Nasreddin Lebatelier

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Nasreddin Lebatelier is the pseudonym of Jean Michot, a Belgian Muslim who gained some notoriety in the late 1990s for publishing 'Le Statut des Moines' in Lebanon in 1997.

This pamphlet included a translation of a short work by the famed 13th-14th century Muslim scholar Ibn Taymiyya, called 'On the Status of Monks', which has been read as a call for the killing of Christian monks if they are found outside their monasteries in a Muslim country. Lebatelier's introduction referred to the Algerian Armed Islamic Group's beheading of seven Trappist monks in Tibhirine in 1996. He analysed not only the GIA's justification for the killings but also the Muslim community's consensus (ijmâ') which condemned these assassinations, and explained the religious authoritativeness of such a consensus.

Lebatelier's publication of the pamphlet and the explicit reference to the Algerian massacre led to his removal from a professorship at Louvain and later problems when he was appointed to Oxford. Michot defended himself by stating in reply that in the original publication in 1997 he had not endorsed the killing of monks.[1]

[edit] References

• Ibn Taymiyya. Le statut des moines. Yahya Michot.
• Article in Frontline Magazine, India.
• Islam y Monaquismo
• L’affaire Le Batelier. Philippe Van Parijs.
• Jihad from Qur'an to Bin Laden. Richard Bonney, p. 122.