The contradictions of Jihad

THE WAR ON TERROR — which some readers might prefer to call the so-called war on terror — – has evoked a wide spectrum of opinions which range from what come across as bombastic jingoism to seeming craven appeasement: from “My civilisation right or wrong” to “It’s all our own fault for being such Christian/secular/Western/Anglospheric/atheistic infidels”.

And, as usual, there’s the almost inevitable polarisation: few commentators seem to be able to acknowledge any weaknesses in their own positions or any merit in their opponents’.

But it is possible to hold simultaneously that the justification for war in Iraq was based on erroneous intelligence but that it was the timing, rather than the war itself, that was wrong; it is possible to deplore it as a foolish military adventure and utterly condemn murderous atrocities in Madrid, Bali, London and elsewhere as beyond moral justification; it is possible to admire the military efficiency of the defeat of Saddam’s armed forces and ridicule the ineptitude of the management of the post-war situation.

Whether you are Citizen Leslie or a commander-in-chief, part of the difficulty in getting a grip on the situation is the nature and language, and therefore, the thinking, of the opposition.

In the Cold War [1949-89], the USSR and its Warsaw Pact clients were fundamentally European, and their ideology came in a more-or-less direct line from 1789 via the economic and philosophic musings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in mid-19th century Europe. Russian was a relatively easily learnable language, its Cyrillic script notwithstanding and despite out-Latining Latin in stuff like declensions and conjugations. The communist ideal was a workers’ paradise — prima facie, a worthy ideal, one which most people of good will could relate to — on this earth, the only one recognised officially, and the Soviets were highly unlikely to want it destroyed. In the four decades of this conflict, the only thermo-nuclear explosions were test ones.

Not so now.

Despite the long contact between the West and Islam, there is little knowledge in our world of what the Koran teaches, or even of what it is. Arabic is another stage removed from our languages: unlike Russian, it is not one of the Indo-Aryan/European family; its script, although descended from the same Phoenician source as our own, is a barrier more in kind than in degree, even in so basic a matter as running right-to-left; and in Anglophone countries studying foreign languages is widely reckoned a waste of time and effort anyway. Far better to do an MBA [skipping the “culture” bits] or ponce around with stuff like The tangentially fractured paradigm of post-coital grid-group analysis.

Almost-closed book

So the Koran is an almost-closed book to many Westerners. Unlike the Judeo-Christian scriptures, it has almost no residual echo in the secular West; bits of the Iliad and the Odyssey are likely more prevalent, even though traditional classical learning is almost extinct and is now mediated per Hollywood pretty boys like Mr B Pitt.

What about the Crusader period in West-East relations — can anything, in the spirit of Santayana’s admonition, be learned from that historical epoch ?

Probably little.

Crusader Europe had more in common with Islam than with today’s West: each followed a monotheistic universalist religion intolerant of the claims of any other creed, each saw war as a legitimate tool of religious practice, and neither entertained our secular, Jeffersonian, notion of church-state separation. However, even then the struggles for political supremacy between Pope and Emperor had begun, and our civilisation had begun to develop that vital distinction between “render[ing] therefore unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” [Matthew XXII, 21, King James version, 1611]. At the core of Islam, there seems to be no possibility of any such distinction, whereas for us, freedom from religion is just as important as freedom of religion.

Nor can jihad be seen simply as latter-day Crusades coming from the opposite direction, and serves us right too, even if nine centuries after the capture of Jerusalem in 1099 CE. The concept of jihad is not so simple and straight-forward. Nor are we helped by some commentators in the West bending themselves into unbelievable contortions to deny the obvious, exemplified by London Lord Mayor Ken Livingston’s declaration that “this [the London bus and train bombings] has nothing to do with Islam”.

An article in The Australian of Wed 13 July 05, in its Higher Education section (but, unfortunately, not in the on-line edition) looks to be able to throw some light on this: The devout caught in a clash of calls — Modern Islamic thinkers struggle still with the contradictions of Jihad, by Maher Charif, professor at the Institut Francais du Proche Orient based in Damascus, Beirut and Amman [website: http://www.ifporient.org/ ].

“Jihad derives from the word juhd, which means striving. In present usage, it means combat.

“I will analyse the meaning given to this concept by two significant streams of modern Islamic thought: Islamic reformism and … Islamism, … which appeared with the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928 [and] represents a break with Islamic reformism.

“Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905), grand mufti of Egypt, . . . considers that jihad in the sense of combat has been required of Muslims by God only ‘to defend the truth and its adherents and to keep intact the message of Islam’. Acts of aggression are declared illicit and described as ‘bad actions detested by God’.

“He rejects the notion … that Islam … is a religion of combat and that in the nature of Islam there is a spirit of violence against its opponents.

“In his book The Liberating Spirit of the Koran [Abd al-Aziz] al-Thalabi (1874-1944) says that the concept of jihad is closely linked with the concept of tolerance in Islam. He thinks that Islam came for all humanity to bring about unity between peoples. Because Islam recognises the Jewish and Christian religions*, al-Thalabi calls on Muslims to respect the beliefs of the followers of these two religions.

