On Militant Jihad
ON MILITANT JIHAD
BY
DAVID ARTHUR WALTERS
The Crux is the Ambiguity
The traditional Muslim practice of militant jihad or "holy war" has been a subject of extraordinary interest since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the United States. Since the term ‘jihad’ was used by the Islamist terrorists, it was feared that all Muslims would be implicated and persecuted; therefore to speak of jihad as a Muslim holy war was frowned on. Muslim critics of the Christian perspective on jihad have claimed that "holy war" is an English epithet misapplied to “jihad” by Christians who mistakenly confuse the barbarous Christian Crusades with civilized Muslim campaigns, such as the self-defensive reclamation of the Holy Land by the Muslims. They recall that horrendous crimes against humanity were committed in the name of God by the Christian crusaders, who left death and destruction in their wake. Yet, when Saladin drove the infidels out, he exemplified the humaneness of Islam by taking no revenge on the perverse terrorists for their wanton aggression, despite the fact they were infidels or polytheists with a trinity of gods.
Only a minority Muslims have answered the Islamist call to take up the sword against the United States in order to behead, so to speak, the Great Satan. Muslims are as peaceful as Christians, perhaps even more so – non-Muslims are defined in Islam’s sacred scripture as the Party of War. Therefore when American infidels hear the word ‘jihad’ they should not fear having their throats cut in their sleep and their babies eaten alive, at least not by the “moderate” Muslims they have “assimilated” into their materialistic culture.
After all, Muslims on the whole are a law-abiding and godly people, obviously godlier and less hypocritical than most people – Muslims are even more monotheistic than Jews. Islam is, above all, a lawful religion. As Grand Ayatollah Khomeini pointed out in a lecture at Najaf on Government by Jurist, only a small portion of its laws are ritual law:
“The ratio of Quranic verses concerned with the affairs of society to those concerned with ritual worship is greater than a hundred to one. Of the approximately fifty sections of the corpus of hadīth, containing all the ordinances of Islam, not more than three or four sections relate to matters of ritual worship and the duties of man toward his Creator and Sustainer. A few more are concerned with questions of ethics, and all the rest are concerned with social, economic, legal, and political questions—in short, the gestation of society…. Do not allow the true nature of Islam to remain hidden, or people will imagine that Islam is like Christianity (nominal, not true Christianity), a collection of injunctions pertaining to man’s relation to God, and the mosques will be equated with the church. At a time when the West was a realm of darkness and obscurity—with its inhabitants living in a state of barbarism, and America still peopled by half-savaged redskins—and the two vast empires of Iran and Byzantium were under the rule of tyranny, class privilege, and discrimination, and the powerful dominated all without any trace of law or popular government, God, Exalted and Almighty, by means of the Most Noble Messenger, sent laws that astound people with their magnitude. He instituted laws and practices for all human affairs and laid injunctions for man extending from even before the embryo is formed until after he is placed in the tomb. In just the same way that there are laws setting forth the duties of worship for man, so too there are laws, practices, and norms for the affairs of society and government. Islamic law is a progressive, evolving, and comprehensive system. All the voluminous books that have been compiled from the earliest times on different areas of law, such as judicial procedure, social transactions, penal law, retribution, international relations, regulations pertaining to peace and war, private and public law—taken together, these contain a mere sample of the laws and injunctions of Islam. There is not a single topic in human life for which Islam has not provided instructions and established a norm.”
Unfortunately for the Shah of Iran and his minions, Ayatollah Khomeini the jurist was no hypocrite – Islam and Christianity both arose from discontent with Jewish hypocrisy. At least he believed Muslims should practice what he preached in order to cast out the foreign devils and purge the satanic or immoral influences best represented by the decadent United States of America. The so-called Greater Jihad or internal spiritual struggle might very well call for a Lesser Jihad, a revolution or war:
“Islam is the religion of militant individuals who are committed to truth and justice,” he declared. “It is the religion of those who desire freedom and independence. It is the school of those who struggle against imperialism. But the servants of imperialism have presented Islam in a totally different light. They have created in men’s minds a false notion of Islam. The defective version of Islam, which they have presented in the religious teaching institution, is intended to deprive Islam of its vital, revolutionary aspect and to prevent Muslims from arousing themselves in order to gain their freedom, fulfill the ordinances of Islam, and create a government that will assure their happiness and allow them to live, lives worthy of human beings.”
