The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam From the Extremists (30 page)

The idea that the more virtuous position is to cultivate for- giveness and mercy is entirely alien to puritans. This is why

the problem is one of fundamental attitudes. The attitude of the puritans is that real Islamic virtue is to fight and conquer. Puritans are interested in focusing on and inflating what sepa- rates Muslims from non-Muslims instead of trying to find common ground in forgiveness and mercy. The attitude adopted by puritans is entirely inconsistent with the Qur’anic advice to seek to make the worst of enemies into affectionate close companions through good deeds.

Perhaps the biggest problem of all is that puritans fail to recognize that the absence of peace is identified in the Qur’an as a negative and undesirable condition. The absence of peace is described throughout the Qur’an as a trial and tribulation, as a curse or punishment, or, sometimes, as a necessarily evil. But the absence of peace is never in and of itself a positive or desirable condition—it is not a moral condition that ought to be desired or preferred by Muslims. War (
qital
) is portrayed in the Qur’an as a product of human follies or weaknesses—it is often cast as a product of humans succumbing to their whims or as a state induced by Satanic temptations. Therefore, as mentioned earlier, the Qur’an asserts that if it had not been for Divine benevolence, many mosques, churches, synagogues, and homes would have been destroyed because of wars caused by the ignorance and pettiness of human beings.
14
Often, God mercifully intervenes to put out the fires of war, and saves human beings from follies that would have resulted in further violence.
15
This moral orientation that the Qur’an strives to in- still in Muslims of war as a folly, an evil, and a corruption is curiously absent in the puritans’ consciousness.

Puritans entirely ignore the Qur’anic teaching that the act of destroying or spreading ruin on this earth is one of the gravest sins possible—
fasad fi al-ard,
which means to corrupt the earth by destroying the beauty of creation. This is considered an ul- timate act of blasphemy against God.
16
Those who corrupt the

earth by destroying lives, property, and nature are designated as
mufsidun
(corruptors and evildoers), who, in effect, wage war against God by dismantling the very fabric of existence.
17
Cor- rupting the earth entails the act of undoing and breaking down the ties and relationships that God has established through cre- ation by disrupting the process of human intercourse and by destroying the very possibility of human beings coming “to know one another” through interactive social dynamics.
18

Most importantly, according to the Qur’an, war by its very nature is the primary contributor to this process of corruption that plagues and ultimately destroys human beings. This is ex- actly why Islamic theology teaches that an integral part of the Divine covenant given to human beings is to occupy them- selves with building and creating, not ruining and destroying life. This is why the Islamic civilization excelled in the sci- ences, arts, philosophy, law, architecture, and trade, and this is also why the Islamic historical experience was primarily con- cerned not with war-making, but with civilization-building. In order to better understand the Qur’anic principles sur- rounding the issue of war, there are several significant prece- dents to consider. The early Muslims living in Mecca as a minority were not allowed to respond to Meccan oppression by taking military action until God gave Muslims specific per- mission to do so. Muslims in Mecca had endured oppression for many years, and despite the impatient urgings of Muslims, the Prophet would not allow them to respond with violence. At one point the Prophet allowed a group of his most op- pressed and powerless followers to migrate and seek sanctuary

with al-Najashi, the Christian king of Abyssinia.

God’s authorization to Muslims to migrate from Mecca and use force in self-defense came in the form of a Qur’anic revela- tion addressing the Prophet and his Muslim community. The Qur’an was careful to note that Muslims were given permis-

sion to fight (to engage in
qital
) only because they had become the victims of aggression.
19
Furthermore, the Qur’an instructed Muslims to fight only those who fought them and not to transgress by fighting those who sought to make peace with Muslims.
20
According to the Qur’anic revelation, if the enemy ceased hostilities and sought peace, Muslims were to seek peace as well. The Qur’an explained that God never prohibits Muslims from making peace with those who do not fight Muslims, but God does prohibit Muslims from making peace with those who have expelled Muslims from their homes and who continue to persecute them.
21

