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Feb. 19th, 2003 05:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldAn interesting article, surprisingly enough from the New York Post:
ISLAM & WAR
By AMIR TAHERI
February 16, 2003 -- ALMOST all religions regard war as, at best, a failure of men's will, or, at worst a punishment for their sins. Nevertheless, all religions accept war as a fact of existence.
In Christianity, war was initially regarded as part of the Caesar's realm, and thus as indefensible on religious grounds. But that was before Christianity had become the official religion of the Roman Empire under Constantine the Great.
To get out of a theological tight corner, Christians developed the concept of "the just war" which, in practice, meant any war that they supported. An entire edifice was built on a slender conceptual structure left by Saint Augustine: A just war is one that is willed by God.
The thorny question of how that will is assessed, and by whom, was left to Saint Thomas Aquinas who, always keen to baptize Aristotle, dug into the old Greek master for philosophical succor.
The conditions that Aquinas developed for his "just war," however, are so multifarious and complex as to render it virtually impossible. It was, perhaps, to escape those conditions that Aquinas' less talented successors developed a new concept, that of holy war, which was used as the ideological backbone of the Crusades.
What about Islam? Unfortunately, the current media debate is based on what one could describe as a "Christian reading" of Islam.
MOST of the articles published on the subject in the Western press these days draw on three recent "Islamic" sources: The Pakistani journalist Abul Ala Maudoodi, the Egyptian militant Sayyed Qutb and the Iranian sociologist Ali Shariati - who are supposed to have redefined the concept of "jihad" as the Islamic version of "holy war."
The three individuals mentioned, of course, had a strictly "Christian" reading of Islam. This does not mean that they sympathized with Christianity as a faith or even as a culture. What it means is that they tried to understand Islam through the prism of Christian terminology. Maudoodi was deeply influenced by Locke and Hume. Qutb was overwhelmed by his sporadic reading of Rebatet and Bernanos. Shariati was a pupil of Gurvoitch and a critical-admirer of Fanon. All three regarded Islam primarily as a political ideology rather than a belief system. They would, thus, not hesitate to refashion that ideology to suit their political agenda.
Maudoodi made this clear when he stated that one of his principal tasks was to "discover" the Muslim equivalents of Christian concepts. "We have the concepts but not the etymology," he wrote. "It is our task to find the words needed to describe what exists in our own faith." Thus he took such Western Christian words as "ideology," "party," "imperialism," and even "political" and "universal," to come up with a new reinterpretation of Islam.
What he did not realize was that if Islam did not have the etymology, it was because it did not need it.
Maudoodi, Qutb, Shariati and countless lesser imitators of their method tried to redefine Islam with a vocabulary that they had borrowed from the Christian West. Their method was identical to that of Muslim-born Communists who used a Marxian vocabulary to reinterpret Islamic history.
MANY Western commentators have welcomed the "Christianized" reinterpretation of Islam because they find it more accessible to their own understanding. In Christianity, holiness is widely shared. Matrimony, which is a form of contract in Islam, is "holy" in Christianity. There are thousands of "holy saints" in Christianity, and many more "holy places," but none of those in Islam.
Thus it is now virtually impossible to persuade the Western "Islamologists" that Maudoodi, Qutb and Shariati are wrong and that jihad is not the Islamic form of "holy war."
It is even more difficult to make them understand that in Islam only God is holy (one of His appellations is al-Quddus), and that using the adjective to describe anyone or anything else is a form of association (sherk) and thus a grave sin.
Such terms as "holy shrines," "holy cities," and "holy land" are oxymoronic in Islam. Mecca is only described as "al-Mukarramah" ("the generous"), while Medina's adjective is "al-Munawaarah" ("the luminous"). And Jerusalem is the location of al-Haram al-Sharif ("the noble precinct"). Thus, "holy war" is an oxymoron par excellence.
IT is interesting that Maudoodi, Qutb and Shariati, who borrow heavily from Western philosophers, never mention any of the classical Muslim sources on the subject of jihad in general and war in particular.
