Islam and Jihad

Islam and  Jihad

A.G. Noorani

Leftword, 2002

No writing on Islam, its ideology and belief systems would be authentic, states A.G. Noorani, noted scholar and legal expert, unless one has a firm base and solid foundation in the language of the region where it was founded, viz.  Arabic.  Contrasting the approach of Asians and Arabs to Koran, A.G. Noorani in his slim but highly erudite work, “Islam and Jihad” quotes Heikal: “Asian Muslims tended to take the Koran literally, while Arabs were more inclined to interpret it.  Reading the texts in their own language enabled Arabs to set it in historical context, keeping  in mind observations by religious authorities, but Asians were less able to look beyond it – partly because other works had not been translated into their languages, but more importantly because the Arabic language was the tongue of Islam.  Deprived of linguistic context the Koran inevitably takes on a slightly different character, forcing non-Arab readers to rely more on the texts than on the way the ideas are expressed.”   Adding to this handicap of our understanding of Islam  is the long-running and almost unending campaign of western ideologues, poets and literatures – Dante, Gibbon, Milton, Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Byron, Shelley and Thackeray all contributed  their mite and buttressed Europe’s age-old antipathy towards Islam – against Islam which has been carried forward to this day by western historians, political scientists, political leaders and journalists.   A.G. Noorani calls this carriage of ideas “the burden of history”.   The rest of the non-Islamic, including third world societies such as India, simply import this anti-Islamic propaganda through their English language press which wields a disproportionate amount of influence in shaping political opinion in these countries.

As the back cover of the book announces, A.G. Noorani deals with questions which engage the minds of non-Muslims, such as, What is it about Islam that provokes so quick and unrestrained a response?  What is the meaning of Jihad and is it synonymous with warfare?  Is there a concept of religious tolerance and pluralist society in Islam? And, how can Islam respond to the challenge of modernity?  Noorani traces the antipathy of West towards Islam to the near success of,  first the Arabian army and naval fleet and then the Turkish forces in conquering the entire Europe.  Edward Gibbon writing in 1781 recounted collective fears of Europeans when he wrote in his “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, “A victorious line of march had been prolonged above a thousand miles from the rock of Gibraltar to the banks of the Loire; the repetition of an equal space would have carried the Saracens to the confines of Poland and the Highlands of Scotland; the Rhine is not more impassable than Nile or Euphrates and the Arabian fleet might have sailed without a naval combat into the mouth of the Thames.  Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools  of oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to the circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelations of Muhammad”.  This was the “spectre of Islam” which was haunting Europe in the eighth century, just a 100 years after the death of Prophet Mohammad.  

But these prognostications were unrealised as Charles Martel defeated at Poitiers the forces of Abd al-Rahman in 732.    Even though the Arabs returned a few years later, their expulsion from France was completed by 759.  But some parts of Europe like Spain had experienced Arab rule which was nearly eight centuries, that is, from the eighth to the fifteenth centuries.  Then came the turn of the Turks to conquer Europe.  After Constantinople fell to their forces in 1453, the Turks reached the gates of Vienna twice in 1529 and in 1683.  In the 19^th Century, the Ottoman empire spread across North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and parts of Balkans.  The Ottoman empire was liquidated only after the end of first World War in 1919.  It is anybody’s guess, what would have happened had the Sultan sided with the allies rather than Germany?

In Noorani’s view, it is this near conquest of Europe by the Muslim armies – Arabs and Turks – which has shaped the attitude of Europeans towards Islam.  The envy and anger manifested itself in the writings of some of the greatest writers of Europe.  Dante in his “Inferno” consigns Muhammad and his disciple Ali to the eighth circle of Hell!  A.G.Noorani  quotes copiously from historians and political scientists to support his claim, which even Renaissance and Reformation in Europe could not obliterate.  Noorani asserts that Islamophobia predates 9/11, which only brought to the surface again the deep – rooted prejudices of the west against Islam.

It is against this backdrop that Noorani navigates the tricky terrain of the Islamic notion of “Jihad”.  He points out that the notion of Jihad or holy war had ceased to exist in the Muslim world after the 10^th century until it was revived by American support and encouragement in the fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan in 1979. Evidence also seems to support the veracity of this claim.  Except perhaps of the movement for revival of the Khalifat, none of the political movements in the Islamic world have been wholly influenced by the notion of jihad.  Not the national  movement in Algeria to evict the French colonial power, nor in Iran, whose democratically elected government in the 50s was overthrown in a coup sponsored by Anglo-American governments, who felt threatened by the nationalisation policy of the Iranian government. The Palestinian campaign was also completely secular; in fact, one of its tallest leaders, George Habbash, who led the militant Marxist, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was a Christian.  

       

 It was CIA, Saudi Intelligence and ISI of Pakistan which combined together to set up the Pan Islamic Mujahidin groups, with fighters from many countries pouring in to evict the Soviets from Afghanistan. Once life has been given to a movement of this kind, it invents and reinvents its purpose and rationale and very rarely do these movements confine themselves to the original objectives of its creators. 

What is the theological meaning of the word ‘Jihad’?  The Author says, the highest form of jihad is to speak the truth in the face of an unjust ruler quoting  an authenticated saying of the Prophet Muhammad.  Noorani takes the aid of one Dr. Roland E. Miller, an Islamist to distinguish between the spiritual Jihad  and the worldly, physical form of  jihad.  Spiritually, it means engaging in a battle against sin and Satan in one’s own life.  This is greater jihad.  Applied to the physical realm, the exertion means righteous warfare.  This is called the lesser jihad.  The greater jihad is fighting one’s own animal tendencies, to bring the passions under control.  But, man has a tendency to overestimate himself and to underestimate his spiritual potential.  He has a tendency to control and exploit his environment and other human beings.  Jihad must be waged against such tendencies.

This theological enunciation of the concept of jihad is good enough. But what explains the widespread belief that it is Jihad in its most virulent form which continues to inspire Muslims to wage wars and in the present times, acts of terrorism against non-Muslims? The ‘Jihad’ has also got a moral purpose – justice for the underprivileged and in this backdrop jihad has also come to mean the advocacy of social justice in a widening circle that also includes economic participation and prosperity for Muslims and non-Muslims as well.  This mixture of modern, secular aims with religious precepts which accounts for the aforementioned popular perception among non-Muslims  of the Muslims being inspired by religious jihad.  What is a legally-valid form of protest – even if violent – in other contexts is being seen as religiously inspired when the same occurs in Islamic societies.

But the author blames the Muslims too for not reading the pronouncements of the Prophet and the Quran in the modern context.  For instance, the Prophet had said that he is not a Muslim who eats his fill while his neighbour goes hungry.  In the opinion the A.G.Noorani, this 1400 old injunction must mean the economic uplift of the underprivileged in the present context.  But economic equality and rights of the underprivileged do not mean much to the rulers of present-day Muslims States.