There is nothing more precious than one’s children; for a parent to lose a child must cause pain beyond imagining. It must therefore have been extremely distressing for the parents of Private Luke Worsely to receive a letter purporting to be from an Islamic leader, “Sheikh Haron”, taunting them on the day they buried their son. A copy of the same letter was sent to News Limited, extracts of which they published online.
It remains to be asked: who is “Sheikh Haron”? To begin with, the sheikh would be more convincing (as a Muslim) if he could spell his own name correctly. “Haron” is how I would imagine an imbecile not conversant with Muslim names would spell “Harun’ or Haroon”, the Arabic equivalent of the Hebrew “Aaron“. It resembles the comical fraud perpetrated by Liberal Party goon squad in the seat of Lindsay. How could one forget the “ALA AKBA” which resembled Alo Alo, more than Allah Hu Akbar.
The mystery of the fake sheikh is further clarified by a visit to his webpage. For a religious Muslim, it is clear that Sheikh Haron is fraudulent.
1. He does not begin with “In the name of Allah, the most beneficent, the most merciful….” It would be impossible for a religious scholar to fail to do so.
2. The fatwa section is the real giveaway. Firstly, the questions that are posed: they’re strange questions to ask a scholar. Muslims never ask scholars about who to vote for (that’s what anti-Muslim bigots imagine we do).
3. But his responses are the most bizarre. A religious scholar gives a fatwa, or religious opinion, the same way a QC gives a legal opinion: in a highly ordered and codified manner, quoting verses from the Qur’an and Hadith, and offering religious consensus before finally coming to the scholar’s own opinion. The author, however, is not conversant with Islam and therefore cannot do so, and so merely has written a short response from an opinion that he believes reflects Islamic doctrine.
4. Sheikh “Haron” has no surname, no telephone number, no address, and nobody in the Muslim community knows him. The author has designed this to be an opaque identity.
5. The media release section contain the letters the author has sent to various officials. However, the responses that the author has allegedly received from public figures are not on letterheads, nor have they been signed, nor indeed is there room in the letter template for a signature. They are clearly forgeries generated by the author of the site.
6. His “fatwas” are all, without exception, completely wrong — and wrong in the most infantile manner. For example:
“The people who say that Jesus (peace be upon him) is “God” or “son of God” or they call God “Father” are Mushriks, not Christians. We are not allowed to call them “Christian”.”
This is incorrect. The Qur’an defines Christians as those people of the Book who believe that Jesus is the Son of God.
7. He appears to believe he is being followed and monitored where ever he goes. He also seems to subscribe to a weird crackpot theory that the Australian government are hacking Google to give Muslims a bad name. Neither instill much confidence.
8. Religious scholars don’t normally spam government departments with strange requests and allegations.
The author of the Sheikh Haron site is obviously not a religious scholar, and has designed it to perpetrate a fraud and cast a cloud over the Muslim community. He has intruded, in a most obscene manner, into the private grief of parents who have lost their son, and he has embarrassed the gullible editors of the New Limited website.
20 comments ↓
Sheik Haron is just a small soldier. Maybe he even doesn’t deserve to be a soldier. Sheikh Haron hopes to be accepted by Allah as a soldier. He loves and supports all Muslims clerics and Muslims who speak out against oppression. Sheikh Haron is nothing. Shame on Sheikh Haron who is very behind. He is very behind comparing with many Muslims who struggle hard in the way of Allah. He is not trying to pretend that he is down to earth and good man by saying this, no , the fact is that he is really behind. Sheikh Haron has decided not to be after this world, so with the help of Allah, he can not be bought, “Not 4 Sale”, not interested in trading or to get a position or money to be the speaker for the oppressors. He doesn’t have permanent visa of this world, so he knows he is on tourist visa and soon or later he will leave. Permanent visa only for hereafter, so in that case why are we wasting our time? We don’t belong to this, so why should we sell our religion to get material things in this world? Sheikh Haron believes in unity between Muslims.He believes that Muslims better to critisize each other in private and don’t give opportunity to the enemy to take advantage.Sheikh Haron respects the lives of others although a Hypocrite accuses him that he doesn’t.All Muslims are obliged to respect the lives of other human beings. Sheikh Haron is against discrimination and racism, how about you? As Sheikh Haron has mentioned in his letter of 14 November 2007 to Mr. John Howard, he is just a simple teacher who wants to teach the Holy Quran but he is waiting for the answer of his letter. Letter of 14 November to Mr. Howard is very important but don’t tell anyone! By the way don’t worry about the title of “Sheikh”, everyone is Sheikh. All practicing Muslims are Sheikh. And if one day all of them will be “a littlbe bit” UNITED then ….(tell you later).
