An Exegesis on ‘Jihad in Islam’
D. Jihad as per Islamic-historians/Scholars/Philosophers:
We can find hundreds of books written by well-known Islamic authorities (Islamic Chintabid or thinker) on Jihad. A few examples of historical events and comments should be enough to lay the foundation that Jihad in Islamic history was primarily a Holy War against the infidels. Here are some examples:
In his book, “ Jurisprudence in Muhammad’s Biography” the Azhar scholar, Dr. Muhammad Sa’id Ramadan al-Buti wrote the following: “The Holy War (Islamic Jihad), as it is known in Islamic Jurisprudence, is basically an offensive war. This is the duty of Muslims in every age when the needed military power becomes available to them. This is the phase in which the meaning of Holy war has taken its final form. Thus the apostle of God said: ‘ I was commanded to fight the people until they believe in Allah and his messages…..(page 134, 7th edition) ”.
Azhar scholar Dr. Buti adds in the same book (page-263): The apostle of Allah started to send military detachments from among his followers to the various Arab tribes which were scattered in the Arab Peninsula to carry out the task of calling (these tribes) to accept Islam. If they did not respond, they (Muslims) would kill them. That was during the 7th Hgira year. The number of the detachments amounted to ten.”
The Baydawi quoted in his book (The lights of Revelation, page-252): “Fight Jews and Christians because they violated the origin of their faith and they do not believe in the religion of the truth (Islam), which abrogated all other religions. Fight them until they pay the poll-tax (Ziziya tax) with submission and humiliation.”
In another place of his book (The Jurisprudence in Muhammad’s Biography) Al-Buti (published in Egypt) quoted: “The concept of Holy War (Jihad) in Islam does not take into consideration whether defensive or an offensive war. Its goal is the exaltation of the Word of Allah and the construction of Islamic society and the establishment of Allah’s Kingdom on Earth regardless of the means. The means would be offensive warfare. In this case, it is the apex, the noblest Holy War. It is legal to carry on a Holy War.”
Ibn Hisham-Al Sohaily quoted in his famous book (Al- Rawd al- Anaf, page-50,51 ): ” No two religions are to exist in the Arab Peninsula .” Therefore, Saudi Government does not allow any other religion to manifest their religious task. What a tolerant and peaceful religion Islam is!
The well-known Egyptian scholar, Sayyid Qutb, (Sayyid Qutb, Milestones, Revised Edition, chapter. 4, “Jihaad in the Cause of God”) notes four stages in the development of jihad:
- While the earliest Muslims remained in Mecca before fleeing to Medina, God did not allow them to fight;
2. Permission is given to Muslims to fight against their oppressors;
- God commands Muslims to fight those fighting them;
- God commands the Muslims to fight against all polytheists.
Sayyid Qutb views each stage to be replaced by the next stage in this order, the fourth stage to remain permanent). To justify the universal and permanent dimensions of jihad he cites the following Qur’anic passages:
Quran: 4:74-32: They ought to fight in the way of God who have sold the life of this world for the life of the Hereafter; and whoever fights in the way of God and is killed or becomes victorious, to him shall We (God) give a great reward…
Quran: 8:38-40: and fight them until there is no oppression and the religion is wholly for God….
Quran: 9:29-32: Fight against those among the People of the Book (Jews and Christians) who do not believe in God and the Last Day, who do not forbid what God and His messenger have forbidden, until they are subdued and pay jizyah (tax on non-Muslims) …
Sayyid Qutb, however, pours scorn upon those who view jihad as solely defensive:
… They are ignorant of the nature of Islam and of its function, and that it has a right to take the initiative for human freedom. Thus wherever an Islamic community exists which is a concrete example of the Divinely-ordained system of life, it has a God-given right to step forward and take control of the political authority so that it may establish the Divine system on earth, while it leaves the matter of belief to individual conscience.
Maulana Mawdudi’s Fatwa:
Likewise, the popular Pakistani Muslim revivalist Abu’l Ala Mawdudi rejects any distinction between offensive and defensive jihad. So also, the distinguished contemporary Pakistani scholar, Fazlur Rahman, while recognizing the extensive presence of jihad in the Qur’an, rejects the stand of those modern Muslim apologists who have tried to explain the jihad of the early (Muslim) Community in purely defensive terms (Fazlur Rahman, Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979) 37).