Islam does not treat war as an abstract philosophical category. Regarded as one of the forms of human activity, it is subjected to the same basic rules that apply to man's behavior in general. It is assessed by taking into account the intention, the method of application and the results.
Abdallah Ibn Mubarak Khorassani, who wrote the first Muslim treatise on war in the 8th century, makes that point abundantly clear. It was not enough to declare jihad, and pretend that a war is just, for it to become so.
Malik Ibn Anas, also writing in the 8th century, admitted that war might become a necessity, but insisted on subjecting to stringent rules at all its stages. One point he made clear was that Islam does not consider any war as "holy."
Another classical Muslim writer, Muhammad Ibn Idris al Isfahani, writing in the 9th century, rejected the idea of war as a generic category. Each individual battle that had to be judged separately to determine its justness or otherwise. Thus there is no single overarching rule that applies to all battles in Islam's history, from Uhud to the battle of Varna in 1444 and passing by the sack of Rome in 846.
The wars in which the Prophet himself was present are regarded as a separate category, known as al-maghazi al-nabi. But even then there is no attempt at a narrow categorization. Each battle had its own specific rules, and is ultimately judged on its own merits.
MORE importantly, al-Isfahani showed that war was a minor activity that a believer would undertake when and if necessary and then only for the period needed. This is why there were no standing armies in Islam until it was Byzantanized by the Umayyads and Persianized by the Abbasids. Most of the great Muslim warriors of the classical era were ordinary citizens, businessmen, farmers, artisans and physicians. Nor does Islam glorify war.
Almost all major streets at the center of Paris, and many other great Western cities, are named after war leaders. This was never the case in the great Islamic cities of the classical times. (With the coming of Western ideologies, some Muslim regimes imitated that nasty habit.)
Elevating war into a cult is strictly un-Islamic. Ibn Athir was the first Muslim to notice how religion was exploited as an ideology by the Christian Crusaders, and warned Muslims against "becoming like them."
Imad al-Din Isfahani, who served as Saladin's secretary, was scandalized by what he saw as the Crusaders' "cult of war."
He wrote: "Wanting their fame to be on every lip, these men deemed every means of war to be permissible, indeed sacred. They took liberties with human souls and claimed license for their deeds, as Satan blurred their vision."
Isfahani found it "strange" that a pope or a bishop could issue an edict bestowing "sanctity" on a war. No one in Islam had the authority to break all rules and transgress all limits in such a fashion.
UNTIL the 19th century when the world of Islam began to be influenced by Western modes of thought, the typical Muslim folk hero was a scholar, a philosopher or a poet - not a warrior.
When Muslim warriors tried to achieve recognition, they camouflaged their military aspect behind a spiritual identity. The ghazi would be presented also as a Sufi. And a rabat, which was a logistical point for war, would be transformed into a center for religious meditation.
Contrary to Western images of Islam, the conquest of territory or the imposition of political rule have never been the primary goals of Muslim wars. The principal goal has been the spread of the True Faith.
But even then, history shows that Islam's victories through proselytizing far exceed its territorial conquests. Today, Islam has no chance of winning any territory by force. (In fact, it has difficulty holding its own territory). But it is still winning more adherents each year than any other religion.
When Muslims won territory, they did not force anyone to submit to Islam by force. Assad Ibn Furat, the Khorasani general who conquered Sicily in the 9th century, put it this way: The sword can win the land, but the heart can be won only by faith, iman."
TO sum up: No war is either holy or just in Islam. War is allowed if it is waged in defense of the faith, against a tyrant (taghut) or to rescue a Muslim people from repression by infidels.
But even then the rules, and the limits (hoddod), that apply to all actions, apply to war: The intention must be pure, the method must not be excessive, the change must not be worse than the status quo.
On that basis, the wars against Milosevic in Kosovo and the Taliban in Afghanistan could be regarded as permissible, though neither holy nor just.
What about the looming war in Iraq?
The rules are clear. Each must make his judgment.