After the symbolic Twin Towers of the military-industrial-oil complex fell and a few frightened Americans started attacking people who looked like Muslims, a journalist warned Americans not to panic over the reference to jihad. He kindly filled in the blanks between the consonants j-h-d with other vowels, and informed us that 'jahada' means a righteous 'struggle' to do God's will in thought, word and deed. Jihad in the sense of "holy war" is only one of many ways to satisfy God's requirements, he wrote, providing that the war is just, and of course Muslim wars are at least as just as our own. Struggling for something naturally implies exerting oneself against resistance. War is a reprehensible mode of struggle as far as pacifists are concerned, but it is only inherently evil when initiated by enemies who make pre-emptive attacks based on false pretexts. War should be the last resort, employed only for self-defense. Self-defense is of course obligatory: only a fool or a coward would turn the other cheek. With all due respect to Muslim variations on the ancient militant theme, we declare that Islam does not have a monopoly on jihad, no matter how the term is translated into English and explained.
Muhammad’s early military struggles were jihads. His first militant jihads were the caravan raids that eventually provoked a bloody battle in the valley of Badr. Three hundred warriors were immortalized on that battlefield, where certain standards were set for jihads thereafter. Yet Muhammad was not a bloodthirsty killer to begin with. Rumor has it that Muhammad stayed in his tent during the first great battle, but he was overjoyed when the head of one of his worst enemies was presented to him as a trophy, and said that he prized it even more than a camel. Not that Muhammad intended to set standards for circumstances that he could hardly foresee. But first impressions are lasting impressions: traditions are formed; once formed, they are difficult to break absent a revolutionary jihad.
Muhammad admired the advanced Jewish civilization and loved the Christian preaching, but he was confronted with different circumstances than was Jesus, who, when faced with the might of the Roman Empire, had the Sword sheathed. The Prophet had good reasons, some of them rooted in the caravan-robbing culture, for waging his jihads, even against his own pantheistic tribe, to save his Arabic monotheism from certain extinction. Muhammad had to personally take the initiative and call for jihads. He and his impoverished followers were sick and tired of being pushed around for thirteen years by the powerful Quraish tribe that he was born into. Incipient Islam could not afford to wait around for an emperor like Constantine to adopt their religion and support it with the arms of empire. Unless the pioneering Muslims took action, they would perish forthwith and their faith would die with them. Wherefore the Arab custom of raiding was continued; but now the plundering would be conducted on behalf of the Allah, as a religious duty.
Of course Muhammad's monotheism and his militant approach were not innovative: the Jewish Testament revered by Muhammad was famous for the holy wars referred to therein and the tribal one-god that decided the outcomes. The Muslim jihadis obtained plenty of booty to boot, the sort of thing appreciated from time immemorial by warriors of all races and creeds. In this case, the Prophet and his associates assembled the explosive unifying force that dismembered the infidels and embraced much of the known world. Admittedly it was a terrifying force, yet it was not as brutal as the invading khans whom it tamed; the one and only god is not only feared but loved.
During the early Muslim jihads certain ethical problems were bound to arise; but they were duly resolved by Muhammad's revelations - the Prophet was a prophet and a politician, not a philosopher or political scientist. For instance: "Then when the forbidden months are past, slay the idolaters where you find them; seize them, confine them, and wait for them in every ambush..."
After the immigration to Medina, certain verses of the Koran recommended jihads against infidels. The Prophet’s followers were allowed to continue with their raids, but now under the cloak of religion, for only non-Muslim caravans were to be attacked. Now Jihadis who died in battle become martyrs. All who resisted the enlargement of the area controlled by Muslims were deemed to have rejected Allah’s will. Mind you that not everyone had to actually wage the jihads as warriors on the battlefields: "The Messenger of God said, 'Whoever equips a warrior in the way of God has himself fought, and he who supplies the needs of the family of a warrior has himself fought." Furthermore, "The doors of paradise are under the shadow of swords." (Hadith, Khatib al-Tibrizi, 1337).
In any event, if the term 'jihad' is not specifically qualified, as in "jihad of the heart," or "jihad of the tongue," everybody assumes that 'jihad' standing alone means jihad of the sword. Let us not kid ourselves: Islam was not a passive or irenic religion. Militant Islamic jihad has a 1,300-year history in Europe, Africa, Asia, the Near East and Middle East. Much of Europe was taken: the battlefields included Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Serbia, Bosnia, Greece, Bulgaria, Russia, Hungary, Poland, among others. The devastation was widespread. Europeans prayed to the one-god for protection as the Muslims prayed for victory. It is not surprising that the term jihad is more closely associated with the so-called Lesser Jihad, or holy war, than with Greater Jihad, or internal spiritual struggle with one’s ego or personal god, for when booty and death are at hand even atheists are inclined to prayer.