According to the Encyclopaedia of Islam, “the fight is obligatory even when the unbelievers have not started it (E. Tyan, “Djihad”, Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1965). In the words of Rudolph Peters the “ultimate aim of jihad is ‘the subjection of the unbelievers’ and ‘the extirpation of unbelief’” (Rudolph Peters, “Jihad”, The Encyclopedia of Religion (NewYork: Macmillan, 1987) Vol. 8:88-91).
All of these authorities simply echo Islam’s fundamental assumption that world sovereignty must be in the hands of Muslims.
Quran: 16:101: And when We put a revelation in place of (another) revelation, – and Allah knoweth best what He revealeth – they say: Lo! thou art but inventing. Most of them know not.
On the basis of these verses there arose within the Muslim community the principle of Qur’anic interpretation, called naskh (“abrogation”) which stipulated that earlier peaceful verses could be abrogated by later militant verses, i.e., in the case of jihad the Meccan verses were abrogated by the Medinan verses. It is well known that many Muslim scholars in the early history of Islam contended that Qur’an 9:5, sometimes called “the verse of the sword”, abrogated a host of peaceful passages in earlier portions of the Qur’an.
What it has signified in the past and signifies at present for masses of Muslims is well summarized in a statement by the world renowned Ibn Khaldun (A.D. 1332-1406), Islam’s great historian, sociologist and philosopher:
In the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the (Muslim) mission and (the obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force. Therefore, caliphate and royal authority are united in (Islam), so that the person in charge can devote the available strength to both of them at the same (Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah, trans. by Franz Rosenthal (New York: Pantheon Books Inc., 1958) Vol. 1:473).
(The Translation of the Meanings of Sahih al-Bukhari, Vol. 1:xxiv-xliii ).
So, it is incumbent upon us (Muslims) to follow the path which Allah’s Messenger (Muhammad) adopted to avoid polytheism and heresy in all its shapes and to take the Holy Qur’an and the Prophet’s Traditions as torches in front of us to guide us. We have to teach our brethren and convey the Message to non-Muslims all over the world as much as possible in order to save them from the Hell-fire. We have to prepare ourselves to stand in the face of our enemy and to possess the means of power and to participate in the progress of useful industries in order to protect our religion and be powerful enough to face our enemy, as Allah, the Elevated says in Surat al-Anfal (8:60):
Qur’an: 8:60: Against them (kaffirs) make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war (tanks, places, missiles and other weapons, etc.) to strike terror into the (hearts of) the Enemy of Allah and your enemy, and others beside, whom you may not know, but whom Allah does know. Whatever you shall spend in the Cause of Allah, shall be repaid to you, and you shall not be treated unjustly
How many terrorists would appeal to this verse “to strike terror into the hearts of the enemy”?
The majority of the Qur’an’s texts themselves clearly identify jihad as physical warfare in Islam and, Islamically, God’s way of establishing the Kingdom of God on earth. Likewise, from the Hadith and the earliest biographies of Muhammad it is just as evident that the early Muslim community understood these Qur’anic texts to be taken literally. Historically, therefore, from the time of Muhammad onwards, jihad as physical warfare in support of the message of Islam has been a reality for the Muslim community. Hence, it comes as no surprise when even terrorists (Osama and his al-Qaeda) easily appeal to these source materials to justify their actions, not to speak of their teachers who teach the theory and the art of terrorism. September 11, 2001, terrorist act in the soil of America is the glittering example of Jihadi mindset of Islamist like Osama bin Laden.
Qur’anic Ayats (I just mentioned above) and numerous Sahi Hadiths of same kind were instrumental for Muslims to dedicate their strength & minds for the cause of Islam. Therefore, in the name of spreading the religion, devout Muslim fighters killed millions of people while occupying neighboring Arab lands such as Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Egypt, Iraq and non-Arab countries like India, Turkey, Libya, Iran etc. Even Spain had fallen into their hands for hundreds of years. I simply wonder were these wars defensive. Were those swords used by Islamic soldiers to occupy country after country be considered a symbol of forgiveness or mercy? Following Muhammad’s death, his companions fought each other in relentless savage wars competing for authority.
