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 209<br />
In the centuries after Muhammad, the combination of juridically<br />
imposed conditions <strong>and</strong> political realities has diminished the<br />
effectiveness of jihad as a practical instrument of policy, though it<br />
remains a potent propag<strong>and</strong>a weapon both <strong>for</strong> Muslim fundamentalists<br />
to br<strong>and</strong>ish <strong>and</strong> <strong>for</strong> their Western opponents to decry. Muslim<br />
jurists have rarely agreed on the exact fulfillment of the conditions<br />
they have laid down <strong>for</strong> a genuine jihad (<strong>and</strong> Muslim public<br />
opinion even less often), while the umma on whose behalf it is to<br />
be waged has now been divided, perhaps irretrievably, into nationstates<br />
that generally subscribe to a quite different (<strong>and</strong> decidedly<br />
non-<strong>Islam</strong>ic) version of international law.<br />
Just Wars <strong>and</strong> Crusades<br />
While the classical <strong>Islam</strong>ic legal tradition prohibits all war (e.g.,<br />
tribal warfare, raids, blood feuds) except on religious grounds,<br />
Western ethical theories, on the contrary, have sanctioned “just<br />
wars” on certain natural law grounds but never on the basis of<br />
religious ones. This latter attitude is altogether quite modern <strong>and</strong><br />
altogether secular since most religious communities have permitted<br />
<strong>and</strong> even encouraged war in the name of God. Yahweh was a<br />
warrior God (Exod. 5:3; Isa. 42:13), <strong>and</strong> the Bible is not unnaturally<br />
filled with conflicts that are palpably holy wars. The Israelites,<br />
quite like the pre-<strong>Islam</strong>ic Arabs, even carried their God with<br />
them into conflict on occasion (Num. 10:35–36). Deuteronomy<br />
20–21 provides rules <strong>for</strong> war, with God as the leader, <strong>and</strong> its terms<br />
are not very dissimilar from those dictated by Muhammad, except<br />
there is no agreeable dhimma status granted to the Israelites’ enemies.<br />
With the progressive loss of Jewish sovereignty (<strong>and</strong> so the<br />
capacity to employ <strong>for</strong>ce against its enemies), war eventually became<br />
an anticipated eschatological event among the <strong>Jews</strong>, <strong>and</strong><br />
then, with the diminution of messianic enthusiasm, a school exercise<br />
<strong>for</strong> the rabbis.<br />
With the 1948 foundation in Palestine of a “Jewish state”—the<br />
ambiguity of the expression is as profound as it is in “<strong>Islam</strong>ic<br />
state”—the question has been reopened <strong>for</strong> <strong>Jews</strong>. Israel’s battles