JIHAD

The word jihad is derived from the Arabic root jahada, meaning "to strive" or "to exert oneself" toward some goal. In this general sense, jihad could mean striving to achieve something with no particular moral value, or even a negative value. The Qur?an itself twice uses the verb when describing the efforts of pagan parents to induce their Muslim-convert children to return to polytheism (29:8, 31:15). Other occurrences of this verbal form and its derivatives, however, are limited to the struggle of the Muslims to attain and maintain their faith. Thus, jihad has come to mean in the Islamic context only a virtuous struggle, toward some praiseworthy end, as defined by religion. It is therefore often linked with the phrase fi sabil Allah, meaning "struggle in the path of God."

The term jihad occurs infrequently in what are believed to be the Meccan revelations of the Qur?an. During this first part of the Prophet's mission, lasting some twelve years, jihad is used in the sense of cultivating personal piety, perseverance in the preaching of Islam, and forbearance and patient suffering in the face of persecution by the Muslims' enemies. Qur?an 25:52, for example, advises Muslims to "listen not to the unbelievers, but strive against them with it [the Qur?an] with the utmost effort." There is no recorded instance during the Meccan period in which the Prophet ordered or allowed his followers to use violence against their enemies. Jihad during this period meant exclusively nonviolent resistance.

Following the Prophet's migration to Medina (the Hijra), occurrences of jihad increase in the Qur?an. While some of these verses may be understood as still referring to nonviolent struggle, the majority clearly refer to physical force or fighting (qital). Qur?an 22:39 is believed by many scholars to be the first verse on this topic. It permits the Muslims to retaliate with force against those who continue to attack and persecute them. A subsequent series of verses (2:190–191) converts the permission of self-defense into an obligation, with the argument that "oppression is worse than killing." Then, after eight years of warfare between the Muslims and their polytheist enemies, the Jewish tribes of Medina, and the Christian empire of the Byzantines, the Qur?an seems to enjoin a war of conversion against all remaining polytheist Arabs (9:5) and a war of subjugation against Christians and Jews (9:29).

The Classical Theory

Following the Prophet's death, Muslim scholars produced a large body of literature analyzing Qur?anic terms and collecting traditions of the Prophet as part of their effort to codify divine law (shari?a). Defining and understanding jihad, a concept with complex religious and moral significance, naturally occupied a great deal of their attention. The scholars outlined a number of different types of jihad, all of which may be grouped into two basic categories, the spiritual jihad and the physical jihad. The objects of the first type included one's own soul (nafs), whose evil inclinations had to be overcome, or Satan (Shaitan), whose attempts to sow doubt and confusion and to lead the believer astray had to be perpetually fought. The physical jihad was aimed at unbelievers outside the Muslim community, as well as hypocrites and trouble-makers within the Muslim ranks. Its goal was to establish the supremacy of divine law and thereby to promote justice and social welfare according to Islamic values. In this sense, jihad was closely related to the Qur?anic injunction that Muslims "command the right and forbid the wrong" (amr bi?l-ma?ruf wa nahy ?an al-munkar).

The classical scholars also listed various means by which both the spiritual and the physical jihad could be conducted, including by the heart, tongue, pen, hand, and sword. Some traditions ascribed to Muhammad profess the merits of jihad conducted by the tongue, as in one hadith in which the Prophet said, "The greatest jihad is a word of truth spoken to a tyrant." Other traditions describe the jihad of the pen, that is, of scholars, as more meritorious than the jihad of the sword. One of the most famous such hadiths declares the spiritual jihad to be the greater jihad (jihad al-akbar) as compared to the physical jihad, which is the lesser jihad (jihad al-asghar).

But the most widespread use of the term jihad in classical Islamic thought was in the sense of a divinely sanctioned struggle, through war if necessary, to establish Islamic sovereignty and thereby to propagate the Islamic faith to unbelievers. In classical jurisprudence (fiqh), the dominant strand of intellectual activity in these early centuries, the chapters on jihad in legal treatises contained rules for the declaration, conduct, and conclusion of such religiopolitical wars.

At the heart of the classical theory was the division of the world into two basic spheres, dar al-islam (land of Islam), a unitary state comprising the community of Muslims, living by the shari?a, and led by the just ruler (imam); and dar al-harb (land of war), where Islamic law did not prevail, leading presumably to anarchy and moral corruption. It was commonly understood that Muslims had an individual obligation (fard?ayn) to defend dar al-islam whenever it was threatened by aggression from dar al-harb. This type of war received little attention in the chapters on jihad.

The jurists' attention was focused on what may be called the expansionist jihad. The imam was obliged to undertake a jihad whenever the conditions of the Islamic state permitted him to reduce dar al-harb and bring its lands and peoples into dar al-islam. This was a collective duty of the Muslim community (fard kifaya), one that required participation only from those financially and physically capable of undertaking it. One school of Sunni jurisprudence, the Shafi?i, interposed a third category between the other two, dar al-sulh (land of truce), comprising peoples with which the Muslims had a treaty of truce, which suspended, but did not end, the jihad obligation. The maximum duration of such a truce, according to most scholars, was ten years, although nothing prevented the imam from renewing the truce if he deemed it in the Muslims' interest.

