I copied this article from a website and cannot now give credit to it's author, "Robert"
[see end of article]. It's long, but an important and thorough refutation of the assumption that the Bible incites violence, as does the Qur'an.
Jihad Watch
Bible and Qur'an:
equally violent?
Recently the Boston
Globe published two pieces pushing the prevailing assumption that the
Bible and the Qur'an are equally likely to inspire those who believe
in them to commit acts of violence -- or to act benevolently: "The
other good book" on March 6, and "Dark passages: Does the
harsh language in the Koran explain Islamic violence? Don't answer
till you've taken a look inside the Bible," by Philip Jenkins on
March 8.
Since almost
everyone takes this for granted nowadays, it is odd that the Globe
would think it necessary to shore it up with not one, but two pieces
making this case. On the other hand, it is such a patently absurd and
false proposition that, despite its popularity, it does need constant
propping up.
Jenkins's thesis, of
course, is that since there are violent passages in the Bible as well
as in the Qur'an, and yet Jews and Christians are not committing acts
of violence and justifying them with reference to their holy texts,
therefore Muslims who commit acts of violence and justify them with
reference to their holy texts must actually be motivated by
something else.
It's a common view
that many others have previously enunciated. When confronted with
material from the Qur’an that calls upon Muslims to wage war
against unbelievers, Islamic apologists and their non-Muslim allies
frequently claim that such passages have been “cherry-picked”
from a holy book that teaches peace, and that they only seem to
incite to violence when ripped out of context. Usually accompanying
such claims is the assertion that the Bible is just as violent, if
not more so, than the Qur’an. The Lutheran theologian Martin E.
Marty has written disdainfully of “people who selectively quote the
Qur’an to show how it commits Muslims to killing ‘us’
infidels.” He then goes on to enumerate numerous violent passages
in the Bible, quipping: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against
thy neighbor’s God or Book, nor witness at all until thou comest
clean on what thy book portrays, a holy warrior God.”
As Ralph Peters put
it, “As a believing Christian, I must acknowledge that there’s
nothing in the Koran as merciless as God’s behavior in the Book of
Joshua.”
While not going as
far as Peters’ assertion that the Bible is actually more violent
than the Qur’an, Dinesh D’Souza suggests that the Qur’an and
the Bible are at least equivalent in their capacity to incite
violence: “the Koran, like the Old Testament, has a number of
passages recommending peace and others celebrating the massacre of
the enemies of God.” The problem is that some people focus on the
wrong ones. He says: “I realize that you can fish out this passage
or that passage and make it sound like the Muslims want to convert or
kill everybody. But that would be like taking passages out of the Old
Testament to make Moses sound like Hitler.” D'Souza even claims
that Moses would have pursued an aggressive policy of religious
imperialism, a la Islamic jihad, if he had had the chance: “Moses
wasn’t exactly a believer in religious freedom. When he came down
from the mountain and discovered the Israelites worshipping the
golden calf he basically ordered a massacre. Don’t you think that
if Moses could he would have imposed the laws of Yahweh on the whole
world? Of course he would.”
But is all this
really true? Are these two prominent conservative thinkers, who after
all are only echoing a widespread opinion, right that the Bible and
the Qur’an are at least roughly equivalent in their capacity to
inspire violence?
This is an important
question, for it goes to the heart of whether or not the actual
teachings of either religion has anything to do with the violence
committed in its name. After all, that is not a question that can be
determined wholly by examining the historical record of each religion
– for in every religious tradition the teachings of the religion
are one thing and the way they are and have been lived out is quite
another. No body of people has ever lived in complete fidelity to any
set of principles, religious or otherwise, and there never will be
such a group of people. Moreover, a central tenet of Christianity is
that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans
3:23). This is, as many have noted, one Christian dogma for which
there is abundant empirical evidence: the dividing line between good
and evil doesn’t run between one group and another, or one race and
another, or one nation and another. Nor does it run between the
adherents of one religion and those of another. It is said that the
British writer and superlative wit G.K. Chesterton once responded to
an invitation from the Times of London to write a piece about what is
wrong with the world by writing: “Dear Sir, I am. Yours, G.K.
Chesterton.” Chesterton wasn’t just being flip; he was expressing
the fundamental Christian belief that the dividing line between good
and evil actually runs through every human heart. With this as a core
assumption, neither Christians nor anyone else should ever be
surprised by evil, even when it is perpetrated by Christians in the
name of Christianity. That is the way human beings are.
Islam’s view of
this is vastly different in some ways and identical in others. While
acknowledging that any human being is capable of evil, the Qur’an
says that Muslims are the “best of peoples” (3:110) while the
unbelievers are the “vilest of creatures” (98:6). It is easy, if
one takes such a worldview seriously, to see evil in others but have
a harder time locating it in oneself. And that is indeed a recurring
tendency in the Islamic world today – an unwillingness to engage in
self-reflection and self-criticism, and to locate the source of all
ills on a malignant outside force: “Zionists,” “the Great
Satan,” and the like. Still, most Muslims, like most Christians,
would acknowledge that the gap between theory and practice has
sometimes been quite large, although that is an argument also made by
jihadists, including those who in recent decades have spearheaded a
revival of jihadist sentiment around the world by publishing material
such as the tract “Jihad: the Forgotten Obligation.” In any case,
the teachings of each religion – as those teachings have been
understood by the mainstream sects of each faith -- will make it
clear whether those who claim to be acting in the name of
Christianity and Islam have a creditable claim to do so in fact, or
if they are actually transgressing against the teachings of the
religion they are claiming to defend.
Joshua: God
mandates ethnic cleansing?
So is Peters right
that “there’s nothing in the Koran as merciless as God’s
behavior in the Book of Joshua”? It certainly seems so. Besieging
Jericho, Joshua announces that the city is “devoted to the LORD for
destruction” (Joshua 6:17). When it falls, Joshua and his men
“utterly destroyed all in the city, both men and women, oxen,
sheep, and asses, with the edge of the sword” (6:21). And Joshua
warned: “Cursed before the LORD be the man that rises up and
rebuilds this city, Jericho” (6:26).
Later God tells
Joshua: “You shall do to Ai and its king as you did to Jericho and
its king,” except that this time they shouldn’t kill all the
animals: “its spoil and its cattle you shall take as booty for
yourselves” (8:2). Joshua complied: “When Israel had finished
slaughtering all the inhabitants of Ai in the open wilderness where
they pursued them and all of them to the very last had fallen by the
edge of the sword, all Israel returned to Ai, and smote it with the
edge of the sword. And all who fell that day, both men and women,
were twelve thousand, all the people of Ai. For Joshua did not draw
back his hand, with which he stretched out the javelin, until he had
utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai. Only the cattle and the
spoil of that city Israel took as their booty, according to the word
of the LORD which he commanded Joshua” (8:24-27). Joshua similarly
kills all the inhabitants of a number of other cities: Makkedah
(10:28); Libnah (10:29-30); Lachish (10:31-2); Eglon (10:34-5);
Hebron (10:36-7); and Debir (10:38-9); as well as Madon, Shimron,
Achshaph, and Hazor (11:10-11).
Nowhere in all this
is there a hint of any disapproval on the part of the writer or
anyone in the book. Instead, we are told that in carrying out these
massacres Joshua was just being obedient to God: “So Joshua
defeated the whole land, the hill country and the Negeb and the
lowland and the slopes, and all their kings; he left none remaining,
but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the LORD God of Israel
commanded” (10:40).
Not just Joshua
Nor is the Book of
Joshua the only apparently morally problematic portion of the Jewish
and Christian Scriptures. Chris Hedges says in his book American
Fascists that many Christians “often fail to acknowledge that
there are hateful passages in the Bible that give sacred authority to
the rage, self-aggrandizement and intolerance of the Christian
Right.” The behavior of Joshua himself is rooted in earlier
behavior, and other commands of the Lord. The Book of Numbers
recounts that after the Israelites defeated the Midianites, they
presented the captives and spoils of war to Moses. But the prophet
“was angry with the officers of the army, the commanders of
thousands and the commanders of hundreds, who had come from service
in the war. Moses said to them, ‘Have you let all the women live?’”
He reminded them that these women had earlier caused the Israelites
to “act treacherously against the LORD.” Consequently, Moses told
his men: “Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and
kill every woman who has known man by lying with him. But all the
young girls who have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for
yourselves” (31:14-18).
