What does the fatwa against Trump mean? A tool of political power and a weapon of intimidation

Two influential Grand Ayatollahs from Iran have publicly called for the assassination of US President Donald Trump. What at first glance may seem like a grotesque display of power by old men is, upon closer inspection, symptomatic of a decades-old practice in the tension between religion and the securing of political power.

The question, therefore, is not just: How seriously should such a call for murder be taken? Rather, it is: What does this religious gesture of violence reveal about the state of a regime that once set out with revolutionary fury to establish a new Islamic order, but now has to resort to symbolic acts of revenge to conceal its weakness?

A fatwa was originally a religious opinion issued by an Islamic scholar to provide guidance in questions of everyday law. In the political practice of modern Islam, it has long since detached itself from its theological origins. In its banal form, it regulates questions such as: Is the taking of interest permissible? How should fasting be practiced in diabetes? In its spectacular, media-effective form, however, the fatwa becomes a weapon of intimidation, a display of religious authority, a cryptic declaration of war.

I myself became the target of such a fatwa in 2013. Two Egyptian television preachers and an Al-Azhar professor publicly declared me an outlaw for allegedly insulting the Prophet Muhammad during a lecture in Cairo. The true background, however, was political: I had dared to sharply criticize the Muslim Brotherhood and its then-president, Mohamed Morsi, at a time of growing protests. In this case, the fatwa served less to protect the religion than to protect an organization threatened by political power. The mechanism was clear: Anyone who criticizes an Islamist party is automatically accused of blasphemy. Blasphemy accusations, then, as political self-defense.

This pattern runs like a thread through the recent history of Islamic forms of rule and movements. When the Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini issued his infamous death fatwa against the British-Indian writer Salman Rushdie in 1989, it was not merely the indignant reaction of an offended believer.

While the novel "The Satanic Verses" contained religious allusions, far more explosive was its allegory of an imam living in London who despises the West but exploits its freedoms to gain power over his homeland. It was a transparent dig at Khomeini himself. The fatwa was therefore doubly coded: internally, it was a demonstration of Islamic authority, and externally, a message to the West, particularly to the United States, which at the time was still supporting Iraq in its war against Iran. It struck not only at Rushdie, but also at the Western understanding of freedom of expression.

Today it's Donald Trump. The context is different, but the principle remains the same. The Islamic Republic of Iran is at a turning point. For decades, the regime was considered untouchable. It had built a Shiite network of militias and spheres of influence from Tehran to Beirut and from Baghdad to Gaza. Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and the Shiite Brigades in Iraq and Syria were both ideological allies and strategic outposts of Iranian regional policy. They served as a deterrent against Israel and the United States, but also guaranteed the regime's legitimacy at home: Those under external threat can justify repression at home.

But the events following October 7, 2023, shook this balance of power. Hamas's unprecedented attack on Israel triggered a counteroffensive that wasn't limited to Gaza. Israel seized the opportunity to target the entire Shiite axis. Hezbollah suffered heavy losses, the Assad regime lost ground due to the loss of its protecting power, and the Houthis were decimated by targeted airstrikes. The previously hesitant West, especially the United States, seemed this time ready not only to tolerate Israel's actions but to actively support them.

Then came the breaking of taboos: The US attacked Iranian territory as part of a military operation, destroying several nuclear facilities. Beforehand, Israel had disabled Iran's air defenses and liquidated high-ranking officers of the Revolutionary Guards. This exposed the structural weakness of the Iranian military. The Iranian leadership agreed to a ceasefire – a declaration of political bankruptcy that the regime attempted to turn into a victory. Amid this geopolitical humiliation, Donald Trump issued a calculated threat: "I know where he's hiding," he said of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. While this wasn't an explicit promise to kill, it was a psychologically sharp blade that cut deep.

What response did the regime have left? Militarily weakened, economically undermined by sanctions, and socially eroded by protests and a loss of legitimacy, it now resorted again to the instrument that had already proven so effective in 1989: the fatwa. The calls for Trump's assassination by Ayatollahs Makarem Shirazi and Nouri Hamedani are not misguided rants by old men, but calculated political gestures. They are intended to signal strength and maintain the religious narrative of retribution while real options for action dwindle. And they are intended to show its own people: We still have teeth, even if we bleed.

But isn't a wounded lion more dangerous than a satiated one? A regime that has nothing left to lose often resorts to the most radical means. History has also shown that religiously motivated acts of violence, once unleashed, can elude control. The fatwa as a political strategy is not a rhetorical whim. It is a signal to sympathizers worldwide that the war will continue—if not with rockets, then with knives, bomb belts, or assassinations. It transforms political impotence into sacred fantasies of revenge.

The real danger, however, lies not in the feasibility of an attack on Trump. The danger lies in the reactivation of a mindset that legitimizes murder as worship and revenge as theology. In a world where digital mobilization and ideological radicalization occur in real time, a single religious impulse is often enough to inspire entire networks to act. We must not forget that Salman Rushdie narrowly escaped death in an assassination attempt three years ago, 33 years after the fatwa was issued against him. Islamists have a very good long-term memory. When they are powerful, they conquer countries. When they are defeated, they switch to terrorism.

Hamed Abdel-Samad is a German-Egyptian political scientist and author. His book "The Price of Freedom: A Warning to the West" was published in 2024 by DTV-Verlag, Munich.