Yahya Michot

Yahya Michot (born Jean Michot) is a Belgian Muslim who is a professor of Islamic studies. Background Yahyah Michot was the president of the Higher Council of Muslims in Belgium from 1995 to 1998. Yahyah Michot teaches at the Hartford Seminary, Connecticut as a professor of Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations. He is also the current editor of the journal "The Muslim World" edited by the Seminary. Controversy In 1997, under the pseudonym of Nasreddin Lebatelier, he published Le Statut des Moines from Lebanon. This pamphlet included a translation of a short work by the famed 13th-14th century Muslim scholar Ibn Taymiyya, called On the Statute of Monks, which is read by some 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 (GIA) killing 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. He was nevertheless accused of having condoned the killing of the seven Trappists by Catholic authorities and media, notably by Marcel Crochet, the Rector of the Catholic University of Louvain where he was employed (June 26, 1997).