Later this command
was extended to other enemies of the Israelites: “When the LORD
your God brings you into the land which you are entering to take
possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the
Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the
Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and
mightier than yourselves, and when the LORD your God gives them over
to you, and you defeat them; then you must utterly destroy them; you
shall make no covenant with them, and show no mercy to them”
(Deuteronomy 7:1-2). God also tells the Israelites: “When you
approach a city to fight against it, you shall offer it terms of
peace. If it agrees to make peace with you and opens to you, then all
the people who are found in it shall become your forced labor and
shall serve you. However, if it does not make peace with you, but
makes war against you, then you shall besiege it. When the LORD your
God gives it into your hand, you shall strike all the men in it with
the edge of the sword. Only the women and the children and the
animals and all that is in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as
booty for yourself; and you shall use the spoil of your enemies which
the LORD your God has given you. Only in the cities of these peoples
that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not
leave alive anything that breathes” (Deuteronomy 20:10-17).
Besides passages
apparently celebrating warfare and ethnic cleansing as sanctioned by
almighty God, the books of Moses also contain other passages jarring
to modern sensibilities. God commands, for example, that
Sabbath-breakers be put to death: “And the LORD said to Moses, ‘Say
to the people of Israel, You shall keep my sabbaths, for this is a
sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may
know that I, the LORD, sanctify you. You shall keep the sabbath,
because it is holy for you; every one who profanes it shall be put to
death; whoever does any work on it, that soul shall be cut off from
among his people’” (Exodus 31:12-14). So are idolaters. God tells
Moses: “If there is found among you…a man or woman who does what
is evil in the sight of the LORD your God, in transgressing his
covenant, and has gone and served other gods and worshiped them, or
the sun or the moon or any of the host of heaven, which I have
forbidden, and it is told you and you hear of it; then you shall
inquire diligently, and if it is true and certain that such an
abominable thing has been done in Israel, then you shall bring forth
to your gates that man or woman who has done this evil thing, and you
shall stone that man or woman to death with stones” (Deuteronomy
17:2-5).
There is more. The
Book of Exodus contains some brief guidelines for occasions in which
“a man sells his daughter as a slave” (Exodus 21:7). And there is
more, here and there, that has raised eyebrows not only in modern
times but throughout history.
“Kill them
all,” says the Lord?
But is the Bible
really enjoining violence, both against nonbelievers and believers
who commit sins deemed worthy of capital punishment? This question
cannot be answered by an evaluation of the text alone, for that text
does now and has never in history stood apart from the way believers
have understood it and acted upon it. From that perspective, the
arguments of Peters and D’Souza, and the many others who have said
essentially the same thing, founded primarily upon one central fact:
there are no armed Jewish or Christian groups anywhere in the world
today who are committing acts of violence and justifying them by
referring to these texts. Indeed, throughout history, these texts
have never been taken as divine commands that either must be or may
be put into practice by believers in a new age. All these passages,
after all, are descriptive, not prescriptive. They nowhere command
believers to imitate this behavior, or to believe under any
circumstances that God wishes them to act as his instruments of
judgment in any situation today.
Biblical scholars
have posited several ways in which passages such as those in the Book
of Joshua that appear to depict God transgressing against his own
goodness can be understood by people of faith who believe that this
material is divinely inspired. Some Biblical scholars have suggested
that the Bible depicts a process of moral evolution – a gradual
advance out of barbarism to the precepts of the Gospel. Others have
adopted a posture of cultural relativism, arguing that what was
acceptable for, or even incumbent upon, the Israelites in their
particular time and place only applied to that time and place, not to
all believers for all time. There are weaknesses in those and other
such interpretations, but they reflect the fact that throughout
history, rather than celebrating such biblical passages, Jews and
Christians have regarded them as a problem to be solved. While
interpretations of these passages differ widely among Jews and
Christians, from the beginnings of rabbinic Judaism and Christianity
one understanding has remained dominant among virtually all
believers: these passages are not commands for all generations to
follow, and if they have any applicability at all, it is only in a
spiritualized, parabolic sense.
This is clear from
popular Scriptural commentaries and other popular treatments of this
material. The Catholic edition of the Revised Standard Version of the
Bible says that “the physical destruction of the enemy in obedience
to the deity” was “practiced much less than a reading of Joshua
might suggest” – and in any case, “it must be seen in light of
the imperfect stage of moral development reached at that time.”
Likewise the Navarre Bible, a Roman Catholic commentary series
prepared by the theology faculty of the University of Navarre in
Spain, calls the instructions to destroy whole cities “a policy
which to us seems quite incomprehensible, savage and inhuman.” It
says that “it needs to be seen in its historical context and to be
set in the framework of the gradual development of revelation.” The
commentary goes on to cite Jesus’ words -- “love your enemies”
(Matthew 5:44) – and a spiritualized interpretation of Joshua’s
battles by the sixteenth-century mystic St. John of the Cross.
The
evangelical Christians Andy and Berit Kjos reflect the near-universal
tendency to spiritualize such passages in a series of study questions
on the Book of Joshua. In connection with Joshua 6:17 they ask: “What
might you ‘utterly destroy’ in your own life in order to fully
live the holy and victorious life in union with Christ?” This is
similar to a footnote on Joshua 6:26 in the 1609 Douay-Rheims Roman
Catholic English translation of the Bible: “Jericho, in the
mystical sense, signifies iniquity: the sounding of the trumpets by
the priests, the preaching of the word of God; by which the walls of
Jericho are thrown down, when sinners are converted; and a dreadful
curse will light on them who build them up again.”
Not only are such
texts spiritualized; the literal sense is often directly rejected.
The Rev. David Holwick of First Baptist Church in Ledgewood, New
Jersey quotes the billionaire Andrew Carnegie: “I picked up the
Bible just the other day and was reading the story of the times of
Samuel. All sorts of ghastly incidents are related, and some passages
are simply revolting to a mind accustomed to feel toward humanity as
Christ felt. And the thing is that God is pictured as directing and
helping it all. It is God who leads in the slaughter and He even
inspires His children to the most unmerciful acts. Do not teach these
parts to boys and girls as heroic deeds, to be admired and copied.”
Holwick maintains that the God of the Old Testament is the same as
that of the New, but agrees with Carnegie that such tales have no
exemplary value for modern believers. “Too many atrocities have
been done in God’s name,” he said, adding: “God doesn’t need
human armies or politicians to win.”
In short, the
consensus view among Jews and Christians for many centuries is that
unless you happen to be a Hittite, Girgashite, Amorite, Canaanite,
Perizzite, Hivite, or Jebusite, these Biblical passages simply do not
apply to you. The Scripture records God’s commands to the
Israelites to make war against particular people only. However this
may be understood, and however jarring it may be to modern
sensibilities, it does not amount to any kind of marching orders for
believers. That’s one principal reason why Jews and Christians
haven’t formed terror groups around the world that quote these
Scriptures to justify killing civilian non-combatants.
Violence in the
New Testament?
Christopher
Hitchens, in his entertaining atheist apologetic god Is Not Great:
How Religion Poisons Everything, surveys what he terms the
“nightmare” of the Old Testament and then entitles his next
chapter “The ‘New’ Testament Exceeds the Evil of the ‘Old’
One.” When it comes to backing up this assertion, however, all
Hitchens offers is thin gruel: “Abraham,” he points out, “is
ready to make a human sacrifice of his own firstborn.” Then he
notes “a rumor” that “a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son,”
concluding: “Gradually, these two myths begin to converge.”
How? In large-scale
calls for human sacrifice? Even Hitchens at his most biting and
indifferent to distinction and nuance doesn’t claim that. In his
Old Testament chapter, he asks about the Ten Commandments: “Is it
too modern to notice that there is nothing about the protection of
children from cruelty, nothing about rape, nothing about slavery, and
nothing about genocide? Or is it too exactingly ‘in context’ to
notice that some of these very offenses are about to be positively
recommended?” One might expect after that kind of buildup that the
New Testament, since it exceeds the evil of the Old, must contain
positive references not only to genocide and slavery, but also
kicking puppies and pulling the wings off flies. Yet most of
Hitchens’ New Testament chapter is taken up with disquisitions on
the historicity, or lack thereof, of various portions of the
narrative – including one which Hitchens seems rather to like, the
story of Jesus showing mercy to the woman who is about to be stoned
for adultery (John 7:53-8:11).
This is no accident.
Those who comb the New Testament searching for incitement to violence
come away disappointed. Nevertheless, in the spirit of the fisherman
who stops off at the market to buy a fresh fish so as to mask his
failure at the lake, some Islamic apologists and non-Muslim purveyors
of moral equivalence claim to find even in the New Testament passages
that exhort believers to commit acts of violence. They most often
point to two passages:
“I tell you that
to everyone who has, more shall be given, but from the one who does
not have, even what he does have shall be taken away. But these
enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them
here and slay them in my presence” (Luke 19:26-27). Of course, the
fallacy here is that these are the words of a king in a parable, not
Jesus’ instructions to His followers, but such subtleties are often
ignored in the modern communications age.
“Do not think that
I have come to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace,
but a sword. I am sent to set a man against his father, a daughter
against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law”
(Matthew 10:34-35). If this passage is really calling for any literal
violence, it would seem to be intra-familial jihad. To invoke it as
the equivalent of the Qur’an’s jihad passages, which number over
a hundred, is absurd: even the Crusaders at their most venal and
grasping didn’t invoke passages like these.
