Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland
Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland
Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland
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DEFINING AND DEFENDING BELIEVERS t 207<br />
time or any place. Quran 9:5—“Slay the idolaters wherever you<br />
find them”—is as broad a permission <strong>for</strong> war against the infidels<br />
as can be imagined. In the traditional Muslim underst<strong>and</strong>ing of the<br />
passage, it was thought to have abrogated all earlier limitations on<br />
the use of violence against nonbelievers.<br />
It was the thrust of these texts, <strong>and</strong> of the body of hadith that<br />
grew up around them that led Muslim jurists to divide the world<br />
into the Abode of <strong>Islam</strong> (Dar al-<strong>Islam</strong>), where <strong>Islam</strong>ic law <strong>and</strong><br />
sovereignty prevailed, <strong>and</strong> the Abode of War (Dar al-Harb), l<strong>and</strong>s<br />
that were not yet subjected to the moral <strong>and</strong> political authority of<br />
<strong>Islam</strong>, as inevitably they must in this triumphalist theology. In theory,<br />
the Abode of <strong>Islam</strong> is in a permanent state of warfare with the<br />
Abode of War, as the very name suggests, at least until the latter<br />
submits, <strong>and</strong> jihad is the instrument by which that subjection will<br />
be accomplished. Hostilities between the two spheres may be suspended<br />
by armistice or truce, but they can never be concluded by<br />
peace, only by submission.<br />
A systematically framed doctrine of jihad emerges in the work of<br />
the Muslim jurist al-Shaybani (d. 804). His Law of Nations became<br />
one of the foundation texts of Muslim thinking on the subject,<br />
<strong>and</strong> it was often glossed <strong>and</strong> exp<strong>and</strong>ed by later lawyers. It is<br />
worth noting that this <strong>for</strong>mulation of a doctrine of jihad occurred<br />
during the full tide of Muslim expansion, when the Abode of <strong>Islam</strong><br />
was growing ever larger by conquest. But it was also a period<br />
when the unity of the original umma was being replaced by local<br />
Muslim polities whose rulers found the conduct of a jihad a convenient<br />
<strong>and</strong> persuasive way of establishing their <strong>Islam</strong>ic legitimacy.<br />
Al-Shaybani <strong>and</strong> other early jurists appear, however, to have exercised<br />
a certain caution on the matter of hostilities with the unbelievers,<br />
which is the essence of holy war, <strong>and</strong> required that some<br />
degree of provocation be present. This was not so with his somewhat<br />
younger contemporary Shafii (d. 820). In his view, war with<br />
the Dar al-Harb was not an occasional circumstance but a permanent<br />
<strong>and</strong> continuous state since the cause was precisely the others’<br />
unbelief (kufr). Jihad was, in the words of a later commentator, “a<br />
duty enjoined (on Muslims) permanently till the end of time.” It<br />
was in fact this notion of obligation that much exercised the ju-