In summary, Islamic Jihad with the help of Islamic sword–hundreds of tribes were wiped out from the Arabian Peninsula. Thousands were orphaned and widowed. Hazzaz bin Yousuf killed more than a hundred thousand Sahabis, Ibne Khattal was killed in Kaba’a. Later Abdulla Bin Zubair was killed in the same Kaba’a. By the end of the first civil war of Muslims, all the Badari Sahabis were killed. By the end of three civil wars all the Sahabis were killed “it sucked up all the strength of Muslims” ( Bokhari). Ten thousand Muslims were killed in the Jamal war between Hazrat Ali (RA) and Bibi Ayesha (RA). Islamic scholar Dr. Abu Zayd Shalabi claimed in his book (page-75), in the ‘battle of Alees’ which took place on the border of Iraq, (Siffin war between Hazrat Ali and Hazrat Mwabia ), the great Islamic General Khalid killed 70,000 people.
Thousands of non-Muslims were killed. After the death of Prophet Muhammad, there were four most favorite disciples of Prophet who ruled the Islamic kingdom established by the prophet Muhammad, who were known as the most pious caliphs. Out of these four Caliphs—three of them were brutally assassinated, and only one had natural death because of his old age and very short rule of the Islamic state. Karbala was flooded with blood with a roar of “Allahu Akbar!” Was it because of the fact that Islamic sword was the sign of Mercy? The fact of the matter is—sword can never be the sign of mercy! Period.
Global Agenda: As I cited various valuable quotes, which clearly depicted a special and unique feature, which is totally absent in any other monolithic religions of the world. Unlike any other world religion—Islam has an ulterior motive in its agenda. Islam considers it has a sacred and mandatory God given duty to spread Islamic message (Din-e-Islam) to all the inhabitants of the world. Their ultimate wishful goal is to convert and bring entire mankind under the fold of Islam, the only true religion of Allah. To this end—two main groups are working very hard. These two groups are: (a) Militant/radical Mullahs, (b) Educated/elite western residing true believing Muslims (Muslims of the ummatic groups in the west such as: AMC, CAIR, ICNA, ISNA, NABIC etc). Here we can exclude group-C Muslims (general God fearing innocent gullible Muslims who constitute about 70-80% of the total Muslims.
Both the groups (A & B) have one thing common in their minds. That is to convert sufficient peoples to Islam in order to establish Islamic Sharia’h or Huhud Laws (Allah’s laws just like Afghan Taliban state) as the state governing administration. Here the main difference is—group A (Militant/fanatics) is engaged in armed struggles (Holy war, Terrorism); and group-B (mainly western resident) is engaged in secret and peaceful propagation with sweet talks and peaceful persuasion of the gullible western peoples by deceitful sermons in the mosques and in various annual and semi-annual Islamic conferences and meetings (Ummatic conference). Both have one last thing in mind—to establish Islamic Sharia’h law in the state.
Conclusion:
Our gullible and wishful Islamists like that Harvard graduate, which we have plenty all over the world, or any other Islamists who wants to twist the real practical and historical meaning of Jihad to fool the modern world, which we have among educated Muslims scattered everywhere, must consider this. If they want to give a new twisted meaning – a sober and politically correct one — of the word Jihad, they had better first change the Qur’an, Hadiths and all those Islamic history books available in the library throughout the world. Alternatively, they should dump all the Islamic history literature into the Daria or sea and re-write a new peaceful Islamic history by themselves. Sadly, if they do so, then it will be a Reformed Islam, which Mullahs will now allow to happen any time soon. Therefore, the Islamic elites, many of who visit NFB (News From Bangladesh) on a regular basis, will have to swallow their false pride and lick their wounds too. The proverbial phrase – the dogs will be barking, but the caravan will pass. Humanity is poised now to get rid of all kinds belief system that has crippled the humankind and which never allowed us to rich for a higher plane.
References:
1. The Holy Qur’an, Translated by A. Yousuf Ali, Published by Amana Corporation, Brentwood, Maryland, 1983
2. Buchari Sharif, Bengali Translation by Maulana Muhammad Mustafizur Rahman, Sulemani Printers and Publishers, Dhaka, Second edition-1999
3. Holy Qur’an, Bengali translation by Maulana Muhiuddin khan, Khademu Harmain Sharifain, Saudi Arabia, Madina Mannwara, 1413 Hijri.
4. The Biography of Muhammad and the Wars (Maghazy) Ibn Isaac, Dr. Sohaul Zakkar, dar Al Fekr
5 The Biography of the Prophet, Ibn Kathir, dar Al Knowledge, Beirut
Recent Comments