Islam and Warfare

Context and Compatibility with International Law

Onder Bakircioglu

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138242722
• eBook ISBN: 9781134091706
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Comparative Law
• Index: Law

The question of how Islamic law regulates the notions of just recourse to and just conduct in war has long been the topic of heated controversy, and is often subject to oversimplification in scholarship and journalism. This book traces the rationale for aggression within the Islamic tradition, and assesses the meaning and evolution of the contentious concept of jihad. The book reveals that there has never been a unified position on what Islamic warfare tangibly entails, due to the complexity of relevant sources and discordant historical dynamics that have shaped the contours of jihad.

Onder Bakircioglu advocates a dynamic reading of Islamic law and military tradition; one which prioritises the demands of contemporary international relations and considers the meaning and application of jihad as contingent on the socio-political forces of each historical epoch.

This book will be of great interest to scholars and students of international law, Islamic law, war and security studies, and the law of armed conflict.

1 Main Sources of Islamic Law

Introduction

Islam possesses some important characteristics of a legal system, which seeks to regulate the behaviour of its adherents in accordance with its ideal paradigm of what constitutes right and wrong, and demands the believer to follow (by means of thought and deed) its precepts, which are believed to have originated from God’s will. Classical Islamic jurisprudence rests on a monotheistic outlook that regards God as the ultimate source of law, for He alone is taken to be the ultimate sovereign whose omnipotence over human affairs stems from His status as the sole creator of the entire universe. Humankind accordingly needs no further justification to be subordinate to His will. Unsurprisingly, in relation to the Lord (rabb), Islam characterises humans as servants (abd).¹ The word ‘Islam’, likewise, derives from the Arabic term salam, which has a two-fold meaning: peace and submission (with the suggestion of total submission to God).² A Muslim, then, is a person who unconditionally submits to God to the exclusion of any other revered entity.

The question of how the Islamic law regulates the notions of just recourse to, and just conduct in, war requires a brief examination of the origins, development, and hierarchy of Islamic law. Rejecting a literal and narrow approach, this book advocates the need for a historical and contextual re-reading of the main sources of Islam, whose varied interpretation informs the ongoing debate on the Islamic use of force discourse and its compatibility with contemporary political and legal exigencies. By providing an overview of the sources of Islam, this chapter aims to set the stage for the subsequent analysis of Islamic jus in bello and jus ad bellum norms.

I. Primary Sources

A. The Quran

Islamic tradition deals with questions of war and peace in its main sources, which include the Quran, the sacred book of Islam, guiding sayings and deeds of the Prophet (hadith), and the individual as well as collective opinions formed by jurists over the centuries since the death of the Prophet Muhammad. It must be made clear at the outset that while there is a consensus over the authenticity of the Quranic text and the traditions and sayings attributed to the Prophet, as recorded by reliable chroniclers,³ the manner in which these sources has hitherto been interpreted varied considerably. While alive, the Prophet often settled controversies over alternative readings of the Quran, yet his demise compelled the Muslim community to call upon their own resources to determine the true meaning of divine revelations. Hence, Islamic tradition as a whole is a rich composite of binding divine sources and man-made doctrines developed over the course of Islamic history.

The Quran (which literally means recitation or reading) constitutes the most important source of Islam, which is composed of the divine revelations received by Muhammad, whose chief mission was to form an orderly and moral world operating in accordance with sacred messages delivered by God. Consisting of these revelations, the Quran is the primary and most authoritative source of Islamic law.⁴ The Quran is the sole Muslim Scripture and it would be misleading to call it the Muslim Bible. This is certainly not to overlook the similarities between Christianity and Islam; these religions have much in common (some of which will be discussed within the context of just war). Both, for instance, emerged from within the same ancient Middle Eastern civilisations; both had adopted the Jewish tradition of ethical monotheism, a prophetic mission of spreading the knowledge of one God and His commandments preserved in sacred texts; and both largely drew upon Greek thought and science, as well as institutions shaped to an important degree by Hellenistic and Roman elements.⁵ Nevertheless, unlike the Old and New Testaments, the Quran is not composed of texts written over a long period of time by various authors; it is rather a single text dictated by a single author over the course of two decades,⁶ with certain distinct messages, injunctions, and truths considered to be universally valid.

