Delivered Into Enemy Hands - Human Rights Watch

Gaddafi also made major changes to the practice of Islam in Libya that he expected others
to follow. 47 For example, the second source of authority in Sunni Islam, the Sunnah (the
acts and sayings of the Prophet as told by his companions), was discarded. 48 The Islamic
calendar was changed so that it no longer started with the date of the Prophet’s migration
from Mecca to Medina, but rather with the date of his death ten years later. 49 Libya began
fasting for the holy month of Ramadan on a different day from the rest of the Middle East. 50
The most contentious of these changes was the discarding of the second Sunnah, which
was deeply offensive and sacrilegious to Muslims, and not just those in Libya. Though
Gaddafi was not the only one advocating this at the time, it was very much a minority
position and put him at odds with the clerical establishment, as well as Islamists. 51
In the early 1980s, a series of fatwas were issued against Gaddafi which proclaimed him a
heathen. 52 Libyans who were opposed to Gaddafi’s changes began organizing. In turn
Gaddafi stepped up surveillance and repression against them. 53 Many victims of the
detentions, and killings going on at the time were members of Islamist opposition
groups. 54 The former head of Libya’s foreign intelligence service, Musa Kusa, once reportedly
boasted to foreign visitors that he monitored domestic Islamic extremists so closely
that he knew the name of every Libyan with a beard. 55
47 Sean Kane, “The Libyan Rorschach,” Foreign Policy, June 14, 2012,
http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/06/12/the_libyan_rorschach (accessed June 14, 2012).
48 Pargeter, Libya: The Rise and Fall of Qaddafi, p. 114-115.
49 Ibid., p. 116.
50 Kane, “The Libyan Rorschach,” Foreign Policy.
51 Pargeter, Libya: The Rise and Fall of Qaddafi, p. 114-115 (“It is difficult to express just how shocking this denial [of the
Sunnah as the second source of authority of Sunni Islam] was to Sunni Muslims at the time (and indeed today)”); See also
Francois Burget and William Dowell, The Islamic Movement in North Africa, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of
Texas, Austin, 1983, generally Chapter 8.
52 Ibid., p. 115-116.
53 Silverstein, “How Kadafi Went From Foe to Ally,” Los Angeles Times; See also Camille Tawil, Brothers in Arms: The Story of
al-Qa’ida and the Arab Jihadists (Saqi Books, London, 2011), p. 33 (“Those who escaped the mass arrests did not wait for
further evidence that the time was not yet ripe for their jihad; instead, they packed their bags and followed their Arab
brothers to Afghanistan.”).
54 Pargeter, Libya: The Rise and Fall of Qaddafi, p. 113-117; Tawil, Brothers in Arms, p. 33.
55 Silverstein, “How Kadafi Went from Foe to Ally,” Los Angeles Times.
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