Also, given the
completely peaceful message of Jesus, it is clear that he meant “a
sword” in an allegorical and metaphorical way. To interpret this
text literally is to misunderstand Jesus, who, unlike Muhammad, did
not take part in battles. It fails to recognize the poetry of the
Bible, which is everywhere. But historically, even when they have
committed violence in the name of God and the Church, Christians have
not invoked such passages to justify what they were doing. These
passages have never been taken as marching orders.
Nor have the
passages of the Revelation to St. John that paint a bloody end times
scenario of death and judgment; four angels “kill a third of
mankind” (9:15); three plagues kill another third; and “the rest
of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of
the works of their hands nor give up worshiping demons and idols of
gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot either
see or hear or walk; nor did they repent of their murders or their
sorceries or their immorality or their thefts” (9:18, 20-21). Jesus
himself is depicted as a leader of armies: “He is clad in a robe
dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of
God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure,
followed him on white horses. From his mouth issues a sharp sword
with which to smite the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of
iron; he will tread the wine press of the fury of the wrath of God
the Almighty” (19:13-15).
Yet here again,
nowhere does any of this amount to a call to action. While God is
depicted as exacting judgment and punishing the wicked, nowhere does
he order Christians to enforce his commands on his behalf. Likewise
the popular Left Behind series, which dramatizes the events recounted
in Revelation from an evangelical Christian perspective, doesn’t
either depict Christians killing their non-Christian neighbors or
order them to do so. But that isn’t enough for Chris Hedges, who
insists that “Church leaders must denounce the biblical passages
that champion apocalyptic violence and hateful political creeds.”
Yet since he does not and cannot produce any evidence of Christians
either preaching or perpetrating violence and justifying this with
reference to the hateful apocalyptic texts he invokes, the necessity
for Christian leaders to “denounce” these passages of Scripture
is perhaps less urgent than the necessity for Muslim leaders to
confront the jihadist use of Islamic Scripture, and to formulate
positive ways these texts can be reinterpreted so that they no longer
have as much power to incite to violence as they do today.
But the Bible has
made people commit violent acts – hasn’t it?
Any believer in the
Christian doctrine of sin will agree that no human endeavor can be
free of base actions and base motives. And certainly Christians have
committed violent acts in the name of Christianity. But have they
done so in obedience to Christian Scripture and the teachings of the
various Christian sects, or in defiance of those Scriptures and
teachings? During the Crusades, it became customary for those who
joined the effort to be referred to as “taking up their cross,”
echoing Jesus’ statement: “If any man would come after me, let
him deny himself and take up his cross, and follow me” (Matthew
16:24).
But on its face, of
course, this says nothing about war or violence of any kind, and has
been understood throughout history as referring primarily to the
Christian’s struggle to conform his life to the demands of the
Gospel. And so it is with all Biblical passages that the Crusaders
and Crusader theologians invoked: they often performed a reverse of
the spiritualization we saw in connection with the Book of Joshua,
taking what are clearly spiritual passages as if they were referring
to physical warfare. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), extends St.
Paul’s New Testament exhortation to “take the whole armor of
God…having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the
breastplate of righteousness” (Ephesians 6:13-14), which clearly
refers to spiritual warfare, in physical terms, and militarizes
Paul’s longing to be with Christ, “For me to live is Christ, and
to die is gain…My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that
is far better” (Philippians 1:21, 23). He also refers to Paul’s
insistence that nothing “will be able to separate us from the love
of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39) and “whether we
live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s” (Romans 14:8):
He indeed is a
fearless knight, and one secure from any quarter, since his soul is
dressed in an armor of faith just as his body is dressed in an armor
of steel. Since he is well protected by both kinds of arms, he fears
neither the demon nor man. Nor is he afraid of death, since he longs
to die. Why should he fear whether he lives or dies, since for him
life is Christ and death is a reward? Faithfully and freely does he
go forth on Christ’s behalf, but he would rather be dissolved and
be with Christ: such is the obviously better thing. So go forth in
safety, knights, and drive out the enemies of the cross of Christ
with fearless intention, certain that neither death nor life can
separate you from God’s love, which Jesus Christ embodies; in every
moment of danger, fulfill through your own actions the principle:
‘Whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.”
St. Bernard goes on
in language reminiscent of that used in his day and today to exhort
jihad warriors to fight on all the more valiantly, for their rewards
will be great on earth if they are victorious and in heaven if they
aren’t:
How glorious the
victors returned from battle! How blessed those martyrs who died in
battle! Rejoice, brave fighter, if you live and conquer in the Lord;
but rather exult and glory, if you die and are joined to the Lord.
Life can be fruitful and victory can be glorious; but sacred death is
properly to be preferred to either, for if ‘they are blessed who
die in the Lord,’ are they not much more so who die on the Lord’s
behalf?
Perhaps those who
believe that any holy text can be used to justify anything will find
support for their views in St. Bernard’s usage of St. Paul here.
However, while Bernard is able to marshal Scriptural passages for the
idea that God rewards martyrs, and that God is the Lord of both the
living and the dead, he does not and cannot adduce any Scripture in
support of his central assumption: that warfare in the name of Christ
is justified. The fact that he must instead resort to the
physicalization of passages about spiritual warfare only makes more
obvious the fact that can have no recourse to any Christian martial
tradition, or doctrine of warfare against and conquest of
unbelievers.
In Islam, however,
the situation is quite different.
Violence in the
Qur’an?
Any Muslim
counterparts to Bernard of Clairvaux, in exhorting Muslims to wage
jihad warfare, need not content themselves with interpreting in
connection with actual warfare passages that refer to spiritual
warfare. For in contrast to the Bible, the Qur’an exhorts believers
to fight unbelievers without specifying anywhere in the text that
only certain unbelievers are to be fought, or only for a certain
period of time, or some other distinction. Taking the texts at face
value, the command to make war against unbelievers is open-ended and
universal.
Osama bin Laden, who
is only the most renowned and notorious exponent of a terror network
that extends from Indonesia to Nigeria and into Western Europe and
the Americas, quotes the Qur’an copiously in his communiqués. In
his 1996 “Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the
Land of the Two Holy Places,” he quotes seven Qur’an verses:
3:145; 47:4-6; 2:154; 9:14; 47:19; 8:72; and the notorious “Verse
of the Sword,” 9:5. In 2003, on the first day of the Muslim holy
day Eid al-Adha, the Feast of Sacrifice, he began a sermon: “Praise
be to Allah who revealed the verse of the Sword to his servant and
messenger [the Prophet Muhammad], in order to establish truth and
abolish falsehood.”
One pro-Osama
website, the now-defunct waaqiah.com, put it this way in 2002: “The
truth is that a Muslim who reads the Qur’an with devotion is
determined to reach the battlefield in order to attain the reality of
Jihad. It is solely for this reason that the Kufaar [unbelievers]
conspire to keep the Muslims far away from understanding the Qur’an,
knowing that Muslims who understand the Qur’an will not distance
themselves from Jihad.”
Of course, the devil
can quote Scripture for his own purpose, but Osama’s use of these
and other passages in his messages is consistent with traditional
Islamic understandings of the Qur’an. When they read their Bibles,
as we have seen, modern-day Jews and Christians simply don’t
understand the passages cited or others as exhorting them to violent
actions against unbelievers. This is the result of the influence of
interpretative traditions that have for centuries moved away from
literalism regarding these passages. But in Islam there is no
comparable interpretative tradition. The jihad passages in the Qur’an
are anything but a dead letter. In Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and
elsewhere, a key recruiting ground for jihad terrorist groups is the
Islamic school: the students learn that they must wage jihad warfare,
and then these groups give them the opportunity. They are made to
understand that passages such as “slay the unbelievers wherever you
find them” (Qur’an 9:5) and “Therefore, when ye meet the
unbelievers in fight, smite at their necks; at length, when ye have
thoroughly subdued them, bind a bond firmly on them” (Qur’an
47:4) are words they need to take to heart and carry out in order to
be pleasing to Allah.
The scholar Ibn
Warraq, an ex-Muslim, author of Why I Am Not a Muslim, and
editor of several collections of scholarly essays on the Qur’an and
Muhammad, calls the Qur’an the most “gnomic, elusive, and
allusive of holy scriptures” — not least because people seem to
be able to read it and come to diametrically opposite conclusions
about what it says.
Some of these
conclusions may have had motivations other than the purely
theological. In the wake of the September 11 attacks, the Detroit
Free Press told readers that “the Quran teaches nonviolence.”