Elsewhere, the Qur’an pronounced a stronger mandate in stating: “If your enemy inclines toward peace, then you should seek peace and trust in God.”
2
2
Moreover, the Qur’an instructs Muslims not to haughtily turn away unbelievers who seek to make peace with Muslims, and reminds Muslims that, “If God would have willed, He would have given the unbelievers power over you [Muslims], and they would have fought you [Muslims]. Therefore, if they [the unbelievers] withdraw from you and refuse to fight you, and instead, send you guarantees of peace, know that God has not given you a license [to fight them].”
23
Furthermore, the Qur’an warned Muslims against adopting a belligerent attitude in which excuses are made to pursue war. If a people offer Muslims peace, according to the Qur’an, it is arrogant and immoral for Muslims to cite the fact that such a people are not Muslims as an excuse to continue fighting them.

In other words, Muslims should not invent impediments to making peace. Doing so is an indication that Muslims have succumbed to the temptations of the mundane instead of stay- ing focused on the temporal and Divine. In other words, the rejection of a just peace could be an indication that Muslims have lost sight of the Divine objectives with which they are

charged, and that they have become distracted by earthly temptations of power and dominance.
24
In this Qur’anic dis- course, failure to seek peace without just cause is considered arrogant and sinful because the desire or willingness to engage in peace is a Divine blessing. God has the power, if God so wills, to inspire in the hearts of non-Muslims a desire for peace, and Muslims must treat this as a blessing and respond with gratitude and appreciation, not defiance and arrogance.
25
These Qur’anic discourses on peace would hardly make sense if Muslims were ordered to be in a permanent state of war with nonbelievers, and if nonbelievers were expected to be a permanent enemy and perpetual legitimate target. From the moderate perspective, puritans fail to understand that it is peace, not war, that is favored in the Qur’an. Puritans fail to exploit opportunities for peace and fail to understand that peace is a gift from God, not to be wasted except for com- pelling reasons. Moderates maintain that the idea of two abodes constantly at war with each other, even if it was a his- torical reality for a period of time, is clearly inconsistent with

Qur’anic morality.

It is not surprising that to all of this puritans respond that the “peace verses” in the Qur’an have been abrogated by a command to wage war against the unbelievers.
26
Per this logic, a single verse, 3:85, commanding Muslims to wage war against unbelievers has canceled out and voided all the verses in the Qur’an that speak about making or seeking after peace. This amounts to saying that a single verse abrogated at least thirty verses that call for peace. But even more, puritans ignore that even the so-called war verses in the Qur’an always add the qualification not to transgress and not to become unjust. In fact, there is not a single verse in the Qur’an that calls for an unmitigated, unqualified, or unreserved obligation to fight

the unbelievers. As I noted earlier, this abrogation claim is a very whimsical way of dealing with Qur’anic teachings.

When the Qur’an says that God does not like aggressors, this must be taken seriously and interpreted reasonably. We should keep in mind that every hostile and belligerent individ- ual can twist the facts sufficiently until he comes to believe that he is the victim and not the aggressor. But the Qur’anic command must be dealt with in good faith, and the onus is al- ways on the one using violence to scrutinize his conscience and make sure that he has not fallen prey to the mythology of victimization, by which one always sees himself as the ag- grieved party. This is one of the most problematic aspects of the puritan creed—they read history in such a way that Mus- lims are always made to be the victims and non-Muslims are always made to be the aggressors. As a result, they render all the Qur’anic commands on nonaggression simply irrelevant— after all, according to the puritans, Muslims are always the ag- grieved party.

