The Art of Jihad

Realism in Islamic Political Thought

Malik Mufti

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781438476360, 9781438476377
• eBook ISBN: 9781438476384
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Medieval & Renaissance Philosophy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Identifies and traces the evolution of a forgotten "realist" tradition in medieval Islamic political thought, and considers the prospects for its revival in the context of the contemporary Middle East.

Now all but forgotten, there exists within medieval Islamic political thought a coherent "realist" tradition analogous to its Western counterpart. In The Art of Jihad, Malik Mufti begins by analyzing contemporary debates on jihad designed to highlight the lacuna occupied by realism in other cultures. He explicates the features of medieval Islamic realism; those it shares with realism everywhere-a focus on power, for example, or the ubiquity of human conflict-but also those features that are distinctive: its insistence on the political centrality of religion, its rejection of scientific certainty, its valorization of hierarchy, and its adherence to empire as the optimal ethico-political framework. These features are fleshed out through the writings of medieval political thinkers such as Ibn al-Muqaffa`, al-Jahiz, and the anonymous author of a seminal military manual, as well as political philosophers such as Ibn Rushd and Ibn Khaldun. Finally, Mufti explores the prospects for a revival of Islamic realism in the context of the political and intellectual upheavals currently besetting the Middle East.

CHAPTER 1

Competing Visions of Jihad

The scholarship on contemporary debates about jihad typically differentiates between two main approaches: a “fundamentalist” or “militant” approach which advocates offensive warfare for the propagation of Islam, and a “modernist” approach which argues that Islam’s teachings are fully compatible with the liberal norms of international relations prevailing globally today, including the imperative of striving for permanent peace.1 Despite the recent prominence of the militants, moreover, much of this scholarship recognizes that the latter, more pacific approach has for some time now been growing increasingly hegemonic in contemporary Islamic thought.2

Rather than trying to ascertain which of the two contending approaches is better grounded in authoritative religious texts, the central argument here will be that the increasingly trenchant criticisms of their militant antagonists are forcing the modernists step by step toward a more thoroughgoing liberalism, one that encompasses domestic politics and governance as well. At the same time, such an assessment of the dynamic between the two approaches will delineate the empty space, currently unclaimed, occupied by realist theories in other cultural traditions, which in turn will justify the investigation, undertaken in subsequent chapters, into what a much earlier set of Muslim thinkers had to say on the subjects of war, peace, and statecraft.

Modernist Evolution

The modernist argument that Islamic law is compatible with contemporary norms of international law—indeed that in many respects it anticipated them—rests on a number of core premises: that Islam may not be imposed coercively, that offensive or aggressive war is therefore prohibited, and that peace is consequently the norm between Muslim and non-Muslim polities. Citing the Qurʾanic prohibition on coercion in religion (2:256), the modernists unite behind the judgment of the Egyptian scholar Mahmud Shaltut (1893–1963) that “lack of faith is not a [legitimate] cause for war.”3 His compatriot and fellow leader in the vanguard of the modernist movement, Muhammad Abu Zahra (1898–1974), agrees: “war is not justified … to impose Islam as a religion.”4 Scripture apparently suggesting otherwise only seems that way because the context is ignored: a Qurʾanic verse (9.29) that calls for fighting non-Muslim “people of the Book” (such as Christians and Jews) until they are forced to submit, for example, is said to refer only to those who had previously provided a casus belli by violating treaties or repressing the practice of Islam.5

One of the most striking features of the modernist argument is the insistence of many of its proponents on distinguishing their approach from a “classical doctrine” of war and peace said to have been developed by Muslim jurists during the eighth and ninth centuries, and rooted in the exigencies of that imperial period. The Egyptian modernist Mohammad Talaat al-Ghunaimi, for example, ascribes to “the classical Muslim doctrine” which encompassed the generality of “the earliest Muslim jurist-theologians, broadly speaking,” the conviction that “the ‘raison d’être’ of the Islamic state is to achieve the universal rule of Islam” through “a holy war of aggression under the doctrine of the jihad … a theory that is generally irreconcilable with the modern standards of international law.”6 Likewise, the American modernist Sherman A. Jackson cites the “majority” of “classical jurists” as approving “aggressive jihad” as a “communal requirement to be carried out at least once every year.”7 There was of course a range of opinion on jihad among the medieval jurists, and even the proposition that a majority sanctioned offensive jihad has been disputed.8 Whatever the historical truth of the matter, the salient point here is that so many modernists oppose themselves to a putative classical doctrine because the more pacific interpretation of Islamic international law they seek to advance rests on a distinction between the medieval and modern contexts.

Thus, Muhammad Abu Zahra describes the classical judgment that war is the fundamental principle or basis of relations between Muslims and non-Muslims as temporally contingent (ḥukm zamānī); a reflection of the fact that the jurists of Islam’s “monarchical” era lived in an age of continuous warfare, so that many of them could not conceive of peaceful relations beyond a tactical and temporary truce.9 In reality, Islam “considers war to be one of Satan’s incitements”; an “odious” disruption of normal life to be avoided whenever possible.10 Similarly, the division, with various modifications and refinements by individual jurists, of the world into an “abode of Islam” (dār al-Islām) and an “abode of war” (dār al-ḥarb) is one modernists such as the Syrian Wahba al-Zuhayli reject as having “no textual support, for no provision is made for it either in the Qurʾan or in the Hadith,”11 and as deriving instead solely, in the Lebanese Sobhi Mahmassani’s words, “from the reasoning of the jurists based on the actual practice” of their time.12