This was repeated in essence by George W. Bush when he said that
“Islam is peace,” and this quickly hardened into a strict
orthodoxy that could not be questioned in the mainstream. Only a few
dared to sound any sour notes. Christian Broadcasting Network
spokesman and former presidential candidate Pat Robertson drew
vehement and indignant criticism when he declared: “I’m very
familiar with what goes on in the Islamic world, where our reporters
are all over that area, and it’s clear from the teachings of the
Koran and also from the history of Islam that it’s anything but
peaceful.” Jerry Falwell and Franklin Graham also drew fire — as
well as bloody riots in India and a call for their deaths from a
Muslim official in Iran — for similar remarks.
Tolerance in the
Qur’an
The evidence of the
Qur’anic text itself goes both ways. Within the Muslim holy book
one finds verses devoted to peace and tolerance — and also abundant
verses devoted to violent intolerance.
Live-and-let-live
tolerance appears in a chapter of the Qur’an that was revealed to
Muhammad early in his prophetic career (the Qur’an is not arranged
in chronological or narrative order, but generally from the longest
chapter – sura -- to the shortest): “Say: O disbelievers! I
worship not that which ye worship; Nor worship ye that which I
worship. And I shall not worship that which ye worship. Nor will ye
worship that which I worship. Unto you your religion, and unto me my
religion” (109:1-6).
Other verses add to
this seeming indifference the contention that Allah will ultimately
judge the unbelievers and cast them into hell. Thus Allah tells
Muhammad not to waste his time arguing with those who reject his
message, but to leave them in peace until that terrible day: “So
leave them alone until they encounter that Day of theirs, wherein
they shall (perforce) swoon (with terror)” (52:45-47; the sections
in parentheses are added by the Muslim translator so as to express
more precisely the sense of the original).
This counsel is
repeated in several places in the Qur’an: “And have patience with
what they say, and leave them with noble (dignity). And leave Me
(alone to deal with) those in possession of the good things of life,
who (yet) deny the Truth; and bear with them for a little while”
(73:10-11).
Above all, no Muslim
should forcibly convert an unbeliever: “Let there be no compulsion
in religion: Truth stands out clear from Error: whoever rejects evil
and believes in Allah hath grasped the most trustworthy hand-hold,
that never breaks. And Allah heareth and knoweth all things”
(2:256). Following this celebrated verse comes another threat of
hell: “Allah is the Protector of those who have faith: from the
depths of darkness He will lead them forth into light. Of those who
reject faith the patrons are the evil ones: from light they will lead
them forth into the depths of darkness. They will be companions of
the fire, to dwell therein (for ever)” (2:257).
Since Jews and
Christians will face this dreadful judgment, Allah admonishes his
prophet not to argue with them. Instead, he is to emphasize that he
believes in the same God they do: “And dispute ye not with the
People of the Book [that is, primarily Jews and Christians], except
with means better (than mere disputation), unless it be with those of
them who inflict wrong (and injury): but say, ‘We believe in the
revelation which has come down to us and in that which came down to
you; Our Allah and your Allah is one; and it is to Him we bow (in
Islam)’” (29:46).
Fighting in
self-defense
While those verses
counsel a form of tolerance, albeit accompanied by threats of
hellfire, that tolerance was not to be exercised in all cases. As
Muhammad’s prophetic career went on, and particularly after his
flight to Medina and establishment there of the first Islamic
political and military entity, he began to receive Qur’anic
revelations allowing Muslims to fight under certain circumstances.
The necessity of self-defense is emphasized in the Qur’an’s
eighth chapter, which is entitled Al-Anfal (“The Spoils of War”):
“Remember thy Lord inspired the angels (with the message): ‘I am
with you: give firmness to the Believers: I will instill terror into
the hearts of the Unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and smite
all their finger-tips off them.’ This is because they contended
against Allah and His Messenger: If any contend against Allah and His
Messenger, Allah is strict in punishment. Thus (will it be said):
‘Taste ye then of the (punishment): for those who resist Allah, is
the penalty of the Fire.’ O ye who believe! When ye meet the
Unbelievers in hostile array, never turn your backs to them. If any
do turn his back to them on such a day — unless it be in a
stratagem of war, or to retreat to a troop (of his own) — he draws
on himself the wrath of Allah, and his abode is Hell, an evil refuge
(indeed)!” (8:12-16).
Another verse
commands the Muslim community to defend not only itself but also
houses of worship — not just mosques, but all kinds: “Sanction is
given unto those who fight because they have been wronged; and Allah
is indeed able to give them victory; Those who have been driven from
their homes unjustly only because they said: Our Lord is Allah —
for had it not been for Allah’s repelling some men by means of
others, cloisters and churches and oratories and mosques, wherein the
name of Allah is oft mentioned, would assuredly have been pulled
down. Verily Allah helpeth one who helpeth Him. Lo! Allah is Strong,
Almighty” (22:39-40).
The Qur’an returns
elsewhere to this theme of self-defense. “Fight in the cause of
Allah those who fight you, but do not transgress limits; for Allah
loveth not transgressors [Another prominent Muslim translation
renders this as “begin not hostilities. Lo! Allah loveth not
aggressors.] And slay them wherever ye catch them, and turn them out
from where they have turned you out; for tumult and oppression are
worse than slaughter; but fight them not at the Sacred Mosque, unless
they (first) fight you there; but if they fight you, slay them. Such
is the reward of those who suppress faith. But if they cease, Allah
is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful. And fight them on until there is no
more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in
Allah; but if they cease, Let there be no hostility except to those
who practice oppression” (2:190-193). The command to fight against
“those who fight you” until “there prevail justice and faith in
Allah” (this is how a popular translation of the Qur’an by
Abdullah Yusuf ‘Ali renders the verse; the Arabic is closer to the
rendering of another Muslim translator, Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall,
who has it that Muslims should fight until “religion is for Allah,”
as Pickthall has it) indicates when Muslims should stop fighting
against unbelievers: not when a peace treaty has been concluded, or
when negotiations have settled disputed issues, but when Allah’s
religion prevails. Throughout history, Muslim jurists and theologians
have understood this to refer to Islamic law being instituted over a
society.
Significant also for
the understanding of jihad as self-defense is the following verse,
which ‘Ali’s translation of the Qur’an renders in part: “If
then any one transgresses the prohibition against you, transgress ye
likewise against him” (2:194). Pickthall translates this more
explicitly: “And one who attacketh you, attack him in like manner
as he attacked you.” This is a foundation for the revenge culture
that dominates so much of the Islamic world.
Fight is defensive,
but not optional: “Fighting is prescribed for you, and ye dislike
it. But it is possible that ye dislike a thing which is good for you,
and that ye love a thing which is bad for you. But Allah knoweth, and
ye know not” (2:216).
Nor should this
defensive struggle be limited in scope. Allah even tells Muhammad to
take no prisoners: “It is not fitting for a prophet that he should
have prisoners of war until he hath thoroughly subdued the land.”
This verse comes in the context of warning the Muslims not to fight
simply for booty: “Ye look for the temporal goods of this world;
but Allah looketh to the Hereafter: And Allah is Exalted in might,
Wise” (8:67). At the battle of Uhud against the pagan Quraysh tribe
of Mecca, Muhammad’s own tribe which had rejected his prophetic
claim, the Muslims failed to destroy their enemies utterly because of
their lust for the spoils of war: “Allah did indeed fulfil His
promise to you when ye with His permission were about to annihilate
your enemy, until ye flinched and fell to disputing about the order,
and disobeyed it after He brought you in sight (of the booty) which
ye covet. Among you are some that hanker after this world and some
that desire the Hereafter. Then did He divert you from your foes in
order to test you but He forgave you: For Allah is full of grace to
those who believe” (3:152).
However, the
prohibition against taking prisoners doesn’t seem to be absolute,
since Allah also gives the Muslims permission to take the wives of
those they have slain in battle as concubines: “O Prophet! We have
made lawful to thee thy wives to whom thou hast paid their dowers;
and those whom thy right hand possesses [i.e., slaves] out of the
prisoners of war whom Allah has assigned to thee” (33:50).
Warfare
in this context still must be limited. One verse that has been
frequently quoted since 9/11 forbids Muslims to take innocent life:
“Whosoever killeth a human being for other than manslaughter or
corruption in the earth, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind,
and whoso saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the
life of all mankind” (5:32).
Allah calls his
people to be fearless in the face of death in view of the rewards he
offers afterward: “And if ye are slain, or die, in the way of
Allah, forgiveness and mercy from Allah are far better than all they
could amass. And if ye die, or are slain, Lo! It is unto Allah that
ye are brought together” (3:157-158). This reward is guaranteed to
those who sacrifice for Allah: “He who forsakes his home in the
cause of Allah, finds in the earth many a refuge, wide and spacious:
should he die as a refugee from home for Allah and His Messenger, His
reward becomes due and sure with Allah: and Allah is Oft-forgiving,
Most Merciful” (4:100).