Amir Taheri is author of "The Cauldron: The Middle East Behind the Headlines."
ISLAM & WAR
By AMIR TAHERI
February 16, 2003 -- ALMOST all religions regard war as, at best, a failure of men's will, or, at worst a punishment for their sins. Nevertheless, all religions accept war as a fact of existence.
In Christianity, war was initially regarded as part of the Caesar's realm, and thus as indefensible on religious grounds. But that was before Christianity had become the official religion of the Roman Empire under Constantine the Great.
To get out of a theological tight corner, Christians developed the concept of "the just war" which, in practice, meant any war that they supported. An entire edifice was built on a slender conceptual structure left by Saint Augustine: A just war is one that is willed by God.
The thorny question of how that will is assessed, and by whom, was left to Saint Thomas Aquinas who, always keen to baptize Aristotle, dug into the old Greek master for philosophical succor.
The conditions that Aquinas developed for his "just war," however, are so multifarious and complex as to render it virtually impossible. It was, perhaps, to escape those conditions that Aquinas' less talented successors developed a new concept, that of holy war, which was used as the ideological backbone of the Crusades.
What about Islam? Unfortunately, the current media debate is based on what one could describe as a "Christian reading" of Islam.
MOST of the articles published on the subject in the Western press these days draw on three recent "Islamic" sources: The Pakistani journalist Abul Ala Maudoodi, the Egyptian militant Sayyed Qutb and the Iranian sociologist Ali Shariati - who are supposed to have redefined the concept of "jihad" as the Islamic version of "holy war."
The three individuals mentioned, of course, had a strictly "Christian" reading of Islam. This does not mean that they sympathized with Christianity as a faith or even as a culture. What it means is that they tried to understand Islam through the prism of Christian terminology. Maudoodi was deeply influenced by Locke and Hume. Qutb was overwhelmed by his sporadic reading of Rebatet and Bernanos. Shariati was a pupil of Gurvoitch and a critical-admirer of Fanon. All three regarded Islam primarily as a political ideology rather than a belief system. They would, thus, not hesitate to refashion that ideology to suit their political agenda.
Maudoodi made this clear when he stated that one of his principal tasks was to "discover" the Muslim equivalents of Christian concepts. "We have the concepts but not the etymology," he wrote. "It is our task to find the words needed to describe what exists in our own faith." Thus he took such Western Christian words as "ideology," "party," "imperialism," and even "political" and "universal," to come up with a new reinterpretation of Islam.
What he did not realize was that if Islam did not have the etymology, it was because it did not need it.
Maudoodi, Qutb, Shariati and countless lesser imitators of their method tried to redefine Islam with a vocabulary that they had borrowed from the Christian West. Their method was identical to that of Muslim-born Communists who used a Marxian vocabulary to reinterpret Islamic history.
MANY Western commentators have welcomed the "Christianized" reinterpretation of Islam because they find it more accessible to their own understanding. In Christianity, holiness is widely shared. Matrimony, which is a form of contract in Islam, is "holy" in Christianity. There are thousands of "holy saints" in Christianity, and many more "holy places," but none of those in Islam.
Thus it is now virtually impossible to persuade the Western "Islamologists" that Maudoodi, Qutb and Shariati are wrong and that jihad is not the Islamic form of "holy war."
It is even more difficult to make them understand that in Islam only God is holy (one of His appellations is al-Quddus), and that using the adjective to describe anyone or anything else is a form of association (sherk) and thus a grave sin.
Such terms as "holy shrines," "holy cities," and "holy land" are oxymoronic in Islam. Mecca is only described as "al-Mukarramah" ("the generous"), while Medina's adjective is "al-Munawaarah" ("the luminous"). And Jerusalem is the location of al-Haram al-Sharif ("the noble precinct"). Thus, "holy war" is an oxymoron par excellence.
IT is interesting that Maudoodi, Qutb and Shariati, who borrow heavily from Western philosophers, never mention any of the classical Muslim sources on the subject of jihad in general and war in particular.
