Shariah’s Black Box

But given all of the above, and the extant literature copiously collected by Coughlin (and others) on the intimate connection between Shariah, the Law of Jihad, and the actual conduct of Jihad, the question must again be asked whether the lawyers for Caribou have willfully blinded themselves to this connection even as they disclose and represent to the investing public that their client abides strictly by Shariah. Given the Qaradawi affair described above, the company and its legal counsel were certainly on notice that one of the world’s most respected Shariah authorities had issued legal rulings based upon Shariah calling for terrorist acts against innocent civilians in Israel.[339] Are the partial disclosures in the company’s prospectus sufficient to provide the unsuspecting post-9/11 investor with the material information that Shariah advocates Jihad as a general, historical, and traditional matter against unbelievers who reject the “invitation to Islam”?

Moreover, after having experienced the 2002 affair over Qaradawi, have the company’s legal advisors fulfilled their fiduciary duties to conduct sufficient due diligence of the other Shariah authorities to determine if they adhere to traditional, historical, and authoritative Shariah as it relates to the Law of Jihad? After a ten-minute Google search on the Internet, the only conclusion one could reach would be that neither the company nor its lawyers conducted even a minimal investigation, or if they did, they willfully ignored the results.

For example, one of Arcapita’s long-standing Shariah authorities and indeed one of the most respected in the world today is Mufti M. Taqi Usmani. Born in Deoband, India, Usmani was a judge on the Shariah Court in Pakistan and on the Shariah Appellate Bench of the Pakistan Supreme Court, a position he occupied for more than 20 years. He currently sits on numerous Shariah authority boards and chairs the Shariah board for the most authoritative of the standards boards for the SCF industry, the AAOIFI.[340]

Usmani is hardly an unknown entity. He has published and spoken prolifically on the evils of the West, America, and the obligation for offensive Jihad. Much of this literature has been summarized by Alex Alexiev, vice president for research for the Center for Security Policy[341], in his short dossier on Usmani. Drawing on open source research, Alexiev exposes Usmani as a Shariah authority fully committed to the Law of Jihad.[342]

The most telling of Usmani’s legal rulings on Jihad is found in the last chapter of his book, Islam and Modernism, published in 2006.[343] In that chapter, Usmani responds to a Syed Badrus Salam of Jedda, Saudi Arabia, who has submitted an inquiry for a legal ruling to Usmani. In his query, Salam seeks to interpret the various authoritative Shariah scholars who ruled in favor of aggressive Jihad against non-Muslims in a historical context. He attempts to suggest to Usmani that aggressive Jihad against non-hostile, non-Muslims was no longer required as a practical matter. Arguing that while aggressive Jihad was effective in the days of Mohammed and the Caliphates as the most effective way to convert the world to Islam, he opines that today this was no longer the case. When Muslims are without military power and live in Western societies which allow freedom of religion and grant Muslims the opportunity to convert non-Muslims peacefully, Salam maintains that the best approach to spreading the “Message of Allah” is through “[c]ompromising relations and amicable treatment”.