Indeed, those who
wage jihad rank highest among the believers: “Do ye make the giving
of drink to pilgrims, or the maintenance of the Sacred Mosque, equal
to (the pious service of) those who believe in Allah and the Last
Day, and strive with might and main in the cause of Allah [jihad fi
sabil Allah]? They are not comparable in the sight of Allah: and
Allah guides not those who do wrong. Those who believe, and suffer
exile and strive with might and main, in Allah’s cause [jihad fi
sabil Allah], with their goods and their persons, have the highest
rank in the sight of Allah: they are the people who will achieve
(salvation)” (9:19-20). Jihad fi sabil Allah refers in Islamic
theology to taking up arms for the Muslim cause.
Offensive warfare
mandated by the Qur’an?
Alongside the verses
enjoining warfare in self-defense, the Qur’an includes a cluster of
verses containing general and open-ended commands to fight: “O ye
who believe! Fight the unbelievers who gird you about, and let them
find firmness in you: and know that Allah is with those who fear Him”
(9:123).
“O Prophet! Strive
hard against the unbelievers and the hypocrites, and be firm against
them. Their abode is Hell, an evil refuge indeed” (9:73). The
Arabic word translated here as “strive hard” is jahidi, a verbal
form of the noun jihad.
The command applies
first to fighting those who worship other gods besides Allah: “Then,
when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye
find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for
them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay
the poor-due, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving,
Merciful” (9:5).
However, Muslims
must fight Jews and Christians as well, although the Qur’an
recognizes that as “People of the Book” they have received
genuine revelations from Allah: “Fight those who believe not in
Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been
forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of
Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay
the Jizya [the special tax on non-Muslims] with willing submission,
and feel themselves subdued” (9:29).
But aren’t you
just cherry-picking violent passages?
Chris Hedges
recounts that Gary Frazier of Discovery Ministries, a Christian
fundamentalist group in Texas, told an “End Times conference”
that “the second sign of the End Times” would be “the rise of
radical Islam.” According to Hedges, Frazier told a rapt crowd that
some Muslims “want to export their religion and achieve their goal
of ‘world domination.’” The cultural contempt is palpable in
Hedges’ account: he apparently believes that only people like Gary
Frazier are really concerned about any threat from Islamic jihadists,
and the disdain he has for Frazier carries over to Frazier’s
concern about Islam.
Similarly, when I
list Qur’anic passages that counsel violence, I am often accused of
“cherry-picking” the worst of such passages in order to try to
portray Islam in the worst possible light, and ignoring similar
material in the Bible. In both cases, however, the question of
whether or not one is “cherry-picking” can only adequately be
solved by recourse to the mainstream interpretative traditions that
have guided believers’ understanding of their respective holy
books. And as we have seen, mainstream Bible commentators on both
sides of the Reformation divide do not consider the Bible’s most
violent passages to contain anything like marching orders for
believers to make war against unbelievers.
In regard to the
Qur’an, on the other hand, the situation is very different. It is
not Gary Frazier – or Robert Spencer – who is “cherry-picking”
violent passages from the Qur’an. Muslims themselves are doing so,
or rather, have recourse to a venerable and mainstream mode of
Qur’anic interpretation that exalts the violent verses at the
expense of the peaceful ones -- and this is one reason why the
jihadist movement is growing all over the Islamic world today.
With material
enjoining both, can ultimately it be said rightly that the Qur’an
preaches either tolerance or war? Very early in the history of Islam,
Muslims noticed and began to grapple with how Muhammad’s messages
changed in character over the course of his prophetic career, which
began in the year 610 A.D. and ended with his death 632. Muhammad’s
earliest biographer, a pious Muslim named Muhammad Ibn Ishaq Ibn
Yasar (Ibn Ishaq, 704-773), explains that originally Muhammad “had
not been given permission to fight or allowed to shed blood…. He
had simply been ordered to call men to God and to endure insult and
forgive the ignorant. The Quraysh had persecuted his followers,
seducing some from their religion, and exiling others from their
country. They had to choose whether to give up their religion, be
maltreated at home, or to flee the country, some to Abyssinia, others
to Medina.”
But as tensions
increased between Muhammad and the Quraysh, the pagan Arab tribe of
which Muhammad was a member but which had rejected his prophethood,
the time for forgiveness ended:
When Quraysh became
insolent towards God and rejected His gracious purpose, accused His
prophet of lying, and ill treated and exiled those who served Him and
proclaimed His unity, believed in His prophet, and held fast to His
religion, He gave permission to His apostle to fight and to protect
himself against those who wronged them and treated them badly.
Ibn Ishaq then
explains the progression of Qur’anic revelation about warfare.
First, he explains, Allah allowed Muslims to wage defensive warfare:
Assuredly God will
help those who help Him. God is Almighty. Those who if we make them
strong in the land will establish prayer, pay the poor-tax, enjoin
kindness, and forbid iniquity. To God belongs the end of matters.”
The meaning is: “I have allowed them to fight only because they
have been unjustly treated while their sole offence against men has
been that they worship God. When they are in the ascendant they will
establish prayer, pay the poor-tax, enjoin kindness, and forbid
iniquity, i.e. the Prophet and his companions all of them.”
“When they are in
the ascendant,” in other words, they will establish an Islamic
state, in which Muslims will pray regularly, pay the poor-tax
(zakat), and institute Islamic laws (“forbid iniquity”). But that
was not Allah’s last word on the circumstances in which Muslims
should fight:
Then God sent down
to him: “Fight them so that there be no more seduction,” i.e.
until no believer is seduced from his religion. “And the religion
is God’s”, i.e. Until God alone is worshipped.
The Qur’an verse
Ibn Ishaq quotes here (2:193) commands much more than defensive
warfare: Muslims must fight until “the religion is God’s” –
that is, until Allah alone is worshipped. Later Islamic law, based on
this development in the doctrine of jihad warfare during Muhammad’s
career, would offer non-Muslims three options: conversion to Islam,
subjugation as inferiors under Islamic law, or warfare. According to
a Chief Justice of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh ‘Abdullah bin Muhammad bin
Humaid, “at first ‘the fighting’ was forbidden, then it was
permitted and after that it was made obligatory.” He also
distinguishes two groups Muslims must fight: “(1) against them who
start ‘the fighting’ against you (Muslims) . . . (2) and against
all those who worship others along with Allah . . . as mentioned in
Surat Al-Baqarah (II), Al-Imran (III) and At-Taubah (IX) . . . and
other Surahs (Chapters of the Qur’an).” (The Roman numerals after
the names of the chapters of the Qur’an are the numbers of the
suras: Sheikh ‘Abdullah is referring to verses quoted above such as
2:216, 3:157-158, 9:5, and 9:29.)
This understanding
of the Qur’an isn’t limited to the Wahhabi sect of Saudi Arabia,
to which Sheikh ‘Abdullah belongs, and which many Western analysts
imagine to have originated Islamic doctrines of warfare against
unbelievers. Jihad theorist Sayyid Qutb, who was not a Wahhabi,
subscribes to the same view of the Qur’an. In his jihad manifesto
Milestones, quotes at length from the great medieval scholar Ibn
Qayyim (1292-1350), who, says Qutb, “has summed up the nature of
Islamic Jihaad.” Ibn Qayyim outlines the stages of the Muhammad’s
prophetic career: “For thirteen years after the beginning of his
Messengership, he called people to God through preaching, without
fighting or Jizyah, and was commanded to restrain himself and to
practice patience and forbearance. Then he was commanded to migrate,
and later permission was given to fight. Then he was commanded to
fight those who fought him, and to restrain himself from those who
did not make war with him. Later he was commanded to fight the
polytheists until God’s religion was fully established.”
Qutb
summarizes the stages: “Thus, according to the explanation by Imam
Ibn Qayyim, the Muslims were first restrained from fighting; then
they were permitted to fight; then they were commanded to fight
against the aggressors; and finally they were commanded to fight
against all the polytheists.” He further quotes Ibn Qayyim as
emphasizing the need to wage war against and subjugate non-Muslims,
particularly the Jewish and Christian “People of the Book”:
“After the command for Jihaad came, the non-believers were divided
into three categories: one, those with whom there was peace; two, the
people with whom the Muslims were at war; and three, the
Dhimmies....It was also explained that war should be declared against
those from among the ‘People of the Book’ who declare open
enmity, until they agree to pay Jizyah or accept Islam. Concerning
the polytheists and the hypocrites, it was commanded in this chapter
that Jihaad be declared against them and that they be treated
harshly.” Qutb says that if someone rejects Islam, “then it is
the duty of Islam to fight him until either he is killed or until he
declares his submission.”