If this is not enough and still you are curious about him please do not hesitate to ask for more informations!
Yeah, I thought it was obviously a fraud when I first heard of it.
What I find scary, though, is that over on the Muslim Village forum they are a bit suspicious but they dare not openly criticise. No-one (last time I read the thread) would say that sending the letter to the bereaved parents was a shitty thing to do, whether or not the Sheikh was bona fide.
That sort of moral timidity is not only shameful but dangerous.
he could be a fraud, but isnt it true what he said about australians soldiers shouldnt be going in to afghanistan to kill muslims in the first place and that ALL civilian casulaties should be condemed etc
oh and there is a “bismallah” on his website
It’s a disgraceful thing to do and it doesn’t matter if he’s a sheikh or not. He should be ashamed of himself for upsetting an innocent family with his stupid letter.
Personally though I think he’s just mentally ill (from reading the website)
“oh and there is a “bismallah” on his website”
Maybe he’s Freddy Mercury?
After looking at his website as well as his statement above ‘All practicing Muslims are Sheikh’ it is quite obvious that he is a fraud.
I also agree with Uthman that he may have mental health issues.
Has anyone tipped off the media - before they work themselves into a hysterical antiMuslim lather about it?
Antish, you shouldn’t judge Islam or Muslims by the muppets at Muslim Village.
Just reading all this guy’s letters to the government, it’s obvious he’s off his rocker.
What I find quite unbelievable is that any reputable media outlet would print such nonsense. I mean this is the depth of shoddy journalism. Does this mean that anyone can create any website, write stupid outrageous letters, and find himself in the mainstream media? Shouldn’t it behoove the media outlets to first investigate and sort out the facts behind this “sheikh” or any “sheikh” before reporting it?
I bet this wouldn’t have happened if RabiLeberman.com started spewing anti-Australian nonsense… any propaganda against the Muslims is kosher of course.
At least it doesn’t say “Ala Akba!” anywhere…
Perhaps sheik haron can set up the Perth branch of the al-Ghazzali centre …
I think it’s some loser with too much time on his hands and some twisted agenda regarding Muslims.
I highly doubt that it is even a Muslim behind it!
Who knows, it could be one of those weirdos who sit in their basement all day and night coming up with crazy things to fill the WWW with.
I skimmed through the site - it’s ridiculous! Does anyone actually take this loser seriously???
“Perhaps sheik haron can set up the Perth branch of the al-Ghazzali centre …”
He’s far too humble and probably over qualified.
SH is obviously is a native English speaker pretending to write as he imagines a stupid Muslim would. Therefore his grammar is deliberately bad, but he forgets to mangle his punctuation (example: read the comment he posted here).
SH is now a dead prop, we have killed it for him. Whenever someone will type his “name” into google, our web-site will come up first.
All of his effort has gone to waste.
Shame on all of us!
SubhaanaAllaah!
The person who has put up this blog has a bundle of misspellings/transliterations.
Does it matter how he spells his name?
To be honest, I do not even know if this Sheikh Haron is a real sheikh.
Though, I am not here to dispute this.
All I say, is we shouldn’t say things things we may have to recant later on.
We are Muslims, not fortune tellers, claiming to tell of the unknown.
If this Sheikh Haron turns out to be a legit person, well, we will deal with him then inshaaAllaah.
If he is found out to be a fraud, then we have wasted our time already!
Enough said I believe.
Please change the word ‘bundle’ in my above post to ‘a’.
My bad…
Whereas this fatwaa;
“Question:
Some Islamic jurists say that smoking cigarette is not forbidden (haraam) but some others believe it is haraam. I think the jurists have different opinions on this. What is your opinion about smoking?
Answer:
It is Haram for a non smoker to start smoking cigarette. The smokers are obliged to try hard to quit.”
Is reminiscent of a fatwaa that I heard someone claim Ayatullah Khomeini gave.
If this Sheikh Haron is a shi`ite, then I have an easier time understanding his “tuqyah”.
Antish,
So muslims ought to condemn things which we have not done as well?
Maybe Amir should start a general “condemnation” thread as they do at LP, just so that we can condemn anything at all and feel better about ourselves.
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