Rashad Khalifa

Rashad Khalifa (Arabic: رشاد خليفة‎; November 19, 1935–January 31, 1990) was an Egyptian-American biochemist, closely associated with the United Submitters International. He was assassinated in 1990.

Life

Khalifa was born in Egypt on November 19, 1935. His father was a Sufi who is reported to have led a group with thousands of followers.^[1]

Khalifa obtained an honours degree from Ain Shams University, Egypt, before he emigrated to the United States in 1959, later earning a Master's Degree in biochemistry from Arizona State University and a PhD. from University of California.^[1] He became a naturalized U.S. citizen and lived in Tucson, Arizona.^{[citation needed]}

Khalifa worked as a science adviser for the Libyan government for about one year, after which he worked as a chemist for the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, then became a senior chemist in Arizona's State Office of Chemistry in 1980.^{[citation needed]} Khalifa's son, Sam Khalifa, played for the Pittsburgh Pirates and was the first major league player of Egyptian descent.^[2]

He was central to the founding of the United Submitters International, (USI), an offshoot Islamic group that usually prefers not to use the terms "Muslim" or "Islam," instead using the English equivalents "Submitter" and "Submission."^[3]

Doctrine

Khalifa said that he was a messenger (rasool) of God and that the Archangel Gabriel 'most assertively' told him that chapter 36, verse 3, of the Quran, 'specifically' referred to him.^[4][5] His followers refer to him as God's Messenger of the Covenant.^[6] He promoted a strict monotheism and was a prominent Quranist, rejecting the hadith and sunnah as fabrications attributed to prophet Muhammad by later scholars.

He is most notable for his statement that the Quran contains a mathematical structure based on the number 19 ^[7] and making the highly controversial claim that the last two the verses of chapter nine in the Quran were not canonical, telling his followers to reject them.^[8] Starting in 1968, Khalifa used computers to analyze the frequency of letters and words in the Quran.^[1] In 1974, he claimed that he had discovered a mathematical code in the text of the Qur'an involving the number 19. The details of this analysis are available in his book, Quran, the Final Testament.^[9]

Khalifa's research did not receive much attention in the West. In 1980, Martin Gardner mentioned it in Scientific American.^[10] Gardner later wrote a more extensive and critical review of Khalifa and his work.^[11]

Khalifa's first publicized report in the Arab world appeared in the Egyptian magazine Akher Sa'a, in January, 1973.^[12] Updates of his research were subsequently published by the same magazine later that year and again in 1975.^[13][14]

Assassination

Owing to Rashad Kahlifa's doctrine, which was averse to some important tenets of Sunni Islam, a fatwa was issued on February 19, 1989, by the Islamic Legal Council of Saudi Arabia. The fatwa, which was jointly issued by some 38 scholars, decreed Rashad Khalifa as a heretic; the punishment for heresy in Sunni Islam is death. As such, the fatwa officially legalized his assassination. The fatwa also implicated Salman Rushdie for his authorship of The Satanic Verses published in 1988.^[15]

Almost a year later on January 31, 1990, Khalifa was murdered at Masjid Tucson. He was stabbed multiple times and his body drenched in xylol but not set alight. Although nobody has been convicted of his murder, James Williams, an alleged member of the Jamaat ul-Fuqra organization, was convicted of conspiracy in the slaying.^[16] Williams disappeared on the day of his sentencing and could not be found.^[17] In 2000 Williams was apprehended attempting to re-enter the United States and sentenced to serve 69 years in prison. His convictions were upheld on appeal by the Colorado Court of Appeals except for one count of forgery.^[18][19]

CBS News reported that Muslim extremist Wadih el-Hage was "connected to the 1990 stabbing death of... Rashad Khalifa was hated by Muslim extremists opposed to his teachings. El-Hage who was indicted for lying about the case, called the assassination 'a good thing.'^[20]

On Tuesday, April 28, 2009 the Calgary Police Services of Canada arrested Glen Cusford Francis, a 52-year-old citizen of Trinidad and Tobago, on suspicion of killing Rashad Khalifa.^[21] Investigators in Tucson learned that Francis, who was going by the name Benjamin Phillips, had begun his studies under Khalifa in January 1990. Phillips disappeared shortly after the slaying,^[21] and was said to have left the country. An investigation revealed Phillips and Francis were the same man upon discovering fingerprints found in Phillips apartment. A specialty unit of the Tucson Police Department furthered in its investigation in 2006 and in December 2008 and was able to use DNA testing on forensic evidence from the crime scene to tie Francis to the assassination.^[22] In October 2009, a Canadian judge ordered his extradition to the United States to face trial.^[23]

Bibliography

• Miracle of the Quran: Significance of the Mysterious Alphabets, Islamic Productions, St. Louis, Missouri, 1973.
• The Computer Speaks: God's Message to the World, Renaissance Productions, Tucson, Arizona, 1981.
• Qur'an: The Final Scripture, Islamic Productions, Tucson, Arizona, 1981.
• Qur'an: Visual Presentation of the Miracle, Islamic Productions, Tucson, Arizona, 1982.
• Qur'an, Hadith and Islam, Islamic Productions, Tucson, Arizona, 1982.
• Qur'an: The Final Testament, Islamic Productions, Tucson, Arizona, 1989.

See also

• Criticism of Hadith

References

External links

• 19.ORG (The site contains articles and books on code 19 and Islamic reform based on Quran alone under the light of reason)
• Masjid Tucson (The official website of the Mosque in the city where Rashad Khalifa preached
• The Quran - The Final Testament (Translated by Rashad Khalifa) -- The Quran - The Final Testament (Authorized English Version translated from the Original by Rashad Khalifa, PhD.)
• Mathematical Miracle of the Quran - Discovered by Dr. Rashad Khalifa in 1974.
• God's Messenger of the Covenant - personal statement from Dr. Khalifa, as appears in Appendix 2 of his translation of the Quran
• Dr. Rashad Khalifa's videos of khutbas (sermons) and lectures
• Dr. Rashad Khalifa's Quran studies audio archieves
• The 38 appendices from Dr. Khalifa's Authorized English Version of the Quran

• The English translation by Rashad Khalifa at the Online Quran Project

Resources

• R. Khalifa, Quran: Visual Presentation of the Miracle, Islamic Productions International, 1982. ISBN 0-934894-30-2
• R. Khalifa, [1], Authorized English Translation
• R. Khalifa, [2], Authorized English Translation
• R. Khalifa, The Computer Speaks: God's Message to the World, Islamic Productions International, 1981. ISBN 0-934894-38-8
• R. Khalifa, Quran, Hadith, And Islam, Universal Unity, 2000. ISBN 1-881893-04-9.
• Y.Y. Haddad and J.I. Smith, Mission to America; Five Islamic Sectarian Communities in North America, University Press of Florida, 1993. ISBN 0-8130-1216-3.
• A.Y. Musa, Hadith as Scripture (Palgrave, 2008) ISBN 0-230-60535-4