Burning of a Pilot

Yesterday, the Islāmic State had burned alive a Jordanian pilot , while I feel pity for the pilot himself (both as a Muslim and a human being), I must say that something.

The reason for killing is vague. A Turkish Islamist claimed that, the pilot was an apostate and it was justified, since both the Rashidun Caliphs (The first four Caliphs after Prophet Muhammad) and Ottomans had executed people with burning alive. But, the actual reason is that, since this pilot had burned people with his plane and his bombs, it was justified to burn him, it was a Qisas (Retribution).

It was not a Qisas for me, and we know that at least many of them think it was not a Qisas. Qisas has its rules and burning people alive is not a part of these rules. Also burning of people is banned in Islam, an authentic hadith (Prophet Muhammad’s sayings) collected by Buhari and Abu Dawud (two of the most reliable hadith collectors) states that:

First kill them, then burn them. Because the punishment of burning alive with fire can only be given by the Creator of  Fires, (i.e. Allah) himself.

On the other hand, the Islamists who think that Qisas is justified also thinks that they are right. We also know that Islāmic histories like history of Tabari (Muhammd ibn Jarir al-Tabari, an Islāmic scholar and historian from Iran at the 9th century AD.) states that Caliph Abu Bakr (First Islāmic Caliph) and Caliph Ali (Fourth Islāmic Caliph and the Last of the Rashidun Caliphs), had ordered burning acts. Here are my objections;

• Historian Tabari states that he writes down the rumors, there is a possibility that these two Caliph’s burning acts was a rumor.
• Let’s assume that Tabari written down real events, not rumors in that case. Why the other two Rashidun Caliphs had not burned people alive? Why Umayyad Calpihate had not burned people alive? Why until the time of 1657, when a person burned alive by the Ottoman State as a punishment for apostasy not for Qisas, no Muslim states had burned people alive? I don’t know any examples for this issue.
• How can you reject the hadith that clearly forbids burning alive? That hadith is from the Six Books of Hadith (The Compendium of six hadith books that include the most reliable and authentic hadiths), how can you reject an authentic hadith? Are you Quranists who argue that hadiths must be rejected?

A last word for the King Abdullah’s comments. He stated that this pilot killed for defending Islam . Mr. Abdullah, this poor pilot killed for an inner conflict of the Cathedral, not for Islam.