The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror (5 page)

Islamic movements also have another immense advantage as contrasted with all their competitors. In the mosques they dispose of a network of association and communication that even the most dictatorial of governments cannot entirely control. Indeed, ruthless dictatorships help them, unintentionally, by eliminating competing oppositions.

Radical Islamism, to which it has become customary to give the name Islamic fundamentalism, is not a single homogeneous movement. There are many types of Islamic fundamentalism in different countries and even sometimes within a single country. Some are state-sponsored—promulgated, used, and promoted by one or other Muslim government for its own purposes; some are genuine popular movements from below. Among state-sponsored Islamic movements, there are again several kinds, both radical and conservative, both subversive and preemptive. Conservative and preemptive movements have been started by governments in power, seeking to protect themselves from the revolutionary wave. Such are the movements encouraged at various times by the Egyptians, the Pakistanis, and notably the Saudis. The other kind, far more important, comes from below, with an authentic popular base. The first of these to seize power and the most successful in exercising it is the movement known as the Islamic revolution in Iran. Radical Islamic regimes now rule in the Sudan and for a while ruled in Afghanistan, and Islamic movements offer major threats to the already endangered existing order in other countries, notably Algeria and Egypt.

The Muslim fundamentalists, unlike the Protestant groups whose name was transferred to them, do not differ from the mainstream on questions of theology and the interpretation of scripture. Their critique is, in the broadest sense, societal. The Islamic world, in their view, has taken a wrong turning. Its rulers call themselves Muslims and make a pretense of Islam, but they are in fact apostates who have abrogated the Holy Law and adopted foreign and infidel laws and customs. The only solution, for them, is a return to the authentic Muslim way of life, and for this the removal of the apostate governments is an essential first step. Fundamentalists are anti-Western in the sense that they regard the West as the source of the evil that is corroding Muslim society, but their primary attack is directed against their own rulers and leaders. Such were the movements which brought about the overthrow of the shah of Iran in 1979 and the murder of President Sadat of Egypt two years later. Both were seen as symptoms of a deeper evil to be remedied by an inner cleansing. In Egypt they murdered the ruler but failed to take over the state; in Iran they destroyed the regime and created their own.

Islam is one of the world’s great religions. It has given dignity and meaning to drab and impoverished lives. It has taught men of different races to live in brotherhood and people of different creeds to live side by side in reasonable tolerance. It inspired a great civilization in which others besides Muslims lived creative and useful lives and which, by its achievement, enriched the whole world. But Islam, like other religions, has also known periods when it inspired in some of its followers a mood of hatred and violence. It is our misfortune that we have to confront part of the Muslim world while it is going through such a period, and when most—though by no means all—of that hatred is directed against us.

Why? We should not exaggerate the dimensions of the problem. The Muslim world is far from unanimous in its rejection of the West, nor have the Muslim regions of the Third World been alone in their hostility. There are still significant numbers, in some quarters perhaps a majority, of Muslims with whom we share certain basic cultural and moral, social and political beliefs and aspirations; there is still a significant Western presence—cultural, economic, diplomatic—in Muslim lands, some of which are Western allies. But there is a surge of hatred that distresses, alarms, and above all baffles Americans.

Often, this hatred goes beyond the level of hostility to specific interests or actions or policies or even countries, and becomes a rejection of Western civilization as such, not so much for what it does as for what it is, and for the principles and values that it practices and professes. These are indeed seen as innately evil, and those who promote or accept them are seen as the “enemies of God.”

This phrase, which recurs so frequently in the statements of the Iranian leadership, both in their judicial proceedings and in their political pronouncements, must seem very strange to the modern outsider, whether religious or secular. The idea that God has enemies, and needs human help in order to identify and dispose of them, is a little difficult to assimilate. It is not, however, all that alien. The concept of the enemies of God is familiar in preclassical and classical antiquity, and in both the Old and New Testaments as well as in the Qur’an.

In Islam, the struggle of good and evil acquired, from the start, political and even military dimensions. Muhammad, it will be recalled, was not only a prophet and a teacher, like the founders of other religions; he was also a ruler and a soldier. Hence his struggle involved a state and its armed forces. If the fighters in the war for Islam, the holy war “in the path of God,” are fighting for God, it follows that their opponents are fighting against God. And since God is in principle the sovereign, the supreme head of the Islamic state, with the Prophet, and after the Prophet the caliphs, as His vicegerents, then God as sovereign commands the army. The army is God’s army and the enemy is God’s enemy. The duty of God’s soldiers is to dispatch God’s enemies as quickly as possible to the place where God will chastise them, that is to say in the afterlife.