The jihad in dar al-harb, in the view of the scholars, was aimed at bringing Islam's higher civilization to those unaware of it, not territorial conquest or plunder. Thus, they elaborated rules on what Muslim armies may or may not do in dar al-harb. The basis for such moral injunctions was the Qur?an's general command, "Do not transgress limits, for God loves not transgressors" (2:190), which was given greater specificity by the practice of the Prophet and his first four successors. Before the start of any attack, the enemy was to be offered the choice of accepting Islam, in which case no further action against them was permissible. If they refused, they were to be offered dhimmi (protected) status as an autonomous community within dar al-islam. This option, deriving from Qur?an 9:29, initially pertained to Jews and Christians, but was steadily expanded to include Zoroastrians, Hindus, and Buddhists as the Islamic frontiers expanded. Only the polytheist Arabs who had fought so bitterly against Muhammad and the early Muslim community were excluded from the dhimmi option and forced to convert according to Qur?an 9:5.

In fighting the enemy, Muslim soldiers were to avoid directly targeting women and children. Some jurists included old men, peasants, hermits, merchants, the insane, and other males who do not ordinarily take part in fighting on the list of prohibited targets. According to most scholars, all able-bodied adult males could be killed at the discretion of the imam, whether they were fighting or had been taken prisoner. The scholars permitted the use of all types of weapons or military tactics that were necessary to overcome the enemy, including laying siege to fortresses, firing incendiary devices, cutting off the water supply, or flooding. The exceptions were certain practices that were categorically prohibited by the Prophet, such as killing by mutilation or torture, burning individuals alive, and violating oaths or grants of security to soldiers or envoys.

The difference in Shi?ite views on jihad was that only the righteous imam, a descendant of ?Ali, could lead the expansionist jihad. Because the line of imams ended with the disappearance of the twelfth imam in the ninth century, according to the dominant strand of Shi?ism, only a defensive jihad to repulse enemy aggression is theoretically possible.

The classical theory was already outdated as it was being formulated in the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries. With the launching of the Reconquista in Spain and the Crusades in Syria and Palestine, the expansionist jihad gave way to a defensive struggle. In the nineteenth century, as European imperialism advanced throughout much of the Muslim world, the defensive aspects of jihad assumed paramount importance.

Modern Interpretations

The Christian missionary activity that accompanied British rule in India led some Indian Muslims to undertake major revisions of classical notions of jihad. The literature produced by these writers is unmistakably apologetic in tone, straining to answer the charge of Christian writers that Islam was spread by the sword. According to the apologists, the wars of early Islam were purely defensive in nature, and jihad in modern times should be largely divested of its military connotations and reduced mainly to its spiritual aspects.

Such writings inevitably created a backlash among other Muslim interpreters. Two broad reactions may be identified, the modernist and the fundamentalist. The modernists' goal is not so much to respond to criticisms of early Islamic history and dogma, but to reinterpret jihad in ways that make it compatible with the principles of modern international law. Thus, they challenge the classical theory's conception of a dar al-islam in opposition to a dar al-harb, pointing out that such categories are nowhere to be found in the Qur?an or hadith. If these two basic sources for Islamic law and ethics are properly analyzed, they claim, jihad cannot be properly understood as a war to spread Islam or subjugate unbelievers. It is waged only in self-defense, in conformity with international law, when the lives, property, and honor of Muslims are at stake.

The fundamentalists also appeal to the Qur?an and hadith to challenge what they consider various false understandings of jihad. First, they refute the mystical strand of thought that emphasizes the superiority of the inner, spiritual jihad over the outer, physical jihad. By the end of the Qur?anic revelation, according to them, jihad meant a struggle, through fighting if necessary, to establish the Islamic order over all unbelievers. The more tolerant and pacific texts relating to unbelievers were abrogated by the later, more belligerent verses. But the category of unbelievers in fundamentalist writings includes nominal Muslims as well as non-Muslims. The transformation of hypocritical Muslim societies into true Islamic communities, led by true Muslim leaders, is the immediate goal of most fundamentalist ideologies. Although some writers continue to speak of dar al-Islam and dar al-harb, the jihad to spread Islam beyond its current borders seems for most fundamentalists to be a secondary concern.

As for the proper conduct of war today, the vast majority of Muslim scholars agree that principles of international humanitarian law are compatible with Islamic teachings. These include the notion of noncombatant immunity and the prohibition against inhumane forms of killing. Muslim terrorist groups have, however, sought to justify the killing of civilians on Islamic grounds, but their arguments and tactics have been condemned by mainstream scholars.

Finally, many Muslims today are trying to reclaim the broad meaning of jihad as "effort" or "struggle" apart from war. Increasingly, we find references to such struggles as the "jihad for literacy" or the "jihad for economic development."

See alsoConflict and Violence ; Terrorism .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hamidullah, Muhammad. Muslim Conduct of State. 7th ed. Lahore: Shaykh Muhammad Ashraf, 1961.

Johnson, James Turner, and Kelsay, John, eds. Cross, Crescent, and Sword: The Justification and Limitation of War in Western and Islamic Tradition. New York: Greenwood, 1990.

Kelsay, John, and Johnson, James Turner, eds. Just War and Jihad: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives on War and Peace in Western and Islamic Tradition. New York: Greenwood, 1991.

Khadduri, Majid. War and Peace in the Law of Islam. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1955.

Peters, Rudolph. Islam and Colonialism: The Doctrine of Jihad in Modern History. The Hague: Mouton, 1979.

Peters, Rudolph. Jihad in Classical and Modern Islam. Princeton: Markus Wiener, 1996.

Sohail H. Hashmi