“Citing calls for tolerance in 125 Koranic verses spread over 36 suras [chapters or sections], al-Thalabi rejects the idea of turning the Koran into a tool of intolerance or duress leading to narrow-mindedness.

“Let us now consider the position of spokesmen for political Islam [or Islamism].

“Considered one of the most important spiritual guides of today’s radical jihadism, [Sayyid Abul A’la] Mawdudi (1903-79) asserts in his book The Jihad on the Way to God that Islam is ‘a revolutionary idea’ and ‘revolutionary program’ whose goal is to destroy entirely the social structure of the world and build it anew’.

Echoes of the Khmer Rouge’s Year Zero ?

“Mawdudi says that the need arises from the fact that Islam is not only a set of theological beliefs, rites and rules but ‘a total and complete system’ that must overcome ‘other futile and tyrannical systems present in the world’.

“Mawdudi rejects the classic division between offensive and defensive jihad. … Islamic jihad, in his view, is simultaneously offensive and defensive: offensive because the Islamic party ‘opposes kingdoms founded on principles contrary to Islam and wishes to eradicate them’; defensive because the party is ‘obliged to build its kingdom and to consolidate its bases until it becomes easy to put its program in place’.

“In this Islamic kingdom, the followers of other divine religions* enjoy freedom of belief but ‘do not enjoy the liberty to take the reins of power’. They are no longer allowed to manage their affairs or behave ‘in a debauched fashion that constitutes evil against society’.”

Wowsers deploring Big Brother Uncut, many of whom seem to be fundamentalist Christians, would relate to that.

“The reformists have not specialised in jihad as a discipline. This has engendered problems in terms of the position to adopt vis-a-vis the West and followers of other divine religions. They see a close link between the notion of jihad and tolerance, which they see as a fundamental characteristic of Islam.

“In contrast, jihad occupies a principal place in the writings of Islamists. Their starting point is the idea that Islam is a complete and coherent system whose aim is to spread the message of Islam, to destroy systems of government that are not based on the rules of Islam and to rebuild the world as an Islamic entity governed by the Koran and the teachings and practices of the prophet Mohammed.”

[Extracted from an edited version of a paper given at the 20th International Congress of Historical Sciences in Sydney last week (4-8 July 05); the text was translated from the French by Patricia McElhone.]

Super-sized Jihad and Jihad-lite

From the above, it looks like a choice between supersized jihad and jihad-lite. Perhaps this may explain some of the Muslim reluctance to condemn jihadism in terms we can identify and in ways we can appreciate: just as few Christians are au fait with all the doctrinal niceties that occupy the minds of theologians, so it’s likely that hardly any Muslims going about their daily lives are up-to-date with the distinctions outlined above. And from the standpoint of serious jihadists, the less known the better.

To return to the Cold War: both Soviet and Chinese communists became very adept at gulling Western intellectuals with the line that a revolution isn’t a tea-party, and that omelettes need cracked-open eggs, so a few bad ones in the gulags or the laogai were a small price to pay for the post-dictatorship workers’ paradise. If we in the West can be so confused so as not to recognise a jihad when it bites us on the collective bum, so much the better for jihadists who follow Sayyid Abdul A’la Mawdudi’s version of jihad.

Atrocities in Bali, Madrid and London, it can be argued very persuasively, have little to do with the war in Iraq and everything to do with it. The US is the “Great Satan” because it supports Zionist oppression of Palestinians and because of its own very nature, depending on what jihad means. Australia, even as a Western secular liberal parliamentary democracy and market economy, could save itself from future jihadist attacks by withdrawing from those parts of the Dar al-Islam, the House of Islam, it has invaded – or, because it is still in the Dar al-Harb**, the House of War, i.e., the non-Islamic world, it is a legitimate target until the Koran and the sharia are fully implemented.

For Japanese, Chinese and Hindus, for example, under the extreme interpretation of jihad, there can be little joy, because they are not ahl al-dhimma or People of the Book, as it is often termed in relation to Jews and Christians. “For atheists or polytheists, the choice was clear — Islam or death. For Jews and Christians, possessors of what were regarded as revealed religions based on authentic though superseded revelations, the choice included a third term — Islam, death or submission.” *** Which gives a different perspective to crackdowns on Islam in the western provinces of the Chinese People’s Republic, and should give the Hindu Balinese furiously to think if Indonesia falls under the control of Jemaah Islamiya. Kemal Ataturk’s secular Turkish Republic would be an obvious target.

Is the whole world in the sights of extreme jihadists, just for being what it is ? Or will the good sense and common humanity of most of the Muslim world keep the extremists at bay ?

* Christians and Jews have always occupied a distinct place in the Islamic world-view, in a kind of half-way house between the faithful and the infidel.

** from Bernard Lewis’s The Muslim Discovery of Europe, ch ii, The Muslim View of the World, pp 60-61 [Phoenix, 1982, ISBN 1 85799 116 8]

*** B Lewis, p 63.

Leonard Colquhoun 7248