On Islam and Jehad
Spirit of Islam
Dr Farida Khanam
A perusal of the Holy Qur’an followed by a study of latter- day Muslim
history will reveal a blatant contradiction between the two—that of
principle and practice. Where recent developments in some Muslim
countries bespeak the culture of war, the Holy Qur’an, on the contrary,
is imbued with the spirit of tolerance. Its culture is not that of war,
but of mercy. At the very beginning of the Holy Qur’an, the first
invocation reads: “In the name of God, the most Merciful, the most
Beneficent”. Throughout the Holy Qur’an, God’s name is thus invoked no
less than 113 times. Moreover, Holy Qur’an states that the prophets were
sent to the world as a mercy to the people (21:107). The word ‘jihad’
has nowhere been used in the Holy Qur’an to mean war in the sense of
launching an offensive. It is used rather to mean ‘struggle’. The action
most consistently called for in the Holy Qur’an is the exercise of
patience. Yet today, the ‘Muslim Mujahideen’ under unfavorable
conditions have equated “God is Great” with “War is Great.” For them,
the greatest reward is to be able to wield a Kalashnikov rifle. In the
light of on-going conflict, we must ask why so great a contradiction has
arisen between the principles of Islam and the practices of Muslims. At
least one root cause may be traced to historical exigency.
Since time immemorial, military commanders have been accorded positions
of great eminence in the annals of history. It is a universal phenomenon
that the hero is idolized even in peace time and becomes a model for the
people. It is this placing of heroism in the militaristic context which
has been the greatest underlying factor in the undue stress laid on war
in the latter phase of Islam’s history. With the automatic accord in
Muslim society of a place of honor and importance to the heroes of the
battlefield, annalists’ subsequent compilations of Islamic history have
tended to read like an uninterrupted series of wars and conquests. These
early chronicles having set the example, subsequent writings on Islamic
history followed the same pattern of emphasis on militarism. The Holy
Prophet’s [PBUH] biographies were called ‘maghazi’, that is ‘The Battles
Fought by the Prophet,’ yet the Prophet of Islam in fact did battle only
three times in his entire life, and the period of his involvement in
these battles did not total more than one and half days. He fought, let
it be said, in self-defense, when hemmed in by aggressors, and he simply
had no option. But historians—flying in the face of fact—have converted
his whole life into one of confrontation and war. We must keep it in
mind that the Prophet Muhammad [PBUH] was born at a time when an
atmosphere for militancy prevailed in the Arab Society.
There being, in their view, no other path to justice. But the Prophet
[PBUH] always opted for avoidance of conflict. For instance, in the
campaign of Ahzab, the Prophet [PBUH] advised his Companions to dig a
trench between them and the enemies, thus preventing a head-on clash.
Another well-known instance of the Prophet’s [PBUH] dislike for
hostilities is his cessation of the campaign of Hudaibiya with a treaty
which made more concessions to the enemies than to his own people. In
the case of the conquest of Mecca, he avoided a battle altogether by
making a rapid entry into the city with ten thousand Muslims—a number
large enough to awe his enemies into submission. In this way, on all
occasions, the Prophet endeavored to achieve his objectives by peaceful
rather than by war-like means. It is, therefore, unconscionable that in
later biographical writing, all the events of his life have been
arranged under the heading of ‘battles’ (ghazawat). How he [PBUH]
managed to avert the cataclysms of war has not been dealt with in any of
the works which purportedly depict his life. Ibn Khaldun, the celebrated
14th century historian, was the first to lay down definite rules for the
study and writing of history and sociology. He followed the
revolutionary course of attempting to present history as a chronicle of
events centering on the common man rather than on kings, their generals
and the battles they fought. But since war heroes were already
entrenched as the idols of society, the caravan of writers and
historians continued to follow the same well-worn path as had been
trodden prior to Ibn Khaldun. When people have come to regard war heroes
as the greatest of men, it is but natural that it is the events of the
battlefield which will be given the greatest prominence in works of
history. All other events will either be relegated to the background or
omitted altogether.
In the later phase of Islam, there came into existence a powerful group
of Sufis—many of them great men, who exerted their influence on a
multitude of people, their goal being to put an end to this
contradiction between the tenets of Islam and Muslim conduct: they at
least wanted to strike a balance between the two. But the Sufis failed
in this, the principal reason being that they expressed themselves in
terms of dreams and the realization of inspiration. The militant
interpretation of Islam, on the contrary, was ostensibly based on
history and knowledge. Dreams and personal realizations could,
therefore, never adequately counter what had come to be regarded as hard
facts. Objective reasoning cannot be bested by subjective postulations,
and so the Sufis failed to establish the equilibrium between precept and
practice which they so ardently desired. In the past when the sword was
the only weapon of war, militancy did not lead to the mass-scale loss of
life and property as modern warfare brings in its wake. In former times,
fighting was confined to the battlefield; the only sufferers were those
engaged in the battle. But today, the spear and sword have been replaced
by megabombs and devastating long-range missiles, so that killing and
destruction take place on a horrendous scale. It is the entire human
settlement which has now become the global arena of war. Even the air we
breathe and the water we drink are left polluted in war’s aftermath.
Hence people in the West find Islam outdated and irrelevant precisely
because of its militant interpretation. Demands for a reform in Islam
are on the increase, as the ‘old’ version of Islam cannot apparently
keep pace with the modern world.But, in reality, it is not reformation
which is urgent, but revival.
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