Related to this idea
of three stages of development in the Qur’anic concept of jihad is
the Islamic doctrine of abrogation (naskh). This is the idea that
Allah can change or cancel what he tells Muslims: “None of Our
revelations do We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, but We
substitute something better or similar: knowest thou not that Allah
Hath power over all things?” (Qur’an 2:106). According to this
idea, the violent verses of sura 9, including the Verse of the Sword
(9:5), abrogate the peaceful verses, because they were revealed later
in Muhammad’s prophetic career: in fact, most Muslim authorities
agree that the ninth sura was the very last section of the Qur’an
to be revealed.
In line with this,
some classical Islamic theologians asserted that the Verse of the
Sword abrogates no less than 124 more peaceful and tolerant verses of
the Qur’an. Tafsir al-Jalalayn, a commentary on the Qur’an by the
respected imams Jalal al-Din Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Mahalli
(1389-1459) and Jalal al-Din ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn Abi Bakr al-Suyuti
(1445-1505), asserts that the Qur’an’s ninth sura “was sent
down when security was removed by the sword.” Another mainstream
and respected Qur’an commentator, Isma’il bin ‘Amr bin Kathir
al Dimashqi (1301-1372), known popularly as Ibn Kathir, declares that
sura 9:5 “abrogated every agreement of peace between the Prophet
and any idolater, every treaty, and every term….No idolater had any
more treaty or promise of safety ever since Surah Bara’ah [the
ninth sura] was revealed.” Ibn Juzayy (d. 1340), yet another Qur’an
commentator whose works are still read in the Islamic world, agrees:
the Verse of the Sword’s purpose is “abrogating every peace
treaty in the Qur’an.”
Ibn Kathir makes
this clear in his commentary on another “tolerance verse”: “And
he [Muhammad] saith: O my Lord! Lo! these are a folk who believe not.
Then bear with them, O Muhammad, and say: Peace. But they will come
to know” (sura 43:88-89). Ibn Kathir explains: “Say Salam
(peace!) means, ‘do not respond to them in the same evil manner in
which they address you; but try to soften their hearts and forgive
them in word and deed.’” However, that is not the end of the
passage. Ibn Kathir then takes up the last part: “But they will
come to know. This is a warning from Allah for them. His punishment,
which cannot be warded off, struck them, and His religion and His
word was supreme. Subsequently Jihad and striving were prescribed
until the people entered the religion of Allah in crowds, and Islam
spread throughout the east and the west.”
That work is not yet
complete.
All this means that
warfare against unbelievers until they either become Muslim or “pay
the jizya” — the special tax on non-Muslims in Islamic law —
“with willing submission” (Qur’an 9:29) is the Qur’an’s
last word on jihad. Mainstream Islamic tradition has interpreted this
as Allah’s enduring marching orders to the human race: the Islamic
umma (community) must exist in a state of perpetual war, punctuated
only by temporary truces, with the non-Muslim world.
All four principal
Sunni schools agree on the importance of jihad. Ibn Abi Zayd
al-Qayrawani (d. 996), a Maliki jurist, declared:
Jihad is a precept
of Divine institution. Its performance by certain individuals may
dispense others from it. We Malikis maintain that it is preferable
not to begin hostilities with the enemy before having invited the
latter to embrace the religion of Allah except where the enemy
attacks first. They have the alternative of either converting to
Islam or paying the poll tax (jizya), short of which war will be
declared against them.”
Ibn Taymiyya (d.
1328), a Hanbali jurist who is a favorite of Osama bin Laden and
other modern-day jihadists:
Since lawful warfare
is essentially jihad and since its aim is that the religion is God’s
entirely and God’s word is uppermost, therefore according to all
Muslims, those who stand in the way of this aim must be fought. As
for those who cannot offer resistance or cannot fight, such as women,
children, monks, old people, the blind, handicapped and their likes,
they shall not be killed unless they actually fight with words (e.g.
by propaganda) and acts (e.g. by spying or otherwise assisting in the
warfare).”
The Hanafi school
sounds the same notes:
It is not lawful to
make war upon any people who have never before been called to the
faith, without previously requiring them to embrace it, because the
Prophet so instructed his commanders, directing them to call the
infidels to the faith, and also because the people will hence
perceive that they are attacked for the sake of religion, and not for
the sake of taking their property, or making slaves of their
children, and on this consideration it is possible that they may be
induced to agree to the call, in order to save themselves from the
troubles of war… If the infidels, upon receiving the call, neither
consent to it nor agree to pay capitation tax, it is then incumbent
on the Muslims to call upon God for assistance, and to make war upon
them, because God is the assistant of those who serve Him, and the
destroyer of His enemies, the infidels, and it is necessary to
implore His aid upon every occasion; the Prophet, moreover, commands
us so to do.
And so does the
Shafi’i scholar Abu’l Hasan al-Mawardi (d. 1058), who echoes
Muhammad’s instructions to invite the unbelievers to accept Islam
or fight them if they refuse:
The mushrikun
[infidels] of Dar al-Harb (the arena of battle) are of two types:
First, those whom the call of Islam has reached, but they have
refused it and have taken up arms. The amir of the army has the
option of fighting them…in accordance with what he judges to be in
the best interest of the Muslims and most harmful to the mushrikun…
Second, those whom the invitation to Islam has not reached, although
such persons are few nowadays since Allah has made manifest the call
of his Messenger…it is forbidden to…begin an attack before
explaining the invitation to Islam to them, informing them of the
miracles of the Prophet and making plain the proofs so as to
encourage acceptance on their part; if they still refuse to accept
after this, war is waged against them and they are treated as those
whom the call has reached…
These are all
extremely old authorities – such that one might reasonably assume
that whatever they say couldn’t possibly still be the consensus of
the Islamic mainstream. The laws of the United States have evolved
considerably since the adoption of the Constitution, which itself has
been amended. So why shouldn’t this be true of Islamic law as well?
Many observers assume that it must be, and that Al-Qaeda’s
departure from mainstream Islam must be located in its preference for
the writings of ancient jurists rather than modern ones. But in this,
unfortunately, they fail to reckon with the implications of the
closing of the gates of ijtihad.
Ijtihad is the
process of arriving at a decision on a point of Islamic law through
study of the Qur’an and Sunnah. From the beginning of Islam, the
authoritative study of such sources was reserved to a select number
of scholars who fulfilled certain qualifications, including a
comprehensive knowledge of the Qur’an and Sunnah, as well as
knowledge of the principle of analogical reasoning (qiyas) by which
legal decisions are made; knowledge of the consensus (ijma) on any
given question of Muhammad, his closest companions, and the scholars
of the past; and more, including living a blameless life. The
founders of the schools of Islamic jurisprudence are among the small
number of scholars -- mujtahedin -- thus qualified to perform
ijithad. But they all lived very long ago; for many centuries,
independent study of the Qur’an and Sunnah has been discouraged
among Muslims, who are instead expected to adhere to the rulings of
one of those established schools. Since the death of Ahmed ibn
Hanbal, from whom the Hanbali school takes its name, in 855 A.D., no
one has been recognized by the Sunni Muslim community as a mujtahid
of the first class – that is, someone who is qualified to originate
legislation of his own, based on the Qur’an and Sunnah but not upon
the findings of earlier mujtahedin. Islamic scholar Cyril Glasse
notes that “‘the door of ijtihad is closed’ as of some nine
hundred years, and since then the tendency of jurisprudence (fiqh)
has been to produce only commentaries upon commentaries and
marginalia.”
Shi’ite Muslims
have never accepted that ijtihad is a thing of the past. Thus it is
with a slight tone of disapproval that the Shi’ite scholar Murtada
Mutahhari notes of the Sunnis:
The right of ijtihad
did not last for long among the Sunnis. Perhaps the cause of this was
the difficulty which occurred in practice: for if such a right were
to continue [for any great length of time], especially if ta`awwul
and the precedence of something over the texts were to be permitted,
and everyone were permitted to change or interpret according to his
own opinion, nothing would remain of the way of Islam (din al islam).
Perhaps it is for this reason that the right of independent ijtihad
was gradually withdrawn, and the view of the Sunni `ulama became that
they instructed people to practice taqlid of only the four mujtahids,
the four famous Imams - Abu Hanifa [d.150/767], al Shafi`i;
[d.204/820], Malik b. Anas [d.179/795] and Ahmad b. Hanbal
[d.241/855] - and forbade people to follow anyone apart from these
four persons. This measure was first taken in Egypt in the seventh
hijri century, and then taken up in the rest of the lands of Islam.
The Imam Hassan
Qazwini, director of the Islamic Center of America, considers this
closing off of new interpretations of Islamic law to be a serious
error. According to David Smock, director of the Religion and
Peacemaking Initiative of the United States Institute of Peace:
One of the gravest
mistakes Muslims have committed, according to Qazwini, is closing the
doors of ijtihad. They have limited legal interpretation to only four
prominent scholars: Malik Ibn Anas, Abu Hanifa al-No‘man, Muhammad
Ibn Idris al-Shafi‘i, and Ahmad Ibn Hambal—the heads of the
Maliki, Hanafi, Shafi‘i, and Hambali [sic] schools of thought. The
motivation for this was political. During the Abbasid Dynasty
(750–1258 CE), the Abbasids decided to outlaw all other sects in
order to strictly control religion and worship, as well as political
matters.