A great deal of historical literature supports the traditional, militant meaning of jihad, beginning with the Prophet’s famous injunction in Chapter 9 of the Koran: "Then when the forbidden months are past, slay the idolaters where you find them; seize them, confine them, and wait for them in very ambush..."
In the Hadiths, or traditional sayings of Muhammad, quoted by al-Khatib al-Tibrizi (written A.D. 1337), we find this said: "The Messenger of God said, 'Whoever equips a warrior in the way of God has himself fought, and he who supplies the needs of the family of a warrior has himself fought." Furthermore, "The doors of paradise are under the shadow of swords."
After Muhammad's death, the caliph Abu Bakr was confronted by rebellious tribes who refused to pay taxes. After subduing the Arabs, he waged jihad on infidels in Syria, where the predominantly Christian population was hostile to its Byzantine rulers. We have this from Ahmad ibn Yahya al-Baladhuri's (d. A.D. 892) 'The Conquest of the Lands': "When Abu Bakr was done with the case of those who apostatized, he saw fit to direct his troops against Syria. To this effect, he wrote to the people...calling them for a holy war and arousing their desire in it and in the obtainable booty from the Greeks (Byzantines). Accordingly, people, including those actuated by greed as well as those (in) hope of divine remuneration flocked to al-Madina.... The battle of Ajnadayn ensued. About 100,000 Greeks took part... At last, by Allah's help, the enemies of Allah were routed and shattered into pieces...."
Eventually the Muslims turned on Damascus: 5,000 warriors were camped outside the East gate. Kahlid, the Muslim general, sent the bishop of Damascus a letter: “In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful. This is what Khalid would grant to the inhabitants of Damascus, if he enters therein: he promises to give them security for their lives, property and churches. Their city-wall shall not be demolished; neither shall any Muslims be quartered in their houses. Thereunto we give the pact of Allah and the protection of His prophet and the Believers. So long as they pay the (tribute), nothing shall befall them.”
One night the bishop tipped off the Muslims that the gate had been left unguarded but blocked with stones while the inhabitants were feasting; ladders were brought; the city was conquered - the editor spares us the details. In any event, the document goes on to report that the Byzantine emperor Heraclius gathered an army of Greeks, Syrians, Mesopotamians and Armenians, numbering 200,000, of which, "By Allah's help, some 70,000 were put to death, and their remnants took flight."
Our opinion that early Muslims regarded jihad as divinely commended violence is further reinforced by Ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani's (d. A.D. 996) 'Legal Treatise': "The jihad is a religious duty which some of the people may perform on behalf of others. For us Malikis it is obligatory not to fight the enemy until he has been summoned to God's religion, if he does not himself force the battle. He then may become a Muslim or pay the tribute, and if he does not, he may be fought..."
Moreover, Najm al-Din al-Muhaqquiq al-Hilli's (d. A.D. 1278) 'Ordinances of Islam, explicitly states:
"Jihad is a religious obligation for every legally responsible free adult male who is of sound body... Fighting in self-defense is obligatory.... People against whom jihad should be carried out are three categories: 1) Those who rebel against the Imam; 2) protected minorities such as Jew, Christians and Zoroastrians, if they violate the conditions of protection; and 3) whoever is hostile, among the various kinds of unbelievers. The Muslims must bring all of these into submission by subjecting them or converting them to Islam. If they begin hostilities, it is obligatory to fight them. Otherwise it is only necessary to fight them according to one's ability to do so, but it should be at least once a year... It is worthiest to begin by attacking those who are most accessible..." And later, "The Jizya, or protection tax may be taken from those who stay in their own religion. These are Jews, Christians, and those who have a kind of scripture, who are Zoroastrians. From any but these, nothing but conversion to Islam is acceptable."
Militant jihad made the Muslim empire, and words were not minced about the violent subjugation of populations. al-Mawardi's (d. A.D. 1058) 'Governing Statutes' informs us that: "Whoever persists in apostasy, whether man or woman, must be put to death bound, and by the sword, though Ibn Surayj, the pupil of al-Shafi'i, says they should be beaten to death with a stick, because that is slower than the sword, and may lead them to repent."