Inasmuch as the Quran is believed to contain the literal word of God, it is deemed the most authentic record of Islamic law,⁷ incarnating the final, inimitable, and infallible injunctions of everlasting validity. God in the Quran affirms Islam’s complete nature, saying that ‘[t]his day have I perfected your religion for you, completed My favour upon you, and have chosen for you Islam as your religion’.⁸ Although the Quran expresses that ‘to every people (was sent) a Messenger’,⁹ and that there is no difference between these Prophets,¹⁰ Muhammad closed the line of Messengers¹¹ by reintroducing the original, unadulterated teaching of God, which had not been preserved in its pristine form in earlier scriptures.¹² Muslims thus believe that the Quran had been bestowed on humankind though Muhammad, ‘the seal of the Prophets’,¹³ as being God’s final effort to repair and reconstruct the original, but distorted and forgotten, message preached by other Prophets since Abraham.¹⁴

The Quran accordingly presents Islam as the very religion that had been preached by earlier Prophets including Abraham, Noah, Moses, and Jesus,¹⁵ who themselves were thus originally Muslims. Among other prophets, Muslims ascribe to Abraham a prominent standing, for he is considered to be a perfect model for the faithful, the harbinger of monotheism, and hence the founding father of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.¹⁶ Muslim tradition, in other words, rooted Islam within the soil of monotheism, a phenomenon which rendered the appeal of the Quran far more acceptable to those who had already been familiar with the monotheistic conception of the universe. This point is confirmed by some early sources,¹⁷ including The Armenian History, written circa 660, which recorded that ‘a certain man from among those same sons of Ismael [i.e. Arabs] whose name was Mahmet [Muhammad], a merchant’, acting as if by God’s command, started preaching the path of truth. ‘He taught them to recognize the God of Abraham, especially because he was learned and informed in the history of Moses.’ Similar to the Jewish tradition, since ‘the command came from on high’, the followers ‘came together in the unity of religion’, abandoning their idols and turning ‘to the living God who appeared to their father Abraham’.¹⁸ Muhammad, in this sense, had never rejected the legacy of his predecessors; rather, he saw himself part of a long series of Prophets who had been appointed by God to preach the divine truth. Like Abraham, Muhammad preached monotheism and advised his followers to comport themselves in a manner of righteousness and piety.¹⁹ Again, similar to Christ, he reminded humankind of resurrection, the Day of Judgement, and of the punishments and rewards in the hereafter.²⁰

1. The Compilation of the Quran

Islamic tradition holds that the Quran is revealed to the Prophet Muhammad by God through the medium of angel Gabriel.²¹ Muslim theology and jurisprudence consider the entire corpus of the Quran as having sprung from Muhammad’s reception of divine revelations (wahy). The form of such revelations had been described to be verbal, visual, or otherwise in character.²² Bukhari relates a tradition on the authority of the Prophet’s wife, Aisha, who described the account of the first direct revelation: while in seclusion for peaceful contemplation in a cave near Mecca, Gabriel commanded Muhammad to read the first lines of Sura 96.²³ Puzzled when the unlettered Prophet could not recite, the angel pressed him hard until he yielded and managed to read the first five verses of the Sura. As the Messenger recounted what had taken place, his first wife Khadija and her Christian cousin Waraqa assured him of the sacredness of his mission.²⁴ Following a brief period of interruption, Muhammad regularly received further revelations, during the process of which he reportedly entered into a trancelike state. These revelations came down in instalments in Mecca and Medina over a 22-year period, until the demise of Muhammad (AD 610–632).²⁵

The Quran is revealed in Arabic,²⁶ containing 114 chapters (suras), 6,236 verses (ayat), and a total number of 77,934 words.²⁷ The entire corpus of the Quran was completed during the lifetime of Muhammad, who called upon his scribes to record what had been revealed to him. The Prophet’s recitations had initially been written down on whatever material came to hand, including palm leaves, shoulder-blades of camels, wood pieces, and parchment. Under Muhammad’s supervision, these fragmented pieces were subsequently collected into suras or chapters. However, while the Quran existed in its full, albeit fragmented, form since the first revelation, the written material was not brought together into a single codex during the Prophet’s lifetime. The assembly of the whole Quran was a lengthy and arduous task, the completion of which has been attributed to various people among the Prophet’s companions, including the four immediate successors as caliphs. Nonetheless, most commentators concur that an official codex had been collected under the rule of Uthman, the third caliph, within 20 years of Muhammad’s demise.²⁸

Uthman concerned himself with ascertaining whether or not the texts he assembled had been directly recited by the Prophet. During this process, the ma...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Main Sources of Islamic Law
• 2. Islamic Tradition on Warfare
• 3. Shades of Jihad: Moderate and Radical Interpretations
• 4. Jihad in the United Nations Era
• 5. Conclusion
• Select Bibliography
• Index