Closing the doors of
ijtihad has had extremely detrimental ramifications for the Muslim
world. According to Qazwini, this decision has resulted in chronic
intellectual stagnation, as thousands of potential mujtahids and
scholars have been prohibited from offering workable solutions to
newly emerging problems. Muslim thinkers have become captive to rules
that were made long ago, leaving little scope for liberal or
innovative thought.
Other Muslims,
however, disagree. Seyyed Hossein Nasr of George Washington
University, in his consideration of Islam and modernity, Ideals
and Realities of Islam, says: “Certain modernists over the past
century have tried to change the Shari‘ah, to reopen the gate of
ijtihad, with the aim of incorporating modern practices into the Law
and limiting the function of Shari‘ah to personal life. All of
these activities emanate from a particular attitude of spiritual
weakness vis-Ã -vis the world and surrender to the world. Those who
are conquered by such a mentality want to make the Shari‘ah
‘conform to the times,’ which means to the whims and fancies of
men and the ever changing human nature which has made ‘the times.’
They do not realize that it is the Shari‘ah according to which
society should be modeled not vice versa.”
In any case, whether
it is a manifestation of “chronic intellectual stagnation” or
fidelity to the Sharia, along with the stasis in other areas there
has been a lack of development in the doctrines of jihad. Even
Islamic apologist Karen Armstrong admits that “Muslim
jurists...taught that, because there was only one God, the whole
world should be united in one polity and it was the duty of all
Muslims to engage in a continued struggle to make the world accept
the divine principles and create a just society.” Non-Muslims
“should be made to surrender to God’s rule. Until this had been
achieved, Islam must engage in a perpetual warlike effort.” But,
she says, “this martial theology was laid aside in practice and
became a dead letter once it was clear that the Islamic empire had
reached the limits of its expansion about a hundred years after
Muhammad’s death.”
The problem is that
however much of a dead letter it became in practice during times of
weakness in the Islamic world, this doctrine of Islamic supremacism
was never reformed or rejected. No one seems to have told the
warriors of jihad who besieged Europe through the seventeenth century
that the Islamic empire had already reached the limits of its
expansion centuries before. No one seems to have told the modern-day
warriors of Islam from Bosnia to the Philippines that jihad is a dead
letter, and that Islam isn’t doing any more expanding. The Saudi
Sheikh Muhammad Saalih al-Munajid (1962-), whose lectures and Islamic
rulings (fatawa) circulate widely throughout the Islamic world,
demonstrates this in a discussion of whether Muslims should force
others to accept Islam. In considering Qur’an 2:256 (“There is no
compulsion in religion,”) the Sheikh quotes Qur’an 9:29, as well
as 8:39 (“And fight them until there is no more Fitnah (disbelief
and polytheism, i.e. worshipping others besides Allaah), and the
religion (worship) will all be for Allaah Alone [in the whole of the
world]”), and the Verse of the Sword. Of the latter, Sheikh
Muhammad says simply: “This verse is known as Ayat al-Sayf (the
verse of the sword). These and similar verses abrogate the verses
which say that there is no compulsion to become Muslim.”
Underscoring the
fact that none of this is merely of historical interest is another
Shafi’i manual of Islamic law that in 1991 was certified by the
highest authority in Sunni Islam, Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, as
conforming “to the practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni
community.” This manual, ‘Umdat al-Salik (available in
English as Reliance of the Traveller), spends a considerable
amount of time explaining jihad as “war against non-Muslims.” It
spells out the nature of this warfare in quite specific terms: “the
caliph makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians . . . until
they become Muslim or pay the non-Muslim poll tax.” It adds a
comment by a Jordanian jurist that corresponds to Muhammad’s
instructions to call the unbelievers to Islam before fighting them:
the caliph wages this war only “provided that he has first invited
[Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians] to enter Islam in faith and
practice, and if they will not, then invited them to enter the social
order of Islam by paying the non-Muslim poll tax (jizya) . . . while
remaining in their ancestral religions.”
Also, if there is no
caliph, Muslims must still wage jihad. And there is something else
also. In Islamic law, jihad warfare may be defensive or offensive.
Jihad is ordinarily fard kifaya – an obligation on the Muslim
community as a whole, from which some are freed if others take it up.
Jihad becomes fard ayn, or obligatory on every individual Muslim to
aid in any way he can, if a Muslim land is attacked. That is what
jihadists argue today – that the American presence in Iraq and
Afghanistan makes jihad fard ayn, or obligatory on every individual
Muslim. But this is just jihad for the defense of Muslim lands,
although the defensive aspect of jihad activity is often interpreted
quite elastically. It is the province of the caliph, who for Sunni
Muslims was the successor of Muhammad as the political, military, and
religious leader of the Muslim community, to authorize the waging of
offensive jihad to spread the rule of Islamic law into non-Muslim
lands – but the caliphate was abolished by the secular Turkish
government in 1924.
This is a primary
reason why jihadists want to restore the caliphate. In 1996 the
Taliban’s Mullah Omar went to the shrine of the Respectable Cloak
of Muhammad in Kandahar and stood on the roof of the shrine wrapped
in the cloak. His followers proclaimed him Emir al Momineen, or
leader of the believers – a title of the caliph. So far, however,
only a jihadist group in Algeria has joined the Taliban in accepting
Mullah Omar as caliph.
In any case, the
desire to restore the caliphate ultimately highlights the
expansionist, imperialist, totalitarian, globalist aims of the jihad
movement, even as today it presents itself as a defensive action
against Western evils. That expansionism is based on Qur’anic
passages such as 9:29 and the life and teachings of Muhammad. The
Pakistani Brigadier S. K. Malik’s 1979 book The Qur’anic
Concept of War (a book that made its way to the American
mujahedin Jeffrey Leon Battle and October Martinique Lewis, and which
carried a glowing endorsement from Pakistan’s then-future President
Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, who said that it explained “the ONLY pattern
of war” that a Muslim country could legitimately wage) delineates
the same stages in the Qur’anic teaching about jihad: “The Muslim
migration to Medina brought in its wake events and decisions of
far-reaching significance and consequence for them. While in Mecca,
they had neither been proclaimed an Ummah [community] nor were they
granted the permission to take up arms against their oppressors. In
Medina, a divine revelation proclaimed them an ‘Ummah’ and
granted them the permission to take up arms against their oppressors.
The permission was soon afterwards converted into a divine command
making war a religious obligation for the faithful.”
Muhammad Sa’id
Ramadan al-Buti, a theology professor at Damascus University, echoes
the classic Islamic legal tenet that Muslims can legitimately wage
war against those who resist the proclamation of Islam in his book
Jihad in Islam: How to Understand and Practice It. Al-Buti
considers at great length the question of whether this armed struggle
can be undertaken “to avert belligerency” or “to put an end to
infidelity.” In other words, is jihad purely defensive, or can it
be offensive? (Al-Buti, however, carefully defines “to avert
belligerency” to allow for a pre-emptive strike against a perceived
imminent attack.)
Al-Buti bases his
discussion of this question on the Qur’an and Islamic traditions.
After a thorough discussion of these hadiths and other elements of
Muslim tradition, al-Buti concludes that Muslim forces shouldn’t
attack unbelievers. They should fight when attacked, or when an
attack seems imminent, but that’s all. In this conclusion he notes
that he is siding with three of the four major Sunni schools of
Islamic jurisprudence, the Hanafi, Maliki, and Hanbali: all agree, by
his account, that military jihad should only be undertaken to ward
off an attack or potential attack. Of course, such restrictions can
be and have been interpreted with great elasticity, but the fourth
Sunni school school of jurisprudence (madhhab) goes even farther: the
Shafi’is, as well as the minor Zahiri school, favor offensive
jihad. The Shafi’is and Zahiris, according to al-Buti, “proclaimed
that the fundamental cause of Jihad is to terminate Paganism.”
Imran Ahsan Khan
Nyazee, Assistant Professor on the Faculty of Shari’ah and Law of
the International Islamic University in Islamabad, in a 1994 book on
Islamic law quotes the twelfth century Maliki jurist Abu al-Walid
Muhammad ibn Ahmad Ibn Rushd. Ibn Rushd reports on a consensus (ijma)
among Muslim scholars on jihad warfare – and in traditional Islamic
legal terms a consensus among scholars, once reached, cannot be
modified. “Why wage war?” asks Ibn Rushd, and then he answers his
own question: “Muslim jurists agreed that the purpose of fighting
with the People of the Book…is one of two things: it is either
their conversion to Islam or the payment of jizyah.” Nyazee
concludes: “This leaves no doubt that the primary goal of the
Muslim community, in the eyes of its jurists, is to spread the word
of Allah through jihad, and the option of poll-tax [jizya] is to be
exercised only after subjugation” of non-Muslims.