The key question that occupies Western policy makers at the present time may be stated simply: Is Islam, whether fundamentalist or other, a threat to the West? To this simple question, various simple answers have been given, and as is the way of simple answers, they are mostly misleading. According to one school of thought, after the demise of the Soviet Union and the Communist movement, Islam and Islamic fundamentalism have replaced them as the major threat to the West and the Western way of life. According to another school of thought, Muslims, including radical fundamentalists, are basically decent, peace-loving, pious people, some of whom have been driven beyond endurance by all the dreadful things that we of the West have done to them. We choose to see them as enemies because we have a psychological need of an enemy to replace the defunct Soviet Union.

Both views contain elements of truth; both are dangerously wrong. Islam as such is not an enemy of the West, and there are growing numbers of Muslims, both there and here, who desire nothing better than a closer and more friendly relationship with the West and the development of democratic institutions in their own countries. But a significant number of Muslims—notably but not exclusively those whom we call fundamentalists—are hostile and dangerous, not because we need an enemy but because they do.

In recent years, there have been some changes of perception and, consequently, of tactics among Muslims. Some of them still see the West in general and its present leader the United States in particular as the ancient and irreconcilable enemy of Islam, the one serious obstacle to the restoration of God’s faith and law at home and their ultimate universal triumph. For these there is no way but war to the death, in fulfillment of what they see as the commandments of their faith. There are others who, while remaining committed Muslims and well aware of the flaws of modern Western society, nevertheless also see its merits—its inquiring spirit, which produced modern science and technology; its concern for freedom, which created modern democratic government. These, while retaining their own beliefs and their own culture, seek to join us in reaching toward a freer and better world. There are some again who, while seeing the West as their ultimate enemy and as the source of all evil, are nevertheless aware of its power, and seek some temporary accommodation in order better to prepare for the final struggle. We would be wise not to confuse the second and the third.

CHAPTER II

T
HE
H
OUSE OF
W
AR

In the course of human history, many civilizations have risen and fallen—China, India, Greece, Rome, and before them, the ancient civilizations of the Middle East. During the centuries that in European history are called medieval, the most advanced civilization in the world was undoubtedly that of Islam. Islam may have been equaled—or even, in some respects, surpassed—by India and China, but both of those civilizations remained essentially limited to one region and to one ethnic group, and their impact on the rest of the world was correspondingly restricted. The civilization of Islam, by contrast, was ecumenical in its outlook, and explicitly so in its aspirations.

One of the basic tasks bequeathed to Muslims by the Prophet was jihad. This word comes from an Arabic root
j-h-d,
with the basic meaning of striving or effort. It is often used in classical texts with the closely related meaning of struggle, and hence also of fight. It is usually cited in the Qur’anic phrase “striving in the path of God” (e.g., IX, 24; LX, 1 et cetera) and has been variously interpreted to mean moral striving and armed struggle. It is usually fairly easy to understand from the context which of these shades of meaning is intended. In the Qur’an the word occurs many times, in these two distinct but connected senses. In the early chapters, dating from the Meccan period, when the Prophet was still the leader of a minority group struggling against the dominant pagan oligarchy, the word often has the meaning, favored by modernist exegetists, of moral striving. In the later chapters, promulgated in Medina, where the Prophet headed the state and commanded its army, it usually has a more explicitly practical connotation. In many, the military meaning is unequivocal. A good example is IV, 95: “Those of the believers who stay at home, other than the disabled, are not equal to those who strive in the path of God with their goods and their persons. God has placed those who struggle with their goods and their persons on a higher level than those who stay at home. God has promised reward to all who believe but He distinguishes those who fight, above those who stay at home, with a mighty reward.” Similar sentiments will be found in VIII, 72; IX, 41, 81, 88; LXVI, 9 et cetera.

Some modern Muslims, particularly when addressing the outside world, explain the duty of jihad in a spiritual and moral sense. The overwhelming majority of early authorities, citing the relevant passages in the Qur’an, the commentaries, and the traditions of the Prophet, discuss jihad in military terms. According to Islamic law, it is lawful to wage war against four types of enemies: infidels, apostates, rebels, and bandits. Although all four types of wars are legitimate, only the first two count as jihad. Jihad is thus a religious obligation. In discussing the obligation of the holy war, the classical Muslim jurists distinguish between offensive and defensive warfare. In offense, jihad is an obligation of the Muslim community as a whole, and may therefore be discharged by volunteers and professionals. In a defensive war, it becomes an obligation of every able-bodied individual. It is this principle that Usama bin Ladin invoked in his declaration of war against the United States.