Forced conversion was forbidden by the Quran; nevertheless, it was praiseworthy to give unbelievers an opportunity to convert before attacking them. According to al-Shaybani's (d. A.D. 805) 'Book of Campaigns': "When the Muslims encounter polytheists whom Islam has never reached before, it is not necessary to fight them, until they have been called upon to accept Islam.... And this the Prophet advised the commanders of his armies, saying, 'Call them first to the testimonial that there is no god but God,' for they often think that we attack them in greed for their possessions and to carry off their women and children, whereas if they knew that we attack them in service of God, they might respond without any necessity for fighting.... Even if news of Islam has come to them, but they still do not know we are permitted to accept the jizya tribute from them, we should not attack them until we have called upon them to pay the tribute.... Unless they are a people from whom jizya may not be accepted, such as apostates and Arabs who worship idols. From these, nothing may be accepted except Islam or the sword...." Later on in the document, the author passes on a story that the Prophet once fell upon people who were watering their flocks, slew their warriors, and captured their women and children without any prior call to Islam - leaving the necessity of a prior call subject to dispute.
Mahmud, the first ruler of Afghanistan to be called "Sultan”, waged jihad on India, as did the better know Tamerlane, the “Lord of Samarkand” who devastated the Islamic East with holy wars. It was Tamerlane who developed the technique of applying jihad to other Muslims. He determined that India was polluted by infidelity, wherefore he crossed the Indus, took 100,000 prisoners and had them killed lest they hinder his advance to Delhi, where high towers were built with the heads of the slain – a form of advertising in those days, a form that he did not invent but perfected.
And we have this from Kohja Sa'd al-Din's poetic version of the conquest of Constantinople during the Ottoman expansion: "He exhorted those furious, blood-lapping lions of the forest of valor; telling them of the universality of the command 'Strive!' (Koran, 5:39) and of the purport of the Divine promises in the verses concerning the Holy War."
We have taken some of our historical quotes from John Alden Williams’ fascinating book, Themes of Islamic Civilization (University of California, 1971). Williams noted that, in modern times, "For the Turks who united under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk to drive the Greek and Allied invasion out of Anatolia after World War I, the war of liberation was a jihad, just as the struggle against Zionist colonization has been for the Arabs."
Furthermore, "In the minds of Muslims who struggle against colonialism today, then, their exertion is a holy war. The emphasis on the holy necessity of self defense is a main reason for the attractiveness of a version of Islam to the Black Muslims. There is a concomitant tendency to restrict jihad to self-defense, and to argue, un-historically enough, that Muslims have never known any other kind." Moreover, "Muslim apologists today find themselves discomfited by the traditional view of jihad in a world where lip service to the Christian ideal of non-violence is admired..."
Williams provides us with the contemporary apologist view, from Sheikh Abu Zahra's The Concept of War in Islam: "As Islam gathered strength and spread in all directions, the vanguard of the faith fought those who had attacked them, and emancipated neighboring peoples from their despotic rulers. Consequently all the non-Muslim rulers made preparations to crush the Muslims. They opposed Islam because it liberated people, defended freedom and established human equality; none of which was compatible with the prevalent absolutism of monarchs."
Kaiser Wilhelm II was persuaded that he could use the Islamist notion of holy war to dupe Muslims into fighting the British so that he might realize the Pan-German dream in the East: the Second Reich, with the help of freedom-fighting jihadis, would ideally extend its living space over Anatolia, Persia, Afghanistan, and India. Wilhelm became the Sultan’s chum – “Deutschland uber Allah!” declared Punch. Three weeks after Turkey joined the Great War, the Sultan declared a Holy War against the Britain and her allies. The proclamation of jihad was solemnly read in Constantinople by the highest spiritual authority, Sheik-ul-Islam.
Naturally the jihad would not be waged against certain non-Muslims, namely the Germans. As grand as the German scheme seemed, it was considered to be a relatively inexpensive method of proceeding at the time, provided that Muslims could be recruited to the cause of ridding the East of hated British rule. The effort to carry out the amazing plot is best told by Peter Hopkins in Like Hidden Fire – the Plot to bring down the British Empire (1994). Sir Charles Cleveland, head of the Indian Secret Service, had warned that a conspiracy to overthrow British Rule there was spreading “Like some hidden fire.” No doubt the Germans were behind it.
“The Holy War raised one awkward question which had to be addressed lest it undermine the entire enterprise. What, it would be asked by many Muslims, was a Christian sovereign doing fomenting and funding a Holy War aimed at killing those of his own faith? Wilhelm’s advisers, who included a number of eminent German orientalists and scholars, were ready for that one. In mosques and bazaars throughout the East rumors were circulated that the German Emperor had been secretly converted to Islam. ‘Haji Wilhelm Mohammed’ – as he was now said to call himself – had even made a pilgrimage to Mecca. Muslims scholars friendly to the cause were able to find mysterious passages in the Koran which purported to show that Wilhelm had been ordained by God to free the faithful from infidel rule. Later, word was spread that the entire German nation had followed their emperor’s example and converted to Islam en masse.”