But if this is so,
why hasn’t the worldwide Islamic community been waging jihad on a
large scale up until relatively recently? Nyazee says it is only
because they have not been able to do so: “the Muslim community may
be considered to be passing through a period of truce. In its present
state of weakness, there is nothing much it can do about it.”
In this view, then,
the jihad must continue as long as there are unbelievers, and only
falls into abeyance when Muslims do not have the military strength to
press forward with it. Making war on unbelievers is one of the
responsibilities of the Muslim umma. That the three stages of jihad,
culminating in offensive warfare to establish the hegemony of Islamic
law – which stage is normative for all time -- can be found not
only in the writings of contemporary Islamic jihadists, but also in
ancient Muslim scholars, underscores the traditional character of
contemporary Islamic jihad activity. Modern mujahedin are, in their
own view, not “hijacking” Islam; they are restoring its proper
interpretation – and they are successfully convincing peaceful
Muslims around the world that they are correct in this.
For this to end,
peaceful Muslims around the world would have to confront the fact
that bin Laden and other jihad terrorists are regularly justifying
their violence by reference to passages of the Qur’an and the words
and deeds of Muhammad. If they don’t acknowledge this and formulate
new and non-literalist ways of understanding this material, it will
continue to be used to incite violence. In other words, the use that
jihadists make of elements of the Qur’an and Muhammad’s teaching
makes it incumbent upon peaceful Muslims to perform a searching
reevaluation of how they understand those elements, so as to
neutralize their capacity to set Muslims against non-Muslims.
People will do evil
in all kinds of circumstances, and use all manner of justification
for it; but the violent passages in the Bible are not equivalent to
those in the Qur’an in content, in mainstream interpretation, or in
the effect they have had on believers through the ages. The fact that
in Islam violence against unbelievers has divine sanction in a way
that it does not in Christianity makes religious violence more
prevalent and harder to eradicate in Islam than it has ever been in
Christianity. To equate it to a jumble of passages from the Bible to
which no one would otherwise be paying any attention at all, at least
as direct marching orders for twenty-first century warriors, is
specious and dangerously misleading.
Mercy vs.
judgment
In Bertrand
Russell’s Why I Am Not A Christian, Russell takes issue with
Jesus as a model of moral behavior on several grounds – notably
because he preaches about hell. Russell says, “I do not myself feel
that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in
everlasting punishment” – yet it is a simple matter of
observation that many people who are indeed profoundly humane, from
Francis of Assisi to Mother Teresa of Calcutta, have so believed. And
contrary to the claims of anti-“Christianist” writers concerned
about the apocalyptic violence of the Left Behind series -- their
belief doesn’t seem to have damaged their capacity for concern for
others.
Russell also feels
pangs of grief for the fig tree cursed by Jesus: “This is a very
curious story, because it was not the right time of year for figs,
and you really could not blame the tree.” Other critics of Jesus
have taken issue with Jesus’ apparent rudeness to the
Syrophoenician woman who asks him to heal her daughter (Matthew
15:21-28), and to his harsh words for the Pharisees, to whom he says,
“You are of your father the devil” (John 8:44). In light,
however, of the teachings of the Qur’an, Muhammad, and Islamic
theologians on jihad warfare and Islamic supremacism, such objections
seem almost quaint. For those who are neither Christians nor Muslims,
of course, neither Jesus nor Muhammad are moral paradigms; however,
to anyone who is aware of the Gospel texts and the traditions about
Muhammad that Muslims consider reliable, there can be no question as
to which one teaches peace and which one teaches war and conquest. Or
can one reasonably equate Jesus’ command to “love your enemies”
(Matthew 5:44) with the Qur’an’s directive to the followers of
Muhammad to be “ruthless to the unbelievers” (48:29)?
And not just war and
conquest. The mercy which is so much a part of Christianity has
virtually no home in Islam, contrary to its repeated invocations of
Allah as ar-Rahim, “the merciful.” An emblematic contrast is in
the treatment within each religion of the Mosaic law’s command to
stone adulterers. In a celebrated incident in the Gospels, Jesus
tells a group that has assembled to stone to death an adulterous
woman: “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to
throw a stone at her.” Then, after the crowd dispersed in shame, he
said to the woman, “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and from now on
do not sin any more” (John 7:53-8:11).
On the other hand,
an adulterous couple was once brought to Muhammad, who used the
occasion to challenge the Jewish leaders about their fidelity to the
letter of their own law. “What do you find in the Torah,” he
asked them, “about the legal punishment of Ar-Rajm (stoning)?”
They answered, “We announce their crime and lash them,” whereupon
a former rabbi and convert to Islam, cried: “You are telling a lie.
Torah contains the order of Rajm.” One of the Jews then began to
read from the Torah, but he skipped the verse mandating stoning for
adultery, covering it with his hand. The former rabbi commanded,
“Lift your hand!” The verse duly read, Muhammad exclaimed, “Woe
to you Jews! What has induced you to abandon the judgment of God
which you hold in your hands?” Muhammad ordered the couple to be
stoned to death; another Muslim remembered, “I saw the man leaning
over the woman to shelter her from the stones.”
Of course, rabbinic
Judaism ever since the destruction of the Temple had evolved
non-literal ways to understand such commands, while in Islam their
literal interpretation is still very much alive.
Hard to believe
Yet many people,
whether they give any credence to the claims that are being made
about Christian theocracy, have a hard time believing that the
teachings of jihad violence and Islamic supremacism could be widely
accepted among Muslims worldwide. One main reason why they have this
difficulty is because the Muslims they have met personally are gentle
souls who profess to abhor religious violence, and assure them that
their religion is peaceful – and surely you’re not saying they’re
lying, are you?
They may not be. In
Islam, as in all religious traditions, there is a spectrum of belief,
knowledge, and fervor. Many who call themselves Muslims know or care
little about what the mainstream authorities of the religion actually
teach. And because of certain elements of the nature of Islam, some
who are quite devout may have only a glancing familiarity, at best,
with the material outlined here about jihad warfare. One is that
although many continue to use the words “Muslim” and “Arab”
as if they were synonymous, most Muslims worldwide today are not
Arabs, and do not speak Arabic – especially the Qur’an’s
difficult, seventh-century Arabic. Yet all the sects and schools of
Islam mandate that prayers must be said and the Qur’an recited in
Arabic – making this for many merely an exercise in formalism,
involving the repetition of syllables they do not understand.
The Islamic ideology
of jihad warfare has been deemphasized in modern times for a complex
of historical reasons – notably in Central Asia, Eastern Europe,
and West Africa. That has created a situation in which many Muslims
have heard little or nothing about it, at least until jihadist
recruiters began appearing with texts entitled “Jihad: the
Forgotten Obligation” and the like. In his delightful memoir The
Caliph’s House: A Year In Casablanca, Tahir Shah recounts the
arrival of jihadist recruiters in a Casablanca slum. They parked a
“well-built trailer” across the street from the mosque, and set
about trying to win the local people to their virulent vision of
Islam.
Jihadists today view
the vast body of cultural Muslims as a huge recruiting field, and
have often recruited them by calling them back to the full practice
of their religion. Dinesh D’Souza illustrates the loyalty that
ordinary Muslims feel to Islamic authorities in an anecdote from his
boyhood in India. A Muslim family that rented property from D’Souza’s
grandfather decided to renege on their pledge to leave at the end of
their lease because property values had risen, and the property was
covered by rent control laws. But then a local imam confronted the
family: “You gave your word and you are still here? You call
yourself a Muslim? You are a disgrace to Islam! I advise you to start
packing.” The family obeyed.
However, if the
local Muslim leader is inclined toward jihad violence, such loyalty
can have chilling implications, as illustrated by an incident
(recounted by David Pryce-Jones in his book The Closed Circle)
from the Ottoman Empire of the late nineteenth century, as recounted
by the wife of a Muslim family that had lived peacefully next to a
Christian family for years:
Then one night, my
husband came home and told me that the padisha had sent word that we
were to kill all the Christians in our village, and that we would
have to kill our neighbours. I was very angry, and told him that I
did not care who gave such orders, they were wrong. These neighbours
had always been kind to us, and if he dared to kill them Allah would
pay us out. I tried all I could to stop him, but he killed them —
killed them with his own hand.
Unfortunately, all
too many in such situations do not believe that Allah will “pay
them out,” but rather that he will reward them for their fidelity
to the teachings of the Qur’an and Islamic tradition on jihad.
Philip Jenkins and
the Boston Globe should take note.
Posted by Robert on
March 14, 2009 7:40 AM
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