl) consists of the whole body except the face and hands. The nakedness of a woman is that which invalidates the prayer if exposed. … It is recommended for a woman to wear a covering over her head (khimar), a full length shift, and a heavy slip under it that does not cling to the body.[13]

In a similar fashion, Shari’a requires that the genders be separated during prayers. While both Reliance of the Traveller and Fiqh as-Sunna express a preference that women should pray at home rather than the mosque,[14] they agree that if women do pray in the mosque, they should pray in lines separate from the men.[15] Additionally, authoritative Shari’a literature agrees that the men’s prayer lines should be straight, that men should be close together within those lines, and that the imam should enforce prayer line alignment.[16]

Sanctioned Violence



Mawdudi (1903-79), for one, believed that it was legitimate to wage violent jihad against “infidel colonizers” in order to gain independence and spread Islam. His Jihad in Islam, found in many of the mosques surveyed, instructed followers to employ force in pursuit of a Shari’a-based order:

These [Muslim] men who propagate religion are not mere preachers or missionaries, but the functionaries of God [so that they may be witnesses for the people], and it is their duty to wipe out oppression, mischief, strife, immorality, high handedness, and unlawful exploitation from the world by force of arms.[17]

Similarly, Qutb’s Milestones serves as the political and ideological backbone of the current global jihad movement. Qutb, for example, sanctions violence against those who stand in the way of Islam’s expansion:

If someone does this [prevents others from accepting Islam], then it is the duty of Islam to fight him until either he is killed or until he declares his submission.[18]


The same cannot be said for some classical works that are also supportive of violence in the name of Islam….



One Response

  1. The Boston Attack

    1. It was an Islamic Attack

    2. It was a simple attack 

    3. It can be repeated all across America very easily.

    4. The two white America Muslims will be hero’s and martyrs to 80% of America Muslims
    With anti terrorist stuff I don’t like being right. That is when people get hurt.

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