Despite the long prominence of militant, external jihad, mystically inclined speakers have long insisted, on the other hand, that jihad is fundamentally an internal struggle to put down the selfish self which craves for mundane existence. Sufi theorist al-Qushayi (d.A.D. 1074) provides us with insight into psychological jihad in his 'Treatise on the Knowledge of Mysticism': "Al-Sulami said that his grandfather heard Abu 'Amr ibn Janid say, 'Whoever is generous with his Self attached no importance to his religion.' Know then that the basis of striving and possession of it is weaning the Self from what it is accustomed to, and bearing the Self contrary to its desires generally, for the Self has two characteristics which prevent it from the good; indulgence in lusts, and abstinence from obedience."
Furthermore, we find this excerpt from the great Baghdad Sufi saint, Shaykh 'Abd al-Quadir al-Jilani's (d. A.D. 1166) sermon 'The Opening of the Unseen’: "Each time you struggle against your lower self and overcome it and slay it with the sword of opposition, God restores it to life and it contends with you again, and demands of you desires and delights, whether forbidden or permissible, so that you must return to struggle and compete with it in order to carry off the everlasting reward. This is the meaning of the Prophet's saying - God bless him and give him peace - 'We have returned from the lesser jihad (war) to the greater jihad (self-control)."
The most prominent Sufi sheik in America, Hisham Kabbani, wages “jihad of the tongue” against militant jihad. His version of Islam is purportedly based on love, respect, peace, tolerance, and the like. He has claimed that 90% of American mosques are being run by extremist ideologues, and has allegedly told government officials that the majority of American Muslims are dangerous, including Muslim advisors to the government, whom he also calls extremists. He reportedly believes that extremists have infiltrated Muslim student and community groups, and have smuggled twenty nuclear bombs in their suitcases. His keen interest in love, respect, peace and tolerance has apparently caused him to support military incursions in Kosovo, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and his native Lebanon. After President Bush warmly welcomed him to the White House, he praised the President’s peacekeeping policies.
Suicide, whether virtual or real, or martyrdom may seem preferable to the murder of others, at least as far as the others are concerned. Pacifist martyrs have preferred to be killed rather than to kill, on the ethical basis that it is better to suffer an evil than to do one. They are in the minority. It appears that the most natural of laws, assuming an instinct for individual survival, is that of self-defense, and that defense, based on what we have learned from experience, may call for “pre-emptive strikes” on neighbors.
We may all want peace at the bottom of our beings, where we began with nothing. We may desire absolute freedom from the struggle for existence, and we may realize a sort of peace through an internal struggle with the selfish self or little god or king within. An omnipotent god or absolute Power is worshipped. The individual would be immortal and eternal, would be forever and ever without resistance whatsoever if only he could; but if he could, he would not be at all, for there is no could without will.
Final peace may be obtained by complete resignation, and, ultimately, by absorption of the finite individual into infinite being. Perhaps Freud was right in his eventual dualism – perhaps there are dueling wills; perhaps there is a “death wish.” It appears that humankind, because of the “original sin” of conscious individuality, and therefore conscience, must wage war for peace. And there are so many kinds of peace to fight over unto death lays us forever to rest! Peace may be the death of us all.
Pacifists may fear themselves most of all, may fear their own violent tendencies – who knows when they will help prove that man is naturally a fighting animal? Pacifists may claim that the inner struggle is the greater jihad because it is symbolic hence bloodless or relatively harmless. Militants say that sort of jihad tends not to freedom, at least not in this world, but to slavery; and then the freedom fighters wind up slaves themselves, for their enemies determine their violent behavior, and they further subject themselves to military regimen in order to win battles.
Essentially there are not two jihads, one for mind and one for body – there is essentially only one jihad, and it is ambiguous. If we are to have relatively widespread peace on Earth, a voluntary peace that is not imposed by the tyranny of god or king or dictator, I believe we must all have a better understanding of Ambiguity. The Hypocrisy is obvious even to hypocrites, and world religions have been founded on calling their predecessors hypocrites, but the hypocrisy continues apace because the difference between the real and the ideal is the underling crisis of human nature. Hypocrisy is out in the open, and can be openly dealt with – sometimes with disastrous consequences because Ambiguity is not understood. Alas, that Ambiguity is so well hidden.
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