Islam does not treat war as an abstract philosophical category. Regarded as one of the forms of human activity, it is subjected to the same basic rules that apply to man's behavior in general. It is assessed by taking into account the intention, the method of application and the results.
Abdallah Ibn Mubarak Khorassani, who wrote the first Muslim treatise on war in the 8th century, makes that point abundantly clear. It was not enough to declare jihad, and pretend that a war is just, for it to become so.
Malik Ibn Anas, also writing in the 8th century, admitted that war might become a necessity, but insisted on subjecting to stringent rules at all its stages. One point he made clear was that Islam does not consider any war as "holy."
Another classical Muslim writer, Muhammad Ibn Idris al Isfahani, writing in the 9th century, rejected the idea of war as a generic category. Each individual battle that had to be judged separately to determine its justness or otherwise. Thus there is no single overarching rule that applies to all battles in Islam's history, from Uhud to the battle of Varna in 1444 and passing by the sack of Rome in 846.
The wars in which the Prophet himself was present are regarded as a separate category, known as al-maghazi al-nabi. But even then there is no attempt at a narrow categorization. Each battle had its own specific rules, and is ultimately judged on its own merits.
MORE importantly, al-Isfahani showed that war was a minor activity that a believer would undertake when and if necessary and then only for the period needed. This is why there were no standing armies in Islam until it was Byzantanized by the Umayyads and Persianized by the Abbasids. Most of the great Muslim warriors of the classical era were ordinary citizens, businessmen, farmers, artisans and physicians. Nor does Islam glorify war.
Almost all major streets at the center of Paris, and many other great Western cities, are named after war leaders. This was never the case in the great Islamic cities of the classical times. (With the coming of Western ideologies, some Muslim regimes imitated that nasty habit.)
Elevating war into a cult is strictly un-Islamic. Ibn Athir was the first Muslim to notice how religion was exploited as an ideology by the Christian Crusaders, and warned Muslims against "becoming like them."
Imad al-Din Isfahani, who served as Saladin's secretary, was scandalized by what he saw as the Crusaders' "cult of war."
He wrote: "Wanting their fame to be on every lip, these men deemed every means of war to be permissible, indeed sacred. They took liberties with human souls and claimed license for their deeds, as Satan blurred their vision."
Isfahani found it "strange" that a pope or a bishop could issue an edict bestowing "sanctity" on a war. No one in Islam had the authority to break all rules and transgress all limits in such a fashion.
UNTIL the 19th century when the world of Islam began to be influenced by Western modes of thought, the typical Muslim folk hero was a scholar, a philosopher or a poet - not a warrior.
When Muslim warriors tried to achieve recognition, they camouflaged their military aspect behind a spiritual identity. The ghazi would be presented also as a Sufi. And a rabat, which was a logistical point for war, would be transformed into a center for religious meditation.
Contrary to Western images of Islam, the conquest of territory or the imposition of political rule have never been the primary goals of Muslim wars. The principal goal has been the spread of the True Faith.
But even then, history shows that Islam's victories through proselytizing far exceed its territorial conquests. Today, Islam has no chance of winning any territory by force. (In fact, it has difficulty holding its own territory). But it is still winning more adherents each year than any other religion.
When Muslims won territory, they did not force anyone to submit to Islam by force. Assad Ibn Furat, the Khorasani general who conquered Sicily in the 9th century, put it this way: The sword can win the land, but the heart can be won only by faith, iman."
TO sum up: No war is either holy or just in Islam. War is allowed if it is waged in defense of the faith, against a tyrant (taghut) or to rescue a Muslim people from repression by infidels.
But even then the rules, and the limits (hoddod), that apply to all actions, apply to war: The intention must be pure, the method must not be excessive, the change must not be worse than the status quo.
On that basis, the wars against Milosevic in Kosovo and the Taliban in Afghanistan could be regarded as permissible, though neither holy nor just.
What about the looming war in Iraq?
The rules are clear. Each must make his judgment.
Amir Taheri is author of "The Cauldron: The Middle East Behind the Headlines."