For most of the fourteen centuries of recorded Muslim history, jihad was most commonly interpreted to mean armed struggle for the defense or advancement of Muslim power. In Muslim tradition, the world is divided into two houses: the House of Islam (
D
r al-Isl
m
), in which Muslim governments rule and Muslim law prevails, and the House of War (
D
r al-Harb
), the rest of the world, still inhabited and, more important, ruled by infidels. The presumption is that the duty of jihad will continue, interrupted only by truces, until all the world either adopts the Muslim faith or submits to Muslim rule. Those who fight in the jihad qualify for rewards in both worlds—booty in this one, paradise in the next.

In this as in so many other matters, the guidance of the Qur’an is amplified and elaborated in the
had
ths,
that is to say traditions concerning the actions and utterances of the Prophet. Many of these deal with holy war. The following are a few samples.

Jihad is your duty under any ruler, be he godly or wicked.

A day and a night of fighting on the frontier is better than a month of fasting and prayer.

The nip of an ant hurts a martyr more than the thrust of a weapon, for these are more welcome to him than sweet, cold water on a hot summer day.

He who dies without having taken part in a campaign dies in a kind of unbelief.

God marvels at people [those to whom Islam is brought by conquest] who are dragged to Paradise in chains.

Learn to shoot, for the space between the mark and the archer is one of the gardens of Paradise.

Paradise is in the shadow of swords.

The traditions also lay down some rules of warfare for the conduct of jihad:

Be advised to treat prisoners well.

Looting is no more lawful than carrion.

God has forbidden the killing of women and children.

Muslims are bound by their agreements, provided that these are lawful.
¹

The standard juristic treatises on shari‘a normally contain a chapter on jihad, understood in the military sense as regular warfare against infidels and apostates. But these treatises prescribe correct behavior and respect for the rules of war in matters such as the opening and termination of hostilities and the treatment of noncombatants and of prisoners, not to speak of diplomatic envoys.

For most of the recorded history of Islam, from the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad onward, the word
jih
d
was used in a primarily military sense. Muhammad began his prophetic mission in his birthplace, Mecca, but because of the persecution that he and his followers suffered at the hands of the pagan oligarchy ruling that town, they moved to the town of Medina, where the local tribes welcomed them and installed the Prophet first as arbitrator and then as ruler. This move is known in Arabic as the Hijra, sometimes misspelt
Hegira
and mistranslated “flight.” The Muslim era dates from the beginning of the Arabian year in which the Hijra took place. The first jihad was waged by the Prophet against the rulers of his birthplace and ended with the conquest of Mecca in the month of Ramadan of the year 8 of the Hijra, corresponding to January 630 of the Christian era. The Meccan leadership surrendered almost without a fight, and the Meccans, apart from those accused of specific offenses against the Prophet or a Muslim, were granted immunity for their lives and property, provided that they behaved in accordance with the agreement. The next task was the extension of Muslim authority to the rest of Arabia and, under the Prophet’s successors, the caliphs, to the rest of the world.

In the early centuries of the Islamic era this seemed a possible, indeed a probable outcome. Within a remarkably short time the conquering Muslim armies had overthrown the ancient empire of Persia and incorporated all its territories in the domains of the caliphate, opening the way to the invasion of Central Asia and of India. To the West, the Byzantine Empire was not as yet overthrown, but it was deprived of a large part of its territories. The then Christian provinces of Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa were absorbed and in due course Islamized and Arabized, and they served as bases for the further invasion of Europe and the conquest of Spain and Portugal and much of southern Italy. By the early eighth century the conquering Arab armies were even advancing beyond the Pyrenees into France.

After several centuries of almost unbroken victories, the Arab jihad was finally held and repelled by Christian Europe. In the East, the Byzantines held on to the great Christian city of Constantinople, repelling a series of Arab attacks. In the West, they began the long, drawn-out process known in Spanish history as the
Reconquista,
or Reconquest, which eventually led to the eviction of the Muslims from the territories they had conquered in Italy and the Iberian peninsula. An attempt to carry the Reconquista to the Middle East, and to recover the birthplace of Christ, conquered by the Muslims in the seventh century, was also launched. This attempt, known as the Crusades, failed totally, and the Crusaders were driven out in disarray.

But the jihad had not ended. A new phase was inaugurated, this time not by Arabs but by later recruits to Islam, the Turks and the Tatars. These were able to conquer the hitherto Christian land of Anatolia, and in May 1453 they captured Constantinople, which from then on became the capital of the Ottoman sultans, the successors of the earlier caliphate in the leadership of the Islamic jihad. The Ottomans in the Balkans and the Islamized Tatars in Russia resumed the attempt to conquer Europe, this time from the East, and for a while seemed to be within sight of success.