I think it is important to note that most moderates are not pacifists. They do recognize that at times it becomes necessary to fight in self-defense, but they read this narrowly. Fighting to wrong historical grievances and avenge injustices that oc- curred centuries ago is often not self-defense at all, but thinly veiled aggression. Fighting in self-defense has to be propor- tional and restrained, in the sense that it should repel the im- pending danger without inflicting more damage than is necessary to terminate the threat. For instance, if an assailant aggressively fires a bullet, responding to the assailant by firing off a volley of missiles would not be a restrained or propor- tional response. Self-defense must be limited to fighting the group of people who invaded and robbed Muslims of their rights or land. In Islamic law, self-defense is not an excuse for

open warfare all around the globe without any restraints or limitations. Of course, the teachings and restrictions of Islamic law are of direct relevance to many conflicts in which Muslims are involved, including Chechnya and Kashmir, among many others.

Moderates take the Prophet’s instructions about not killing noncombatants and other limitations on the conduct of war- fare very seriously. Therefore, moderates recognize that even if the cause is just, if the limits and restraints are not observed, while the case might remain just the war could become unjust because of the aggressions committed. In other words, aggres- sion is not simply an issue of
why
the war is being fought, but also of
how
the war is being fought. So, for instance, if non- combatants and places of worship are intentionally targeted, the war becomes unjust.

But there is a further dimension to consider here—one re- lated to acts of corrupting the earth, as the Qur’an refers to it. The classical jurists, nearly without exception, argued that those who attack by stealth, while targeting noncombatants in order to terrorize the resident and wayfarer. are corrupters of the earth. “Resident and wayfarer” was a legal expression that meant that whether the attackers terrorize people in their urban centers or terrorize travelers, the result was the same: all such attacks constitute a corruption of the earth. The legal term given to people who act this way was
muharibun
(those who wage war against society), and the crime is called the crime of
hiraba
(waging war against society). The crime of
hiraba
was so serious and repugnant that, according to Islamic law, those guilty of this crime were considered enemies of hu- mankind and were not to be given quarter or sanctuary any- where.

The classical jurists repeatedly noted that it is simply be- neath a Muslim to attack the defenseless, and that when at-

tacks are carried out by stealth and without warning, the in- escapable effect will be the spread of terror, the destruction of peace and tranquility, and the undoing of God’s will. The re- sult will be the corruption of God’s earth because people will not be able to cultivate goodness or work together to establish mercy. This crime was considered to be particularly repulsive because people who commit it observe no sanctity and honor no right. As a crime, it severely threatens all forms of peaceful intercourse and completely undermines the ethical obligation that people strive to know one another. As the classical jurists put it, this crime dismantles the fabric of life and, by spreading terror, leads to the complete corruption of God’s earth.

In the modern age, it would seem that terrorism is the quintessential crime of corrupting the earth. When violence is committed against the defenseless, by stealth and without warning, the net effect is to spread fear and horror among God’s people. Whether one calls the crime
hiraba
or terrorism, it is fundamentally the same thing. Those who are familiar with the classical tradition will find the parallels between what were described as crimes of
hiraba
and what is often called terrorism today nothing short of remarkable. The classical ju- rists considered crimes such as assassinations, setting fires, or poisoning water wells—that could indiscriminately kill the in- nocent—as offenses of
hiraba
. Furthermore, hijacking meth- ods of transportation or crucifying people in order to spread fear and terror are also crimes of
hiraba
. Importantly, Islamic law strictly prohibited the taking of hostages, the mutilation of corpses, and torture.

Islamic law was unusually benevolent toward rebels against the government who had an ideology or cause. Such individu- als were not considered common criminals deserving of harsh or severe penalties. However, rebels who committed atrocities such as those described above, regardless of their ideological

cause or justification, were treated as the worst criminals. Frankly, in light of this Islamic legal tradition, the commission by puritans of terrorist acts that are explicitly and specifically prohibited by Islamic law defies comprehension. For instance, Islamic law not only prohibits the taking of hostages, but even prohibits the killing of enemy prisoners of war in retaliation if the enemy murders Muslims hostages or prisoners. This posi- tion emerged from the fact that the Qur’an repeatedly reminds Muslims that no one should be made to suffer for the sins of another.
27