A holistic and therefore correct reading of Islamic scripture will show, the modernists claim, that there is neither contradiction between, nor abrogation of, various Islamic rulings; they can all be shown to affirm the same rationale and objective—to wit, that the true basis of international relations in Islam is peace.13 What then does justify the waging of war in Islam? The modernist answer focuses overwhelmingly on defense. As Mahmud Shaltut puts it, just cause for war “is limited to repelling aggression as well as safeguarding the [Islamic] mission and freedom of religion.”14 This means not only resisting enemy attacks on Muslim lands, but also intervening in foreign countries if the authorities there attempt to persecute their Muslim minorities or repress the dissemination of the Islamic message. Most modernists, moreover, extend such defensive considerations to a further justification for war: to combat injustice and cruel tyranny more generally. They could hardly do otherwise, given the Islamic imperative to do good and oppose evil. As a result, Shaltut and his colleagues are also led to sanction warfare “for the sake of rescuing the weak … for the sake of resistance against tyranny and despotism.”15 Wahba al-Zuhayli describes interventions on behalf of the victims of injustice as corrective war (ḥarb taʾdībiyya).16 Since the imperatives of securing freedom of religion and of preventing tyranny and oppression are not restricted to Muslim victims, such wars may also be waged on behalf of “a friendly or allied nation even if it is not Islamic.”17

In both its reactive (self-defense) and proactive (humanitarian intervention) dimensions, this modernist conception of legitimate war parallels its Western counterpart extending from medieval Christian idealists to the secular liberal tradition of more recent times. In line with the shared premise that war is an evil to be avoided, furthermore, the parallels extend to the conduct of warfare as well. Thus most modernists agree that responsibility for determining when there is just cause, and for initiating and prosecuting the war to its conclusion, lies exclusively with the existing political authority (walī al-amr).18 They also agree in limiting the scope of war as much as possible, here as well departing from the classical doctrine on the grounds of its obsolescence. Classical doctrine, for example, reflecting the norms of its time, understood war as a conflict between the entire peoples—rather than just the formal armed forces—of the polities involved. The majority of medieval jurists therefore sanctioned engaging and killing all enemy able-bodied adult males, even as they exempted other categories of people so long as they did not participate in combat, such as children, women, the elderly, and the physically or mentally infirm. Likewise, they did not differentiate between public and private property when ruling on what goods may be seized in conquered enemy lands. Such rulings were “correct when war in the past was considered a struggle between the peoples of two states. But today, when war has been restricted to organized armies, it is necessary to restrict the effects of war to them as well, not to the rest of the population, and within the limits of what concerns governments only.”19

If one steps back from the narrowly legalistic disputations about which categories of people are specifically cited in the religious texts as being exempted from harm, in other words, or about how war booty is to be collected and distributed, and one focuses instead on the overall spirit of those texts, it becomes possible according to the modernists to formulate rulings that are more appropriate to the conditions and norms of our own time. Since the civilian-military distinction is much sharper today, the general principle protecting “those who do not fight and have no say in war” can be extended to include able-bodied adult males as well, in line with contemporary international law.20 Wahba al-Zuhayli, for example, extends the exemption from harm to enemy war reporters and chaplains, and argues that military medical personnel—who do after all contribute to the enemy war effort by healing soldiers—should also be detained as prisoners of war rather than killed.21 Similarly, private property in conquered lands can now be left alone, and enemy civilians may even be compensated for damage done to their property by Muslim forces.22 The same logic applies to Muslim armies, which have been transformed into clearly defined professional organizations: the share of legitimately seized enemy public property that used to be distributed as booty among individual Muslim warriors is now to be assigned to the Islamic state’s formal military budget instead.23

Other issues differentiating the classical doctrine and modernist approaches include the treatment of prisoners of war, with some of the earlier jurists allowing Muslim commanders a choice only between killing or enslaving them, and others—on the principle of serving the public interest (maṣlaḥa)—giving commanders more discretion to ransom prisoners (for example, in exchange for Muslim prisoners or for money) or even to release them unconditionally. Seizing on this principle of public interest, and pointing to the obsolescence of practices such as slavery, virtually all modernists by contrast narrow the options to those sanctioned by contemporary international norms: releasing prisoners upon the cessation of hostilities either unconditionally or as part of reciprocal exchanges.24

A similar contrast between the two approaches relates to the dhimma contract with non-Muslims who come to live under Islamic rule. In the classical doctrine, it entailed paying a poll-tax called the jizya, along with various legal and social restrictions such as having to wear distinctive attire, in return for being permitted to observe one’s religious practices individually and communally. The earlier jurists generally agreed on the subordinate character of dhimma status, but differed on its eligibility, with some restricting it to monotheistic “people of the Book,” and others extending it to all except Arab pagans (who could only choose between conversion and death). The modernists, however, in addition to tending toward the most inclusive eligibility interpretation, insist that dhimmīs “are not a second class below the Muslims.”25 They are citizens (muwāṭinūn) and not subjects (raʿāya), and the jizya they pay is not a punishment but a tax in lieu of the zakāt tax which Muslims must pay and also in lieu of the military service from which non-Muslims are exempt. Indeed, if non-Muslims elect to serve in the armed forces voluntarily, they are exempted from the jizya as well.26 The influential contemporary Egyptian scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who shares modernist views on many key points, adds that since the true intent of Islamic rulings is not to insult or punish non-Muslims, and since the words dhimmī and jizya have apparently acquired offensive connotations for non-Muslims over the years, there is no objection to replacing them wi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Transliteration Note
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Competing Visions of Jihad
• Chapter 2 Imperial Foundations
• Chapter 3 The Political Turn in Islamic Philosophy
• Chapter 4 Ibn Khaldun’s Synthesis
• Chapter 5 Contemporary Echoes
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover