Sunday, March 02, 2003

 

Where Vengeance is Written in Blood

In a remarkable book, Woman in the Muslim Unconscious, the Morroccan scholar Fatna Sabbah writes these daring words:

"I would like to say to the young men formed in our Muslim civilisation that it is highly improbable that they can value liberty - by which I mean, relating to another person as an act of free will, whether it be in bed, in erotic play, or in political debates in party cells or parliament - if they are not conscious of the political import of the hatred and degradation of women in this culture."

I recalled these fine words when reading a recent article highlighting the continuing atrocities taking place in the name of patriarchal and tribal honour. It describes the intense anguish of a Ms. Khouri, whose newly-released book recalls how her childhood friend, Dalia, was brutally killed at the hands of her own father.

See Winds of Change.NET for details.
posted by Adil 10:54 PM

Saturday, February 01, 2003

 

Destination UK

Imagine that you are somebody who has fought for the Taliban forces in the rugged, dusty hills of Afghanistan against American and British forces. After the fall of Kabul, you decide to leave for Britain where you intend to apply for asylum. Once in Britain, permission is granted for you to stay, and you are let loose into the country, with the help of legal aid - thanks to those kind British taxpayers.

Except you don't have to escape into the realms of fantasy. Not when real life offers up a living, breathing example of such astonishing madness.

For more information, see Winds of Change.NET.
posted by Adil 2:36 PM

 

When Edward Said met Ibn Warraq

Recall the apt words of Stephen Schwartz on Said's book Orientalism:

"Said's Orientalism, a ridiculous imposture from its first page to its last, is now a standard text in Anglo-American universities, but reads like the product of a rather dense college student who has just discovered Marxism; there can be no more telling condemnation of the present state of the American academy than the ascendancy of Said.”

Indeed.

Now, Ibn Warraq has turned his attention towards the Saidian polemicists and penned a rather exhaustive essay decrying the pretensions of Edward Said towards harbouring any conceptions of intellectual scholarship. For more information, see Winds of Change.NET.
posted by Adil 2:19 PM

Sunday, January 26, 2003

 

Winds of Change

Joe Katzman, being the true gentleman that he is, has kindly invited me to be part of an all-new team on his excellent site Winds of Change.NET. When you get an offer like that, you know what to say. (Hint: dammit, yes!). In other words, if you're looking for me on the net somewhere, well, that's the one place where I'll be bloggin' away alongside some startlingly intelligent people. And when I say intelligent, I mean fearsomely intelligent. Crumbs! How am I supposed to compete with that?

So, yeah, I'm feeling pretty honoured to be invited by Joe. And for the ice-breaker, you'll find my first post here.

I'll continue to update this site by linking to my blogs over at Winds of Change.NET. Join us, won't you?
posted by Adil 10:23 PM

Tuesday, August 06, 2002

 

Licensed To Kill

In the Urdu language, there is a word, “sharif”, which means “innocent”. It also has another meaning: it is commonly used to connote “honour”, which can easily extend to the term's sexual subset.

Such usage is a symptom of the widespread social reality in Pakistan. In Pakistan's Dawn newspaper, Irfan Hussain bemoans the tragic state of his country:

The New York Times recently carried the tragic story of Naseem Mai who committed suicide by drinking a bottle of pesticide in public view when the police allowed her rapist to escape. In the next village, the tribal council ordered the rape of Mukhtaran Bibi by four men. This shocking incident was carried by the media around the world, and forced the government to act.

These have been the rare cases where the police have been forced to take some action because of a public outcry. Normally, because of social pressure, women do not even report rape, knowing that if they do, there is every chance that they will be ostracized or be accused of zina themselves. In a patriarchal, backward society like Pakistan, a woman who has been raped has virtually no chance of getting married.

Our treatment of minorities continues to tarnish our image abroad, specially the pernicious blasphemy laws are used to settle scores or usurp property. Scores of Ahmadis languish in jail for the 'crime' of uttering the traditional Muslim greeting; illiterate Christian boys have been accused and sentenced to death for writing supposedly blasphemous sentences; and Hindu girls have been raped by landlords in Sindh in a sickening reprise of the old 'droit de seigneur'.

All this is at the everyday level and mostly goes either unreported or makes the inner pages of the local press. The killings that grab the headlines are generally those relating to sectarian and ethnic terrorism that have become part and parcel of the fabric of our lives. Of late, westerners are being targeted by terrorists seeking to discredit this government while simultaneously lashing out at the American-led coalition that has destroyed the Taliban and is attempting to root out Al Qaeda.

The horrific case of Mukhtara Bibi, where she was gang raped by way of a "punishment" issued from a tribal council, is yet another demonstration of how some women have to bear the brunt of the humility even if they result from the misdeeds of a male relative. Leela Jacinto, of ABCNEWS.com, has an interesting discussion on yet another case of an honour-crime:

On a hot afternoon in April 1999 in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore, Hina Jilani, a respected Supreme Court lawyer, was meeting with her client Samia Sarwar in her office when Sarwar's mother stormed into the premises accompanied by two men.

Sarwar, a 29-year-old mother of two, was seeking a divorce from her violently abusive husband. But her conservative family viewed the looming divorce as a slight against the family honor and Sarwar had told Jilani that she feared for her life.

It's the sort of threat that Pakistani lawyers dealing with women's issues take very seriously and on her part, Jilani was taking no chances.

Her client had fled her Peshawar home two months earlier and agreed to meet her mother — with no male relatives present — in the law offices to collect some documents needed for the divorce.

But when Sarwar's mother arrived at the offices that fateful afternoon, there were two men with her — an uncle and another man, Habibur Rehman, who claimed to be their driver.

The next few moments have been imprinted in Jilani's memory forever, and more than three years later, the feisty activist vividly recounts the event.

"It was a horrible incident, just horrible," says Jilani in a phone interview with ABCNEWS.com. "They walked into my office — it was after-office hours and I guess the security was lax. They entered the building, walked into my office and even as I asked the men to leave the room, the assassin (Rehman) shot her (Sarwar) in the head, killing her instantly. I was very close to her and I very nearly missed a bullet."

Irfan Hussain touches upon one of the problems that have exacerbated such an atrocious situation:

Naturally, these attacks make headlines around the world, and make Pakistan seem an impossibly violent and dangerous country. Many Pakistanis feel such a description to be exaggerated, but is it? According to a researcher, the number of murders in Pakistan has gone up to around 85,000 in the last two decades compared to just over 61,000 in the previous twenty years. He ascribes this rise to the Qisas and Diyat Laws introduced by the late military dictator, General Zia, in the early eighties.

Under these laws, blood money can let a killer off the hook if the family of the victim accepts the offer made by the assailant. In most murder cases in Pakistan, victims belong to the downtrodden classes and their families can be relatively easily bullied and bought off. Judges and police go along with this sham, thus lightening their workload, and killers go scot free.

Is there a connection between these different strands of violence in Pakistani society? Clearly there is: when there is virtually no deterrence, there is no respect for the law. And when even the law is loaded against specific sections of society (women and minorities), then there can be no protection for them. But perhaps the most important is the virtual absence of women from our public life: without their humanizing influence, the most brutish behaviour has been accepted as the norm. In a society where women have been locked away and deliberately kept backward, they can hardly modify and refine the macho, feudal image that is now the Pakistani role model.

In a patriarchal system, where the community is tightly-knit, and heavily dependent on a support network extending throughout one's kinship, individual identity tends to mutate into that of a group identity. Thus, the claims of the community against its members take priority over those of individuals against the community. Honour killings become a a byproduct of the most insular of such communities and societies, and are turned into an full-fledged instrument for correcting the imbalance of "shame" over "honour". Such communal insularity makes a mockery of even the most basic logic over cause and effect. Honour killings become treated as nothing more than "crimes of passion", thereby only inviting manslaughter at the most, instead of the premeditated murders sanctioned by the social community, which in reality they are.

And so, the Islamic law prevailing in Pakistan over such issues of women's rights has helped to worsen rather than to overturn such trends. Leela Jacinto writes:

While these problems dog the entire subcontinent, I.A. Rehman, director of the HRCP, says the situation in Pakistan is exacerbated by the fact that the political elite lacks the will to repeal the controversial Zinna laws, which were introduced in 1979 in a bid to "Islamize" the country.

Experts say the Zinna laws, which were passed by then military ruler Gen. Zia ul-Haq in an attempt to win the support of hardliners, inherently discriminate against women. A 1997 Women's Commission called for the repealing of the laws, but successive governments have shied from following the commission's proposals.

"Every government has had inquiries into the issue," says Farhat Bokhari of the Women's Rights Division of the New York-based Human Rights Watch. "There's no need for inquiries. It's evident the laws need to be repealed. The fact is, the Zinna laws obliterate the distinction between extra marital sex and rape, because rape requires a high level of evidence. So women are actually punished for rape because the laws criminalize extra marital sex."

While some experts believe that Musharraf, as a military dictator, could be in a better position to crackdown on Islamic extremists than an elected leader, Rehman says the failure of democracy in Pakistan has only exacerbated the situation. "There may be corrupt politicians in a democracy," he says. "But there can't be good rulers in a dictatorship."

Unfortunately, Rehman may be right. Musharraf can't even bring himself to repeal the blasphemy laws against so-called blasphemers, let alone overturn the strict laws governing half of Pakistan's population. I hope to proved utterly wrong and, frankly, the sooner the better.
posted by Adil 3:37 PM

 

Telling It Like It Is

A reader sends this in:

Adil,

I have been wrestling with the rights and wrongs of attitudes expressed by Muslim spokesmen, both here in the United States and around the world, since the World Trade Center attack last year. I am not a Muslim, or an expert on Islam, but I have been trying to understand how the world looks from an "Islamic" or "Arabic" perspective. I've wanted to understand why so much public commentary by Muslim spokesmen sounds wrong to my Western ears. I've concluded that much of the Islamic world is doing a poor job of facing up to some grim realities, and doing a good job of blaming everyone else (especially the US and Israel) for their self-inflicted injuries.

So here is my message to the Islamic world. I believe you need to do the following:

1) Acknowledge that every nation of significance that has embraced Islam as the state religion, and has tried to govern according to the laws of Sharia, is a miserable failure. Egypt, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia: These are totalitarian nations that repress their own citizens every bit as savagely as did the former Soviet Union. Citizens in these countries have no freedom, no rights, and no hope for a better life. They cannot speak freely. They can be arrested, imprisoned, tortured, or killed for any reason. The governing authorities can even order mass slaughter of their own people at will (witness Syria).

Part of the reason for the abject failure of these nations is the tribal origins of their peoples. After communism, tribalism has been responsible for more slaughter and suffering than any other single cause in history. Tribal communities are, by definition, barbarian. True civilization arises only when tribal limitations are relegated to the dustbin of history.

Another reason for their failure is Islam itself. The laws of Sharia assume that the highest principle of governance is justice, not freedom. Justice, in this case, means that decisions are made by religious authorities in consonance with the teachings of the Koran. There are no checks on the power of these authorities, as their mandate is given as coming straight from God. Thus Sharia forbids the notion of rule by the people, with laws being made by the people and their elected representatives.

In contrast, Western civilization holds freedom as the highest principle of governance. Government is by the people, for the people. Laws are made by the people and their elected representatives. Western civilization, and especially American civilization, is based on the concept of preserving freedom by limiting powers through a system of checks and balances. Laws are, deliberately, man made, not taken as coming from God, although religious (Judeo-Christian) teachings are influential in guiding legislation.

The bottom line is that no successful civilization of significant size can exist without the separation of church and state. The weight of history has demonstrated this over and over again, as the utter failure of Islamic nations shows. Sharia prohibits this separation, therefore Sharia must be discarded.


2) Discard the myth of Muslim solidarity. I have noticed a great reluctance on the part of Muslim speakers to criticize others who name themselves Muslims, even when the latter are murderous killers such as Al Qaeda, Taliban, or the Palestinian bombers. If you are a good person, you condemn these terrorists and say you want them caught or killed. If you are a bad person, you find reasons to excuse their behavior, or support them. If you are a worthless person, you say nothing.

I have seen a lot of bad Muslims quoted, but not many good Muslims. Pick a side. If you are on the side of good, then disown the evil ones and deny all commonality with them, or you will be considered one of them. Be plain spoken. Be blunt! Avoid the vague circumlocutions favored by virtually every Muslim speaker I've seen quoted --- these irritate the hell out of me, and you can be sure that no one else respects them.


3) Eliminate the apocalyptic language of condemnation and jihad, in private as well as in public. These are bad things to say. Americans are listening, and they do not like what they hear. If you will not change, prepare to accept the consequences of your behavior.


4) Stop pretending to be victims. No country is perfect, and no country is completely free of religious or racial intolerance, but Muslims have it better in the US than anywhere else in the world. If a Muslim organization wants to defend Muslims who are truly mistreated, that is all to the good, but if you want respect, act as if you already have it, and be prepared to condemn the criminal behavior of Muslims as rapidly as you do non-Muslims.


5) Stop talking about the Crusades as an offense against innocent Muslim victims. Islam expanded through North Africa and into Europe by fighting wars and defeating the opposition (in other words, by killing people who disagreed). By our standards today (in the US), these were wars of aggression, unjustified and immoral. By the standards of the time, they were acceptable, the normal way of life. The same is true of the Crusades, which were a response to the expansion of Islam and restrictions on Christian pilgrimages to the Holy Land. The expansion of Islam was halted and reversed after the Muslim forces were defeated at Vienna, as, similarly, the Crusades were defeated by the Islamic forces of the time.

It is not reasonable to apply modern standards to the medieval world. There is no moral superiority to be had in these parts of history. Insisting that the Crusades displayed the brutal victimization of Islam by Christian barbarians is, now, nothing more than the resentful complaints of Muslim populations who look only at the outside world, not within their own, for the causes of their misery.


6) Don't inflate the importance of the "Islamic street." The truth is that the Islamic street doesn't matter much even to the totalitarian rulers of Islamic nations, who have a tendency to kill their own citizens when disagreements arise. It isn't important at all to Americans. What the American street believes, however, is important to the Islamic countries, even if they don't realize it. To be blunt, no Islamic nation or combination of them can present much of a threat to the US, but the US is perfectly capable of exterminating any who try. This truth is almost completely unappreciated throughout the world, even in Europe, where they should know better. The US is not an imperialist nation---it does not trot around the globe and gobble up parts of it with military force. Nor does the US react strongly to most provocations. As a result, few in the world realize just how dangerous this country is when aroused. The Third Reich and the Japanese Empire made this discovery, and they no longer exist. The Islamic nations are nowhere near as dangerous as either of those dead relics, and the US is much more lethal now than it was in World War II.


7) Stop saying that all people will or must become Muslims eventually, and that the law of Sharia must ultimately become the law of the land. The former isn't going to happen. The latter would require the overthrow of the Constitution. While the First Amendment guarantees everyone the right to speak their beliefs, a real attempt to overturn the Constitution would be an act of treason. We will not tolerate treason. We will not let you destroy the founding principles of the United States.

Muslims throughout the world, but especially in the US, are at a turning point. They can choose to change and grow with the rest of the world, or to stay the same and become increasingly backwards, savage, and irrelevant. The history of Islam for the last several hundred years offers little reason for optimism, but if any Muslims can lead Islam into the future, it will be those in this country. Please, I urge you, take up the banner for freedom and progress, and lift the burden of the dead weight of history and dogma from the backs of all Muslims. No one else can do this for you. It is up to the Muslims, and only to the Muslims, to free themselves.


Dr. Anonymous
(who knows many Muslims, and prefers that his real name and email address not be used)

posted by Adil 12:58 PM

Monday, July 29, 2002

 

Get Thee to a Madrassa

[Ed. The following is something I wrote a month after the “My American Jihad” speech incident at Harvard, but was not posted to the site as it remained somewhat incomplete. Clearly, I'm not an expert in this field (yet!). Nonetheless, I decided to blog the article anyway because it contains some general thoughts on the concept of “jihad”.]

The Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society (ISIS) recently published an exegesis on the subject of “jihad”, and its meaning as a term of Islamic literature. The article goes on to document some of the evidence for the view that “jihad” should be contextually understood as a term for “holy war”, “battle for the Faith”, and “sacred combat”, as opposed to quasi-spiritual notions of “struggle”, “striving”, or “exerting effort”. Another interesting article by Douglas E. Streusand, from the Middle East Forum, also provides an historical overview of the term with the same conclusions, but which, in my opinion, is a fuller account.

In the opposing camp, we come across views that signify “jihad” as a spiritually born, inward-seeking struggle aimed at overcoming immoral temptations. Indeed, aside from self-styled “moderate” Muslims, some well-respected journalists and commentators berate Westerners for being clueless about this. Ahmed Rashid, for instance, in his latest book, “Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia”, gently admonishes susceptible Westerners, from the second paragraph onwards in his introduction, for subscribing to simplistic concepts of “jihad”:

“In Western thought, heavily influenced by the medieval Christian Crusaders – with their own ideas about “holy war” – jihad has always been portrayed as an Islamic war against believers. Westerners point to the conquest of Spain in the eighth century by the Moors and the vast Ottoman Empire of the thirteenth through twentieth centuries, and focus on the bloodshed, ignoring not only the enormous achievements in science and art and the basic tolerance of these empires, but also the true idea of jihad that spread peacefully throughout these realms. Militancy is not the essence of jihad.”

He goes onto explain his basis for his last sentence:

“The greater jihad as explained by The Prophet Muhammad is first inward-seeking: it involves the effort of each Muslim to become a better human being, to struggle to improve him- or- herself. In doing so the follower of jihad can also benefit his or her community. In addition, jihad is a test of each Muslim’s obedience to God and willingness to implement His commands on earth. As Barbara Metcalf described it, “Jihad is the inner struggle of moral discipline and commitment to Islam and political action.” It is also true that Islam sanctions rebellion against an unjust ruler, whether Muslim or not, and jihad can become the means to mobilise that political and social struggle. This is the lesser jihad. Thus, Muslims revere the life of The Prophet Muhammad because it exemplified both the greater and lesser jihad – The Prophet struggled lifelong to improve Himself as a Muslim in order to both set an example to those around Him and to demonstrate His complete commitment to God. But He also fought against the corrupt Arab society He was living in, and He used every means – including but not exclusively militant ones – to transform it.”

Similarly, Karen Armstrong, another commentator on Islamic history, contributed an interesting essay, “Was It Inevitable? Islam Through History”, for a book released last year, “How Did This Happen? Terrorism and the New War” (ed. James F. Hoge, Jr, and Gideon Rose). After arguing that “early Muslim conquests were not inspired by the Koran”, she goes on to talk about the real meaning of jihad:

“So Muslims were not inspired by a passionate religious zeal to impose their faith at sword point. Nor was “jihad” a pillar of their religion. The word “jihad” does not even primarily mean “holy war,” as Westerners tend to define it. It means “struggle, effort.” The Koran realizes that it is difficult to put the will of God into practice in a flawed, tragic world and demands a dedicated effort on all fronts: military, political, economic, intellectual, social, and ethical. Sometimes it may be necessary to fight in order to preserve decent values, but warfare is certainly not a major preoccupation. There is a very important and much quoted maxim attributed to Muhammad, which has him say to his companions while returning home after a battle, “We are returning from the lesser Jihad [the battle] to the greater Jihad,” the far more significant, crucial, and demanding struggle to reform one’s own society and to extirpate evil, greed, and malice from one’s own heart.”

It has become increasingly clear to much of the blogosphere that, owing particularly to the fracas at Harvard University and indeed to Sept. 11, the two articles at the beginning of this post should be commonly regarded as conveying the most accurate meaning of “jihad”: that is to say, the classical meaning of jihad has invariably meant “fighting to make God’s Word superior”. The meaning of “jihad” as an isolated term, whereby it is stripped off of all context (i.e. that of Islamic connotations), is “striving”. Given that Arabic is inherently a context-dependent language, particularly the classical form, the general use of the word “jihad” as a term synonymous for “striving” would only demonstrate the speaker’s profoundly faulty command of Arabic. In its proper context as a term of Islamic literature, the only useful meaning and implication of “jihad” is “fighting to make God’s Word superior”. Much commentary has been published to this effect, so naturally I am not inclined to add anything to the record, except for one observation: delving further, it is interesting to find that it is common in works of Islamic literature, especially classical, to find that the word “jihad” is used synonymously with the Arabic word “qitaal”. Whereas “jihad” means “fighting to make God’s word superior”, that is to say, sacred fighting, the word “qitaal” simply means, unconditionally, “fighting”. Notably, from the same tri-consonantal root of “qitaal” [i.e. q-t-l], emerge terms for “murdering” and “killing” – again for unconditional usage for speakers of Arabic. It is, therefore, not unusual to find the definition of “jihad” expressed in terms of the word “qitaal”, after being conditioned to fit into the well-established Islamic concept of sacred combat. Functionally speaking, “jihad” is a conditional form of “qitaal”. Where the Islamic context tends to be already obvious to the Arabic writer, the common Islamic saying, “jihad fi-sabil-Allah” (sacred warfare in the path of God), is more or less synonymous with the phrase, “qitaal fi-sabil-Allah” (fighting in the path of God). Thus, as a case in point, an Islamic classical jurist, al-Hanbiliyyah, defining jihad in this manner, succinctly states: “al-Jihad is al-qitaal and to sacrifice all strength in it to raise the Word of Allah.” [Matalib Uliyan-Nahi, Volume 2, p. 497]. As we shall see, widespread usage of the term from early Islamic history demonstrates that, contrary to Rashid’s assertion, militancy is entrenched within the very concept of “jihad”, and therefore impossible to separate without irrevocably corrupting the historical meaning of the term itself.

But let us turn to the specific arguments propounded by Rashid and Armstrong, which is what I am primarily interested in this post.

The crux of their arguments rests upon a source not derived from the Qur’an, but from among compilations of hundreds of hadith (sayings and actions ascribed to the Prophet) on “jihad”. Of these only a suspect few – you can count them on one hand – pay homage to any distinction between a “lesser jihad” (jihad-i-asghar) and a “greater jihad” (jihad-i-akbar). Here it is argued that, on the basis of such few narratives, fighting on the battlefield is inherently inferior to fighting against one’s inner desires and temptations. Indeed, in the furore over the Harvard debate, some Islamists had accused some experts, like Daniel Pipes, of playing down such distinctions.

But the notion that jihad in some particular form is more superior than some other one has not been indicated in any remotely credible doctrinal source. This arises from not only as a point of historical fact, but of doctrinal consistency as well. Using the same traditional framework of doctrinal criticism as constructed by the classical scholars, it becomes impossible to extract benign, spiritual implications of jihad anywhere in the Islamic literature. This is not difficult to demonstrate, as we will do shortly. I was, however, somewhat surprised at Ahmed Rashid’s insistence upon this notion, because his latest book about Islamist militancy is otherwise considerably well researched, as well an insightful source of information about Central Asia. Karen Armstrong’s article, on the other hand, like some of her earlier work on Islamic history, is, unfortunately, grossly wrongheaded to the point of obscurity.

Hadith, it should be remembered, are narrations of words and acts ascribed to Muhammad and usually take the form of: “A told me that B heard C saying that D had heard the Companion E recite from the Prophet Muhammed that….”. The alleged hadith that posits a difference between “lesser” and “greater” jihad is based upon a story mentioned by the classical juristic scholar, al-Khatib al-Baghdadi, in his book “History”. He cites someone called Yahya ibn al’Ala’ as narrating along the following tradition:

“We were told by Layth, on the authority of ‘Ata’, on the authority of Abu Rabah, on the authority of Jabir, who said:

‘The Prophet (peace be upon him) returned from one of his battles, and thereupon told us, “You have arrived with an excellent arrival, you have come from the Lesser Jihad to the Greater Jihad – the striving of a servant [of Allah] against his desires.’”

Obviously, many problems can arise with the notion of trusting hadith that have been transmitted over generations (anybody remember the classroom game Chinese Whisper?). And yet, notwithstanding transmission irregularities in this form of hearsay, compilations of such narratives and traditions continue to constitute a secondary source of belief after the Qur’an, within the mainstream Islamic framework, and therefore underlie, reinforce, and flesh out Islamic law. In an effort to establish accuracy, traditional Hadith criticism focuses upon the study of the reliability of the transmitters of hadith, and the chain of transmission down the centuries, in order to establish their authenticity and reliability – a process otherwise known as isnad criticism. Notably, this traditional process of hadith checking has been primarily geared to evaluate personalities of the narrators, not necessarily the content of the hadith itself. Thus, we begin with this as our starting point.

In working with the very criteria established by famous hadith scholars themselves, the historical authenticity of this hadith was irrevocably refuted centuries ago. This is the primary reason why in my copies of the two most respected hadith compilations, Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, both generally considered to employ the strictest methods in their application of isnad criticism, the above hadith does not make it anywhere into the books. In fact, the hadith does not make into a vast majority of the several hadith compilations in existence. The reason lies in the fact that the authenticity of the hadith itself is regarded elsewhere by classical hadith authorities as seriously weak, deficient, and therefore unsound. Although it is still possible for any person to subscribe to its content, such problematic hadith lose all juristic backing and are not seen fit for usage in issuing legal opinions, and elsewhere in the construct of Islamic law. In following the required criteria of isnad evaluation, classical hadith authorities, as well as a few modern ones worth their salt, have almost invariably poured a barrage of scepticism upon the transmission of this hadith. Such authorities would include the prominent classicals such as al-Baihaaqi, al-Suyuti, Ibn Hajr, Ibn Taymiyya, and al-Bani. The basis of their verdict concerns the reliability of one of the narrators of the supposed hadith, Yahya ibn al-Ala. One such jurist, Ibn Hajr al-Asqalani, reported in his book Al-Taqrib, that this narrator “was accused of forging hadith”. In a similar vein, al-Dhahabi compiled various opinions from hadith authorities about Yahya ibn al-Ala’s role in transmitting hadith, in his book, Al-Mizan:

“Abu Hatim said that he is not a strong narrator, Ibn Mu’in classified him as weak, al-Daraqutni said he is to be neglected, and Ahmad ibn Hanbal said that he is a liar and a forger of hadith.”

In the traditional practise of Islamic doctrine, such criticism is nothing less than devastating. It relegates the status of that hadith to that of being seriously weak, and therefore is automatically deemed unacceptable for use within the Islamic corpus. Further, Ibn Hajr revealed that the origin of the saying was not the Prophet himself, but actually was concocted by a scholar who came generations after the Prophet, called Ibrahim bin Abi Ablah (for those who are familiar with the term, he was one of the Tabi’ee).

Instead of focusing upon the veracity of the transmitters, as is the case with isnad criticism, an alternative approach is to try analysing the narrative from a content-based perspective, which some Muslims argue for. The question is, is the content of the hadith consistent with main body of classical Islamic literature? If it is, then we can begin to accept it into the corpus of Islam, and thereby reasonably identify “jihad” with that of a spiritually renewing, inward-directed force. But this begs the question, taking us back to square one: What does the main body of classical Islamic literature say about “jihad”?

Well, if we adopt a strictly content-based approach to this hadith, then firstly we must necessarily operate under an important principle relating to the Qur’an’s relationship with the hadith compilations. That principle is as follows: owing to the primary status of the Qur’an as an Islamic canon, it therefore follows that only the Qur’an itself – as being perceived as the final Word of God, and thus in its sacred position as the Mizan (i.e. the Balance) and Furqan (i.e. that which distinguishes between good and evil) – retains the power to abrogate man-made hadith, and not vice-versa. It stands to reason that, in Islamic doctrine, nothing extraneous to the Qur’an can abrogate any part of it. So the question then becomes: what does the Qur’an say about it?

With this type of approach, it then becomes increasingly clear that the Qur’an does not support the concept of “greater jihad” as enshrined in the alleged hadith. That hadith explicitly contradicts relevant sections of the Qur’an (e.g. 4: 95-96), which does not help the case of the “spiritual” jihadis. Even – and this is solely for the sake of argument – if we do away with the role of hadith as a source and canon of Islamic law in their entirety (and there are only few who do), no other available canon gives credence to the belief that some particular forms of jihad are superior to some others, least of all the Qur’an.

What the Qur’an does say, however, is very interesting: not only does it subscribe to a warfare-approach to “jihad”, but what comes across also as increasingly clear is the fact that by far the most instances where Muslims are prompted to carry out jihad in the Qur’an, refer to acts of aggressive instigation rather than that of defensive warfare (just examine the subject index in any good copy of the Qur’an). Not only is it permitted, but the Qur’an orders that it be waged till the cause of God prevails. This flies in the face of Armstrong’s blind belief that Muslims “…may never initiate hostilities… and aggressive warfare is always forbidden. The only permissible war, therefore, is a war of self-defense…”. Such injunctions heavily tend towards being exceptions rather than instances of a general rule. Thus, Muslims, as well as some non-Muslim “experts”, who propound this version of “self-defence-only jihad” subscribe to a notion that, with respect to the classical Islamic doctrine, is palpably false. Some modernist Muslims, like the late Fazlur Rahman of Chicago University, have rejected this view owing to its gross misuse of
history. As they point out, this notion of “jihad”, as a strategy only for self-defence, is a myth.

Similarly, this incorrect implication of the word “jihad” is not supported in the hadith compilations on the subject. In any case, the two most respected compilations of hadith in the mainstream world of Islam, Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, happen to be quite consistent with the concept of “jihad” as expounded within the Qur’an. For this reason, “jihad” is almost invariably invoked in a military sense, by way of sacred warfare and combat. In Sahih al-Bukhari, a section named “The Book of Jihad” (tellingly translated as “The Book of Fighting for God’s Cause”), Chapters 1 and 2 explain the “superiority of jihad”. Here, the whole message is nicely encapsulated within one hadith:

Narrated Abu Huraira: I heard Allah’s Messenger saying, “The example of a Mujahid [a Muslim warrior engaged in jihad] in Allah’s Cause – and Allah knows better who really strives in His Cause – is like a person who observes Saum (fasting) and offers Salat (prayers) continuously without stopping. Allah guarantees that He will admit the Mujahid in His Cause into Paradise if he is killed, otherwise he will return to his home safely with rewards and war booty.” [Sahih al-Bukhari, Vol. 4, Hadith No. 46]

As this hadith tries to make clear, nobody can offer prayer and observe fasting continuously without stopping, and since the Muslim fighter is rewarded as if he was doing such impossible deeds, no possible deed equals jihad in reward. This meaning of the narrative is the premise or support upon which almost all other narratives on this topic of jihad are based, thus flatly contradicting the “greater-jihad-lesser-jihad” hadith. Much of the remainder of the Book of Jihad goes into some detail about how jihad should operate, and under what conditions it should commence. Moreover, in the writings of almost all the classical Muslim jurists and recognised authorities of Hadith, including those mentioned previously, these (and related) narratives exhaust the chapters on the topic of jihad. For instance, in Sahih al-Jam’i, in the spirit of a deadpan, Sergeant Friday, “just the facts, ma’am” style, we have this supporting narrative in the chapter related to jihad:

On the authority of Rashid, on the authority of Sa’d (radiallaahu ‘anhu), on the authority of one of the Companions, that a man said, “Oh Messenger of Allah! Why is it that the believers are all put to trial in their graves, except for the martyrs?” He (salallaahu ‘alayhee wa sallam) said,

“The clashing of swords above his head was sufficient trial for him.”

Most notably, even the famous Muslim philosopher, Ibn Rushd, or Averröes as he known in some parts, laid out his understanding of the basic meaning of “jihad” as a term of Islamic literature (especially the Qur’an), as follows:

“…to fight the Mushrikeen [polytheists] for the Deen [complete Islamic way of life]. So whoever tires himself for the sake of Allah, he strove in the way of Allah. Except that when Jihad Fisabeelillah [warfare in the path of God] is spoken, then it cannot be applied (to everything) in general except striving against the Kuffar [infidels] with the sword until they enter Islam, or pay the Jizya [subjugation tax] with willing submission and they are under humiliation.” [Muqadamat, p. 369]

To sum up: the classical term “jihad” is easily among the most abused term among the current crop of “moderate” Islamists. The term does not mean, or in any way imply, a “spiritually-renewing, inward-seeking search for purposes of moral self-improvement, action or justice”, or anything to that effect. Nor does it arise solely as a concept of self-defence, or indeed, simply “defence of the faith””. On the contrary, the term, “jihad”, embodies an attitude of aggressive militancy, and means “fighting to make God’s Word superior”. And unfortunately, those Muslims who pretend that it does not, become utterly incapable of refuting some militant Islamists who happen to be more aware of the real implications of the term.

Conclusion

In “Among The Believers”, V.S. Naipaul observed that Islam is not a “philosophical or speculative” religion. It is a “revealed religion, with a Prophet and a complete set of rules. To believe, it was necessary to know about the Arabian origins of the religion, and to take this knowledge to heart.”

Indeed. It was by the sword that the empire of Islam was created, and from its political inception through to the Middle Ages it is reasonably true to say that much of the surrounding non-Muslim world, especially those who initially came under some form of Muslim subjugation, thought of the Muslim primarily as a warrior. The Muslim conquests took place in two waves, and their power owed heavily to the successful efforts of tribal unification by Muhammad, who now all operated under the banner of a new religion. The first wave, soon after the death of the Prophet, covered Syria, Egypt, Armenia, Persia and North Africa. The religious fervour dictating this powerful Arab eruption could only be sustained through continued assimilation. As the effects of this first wave dissipated, the second became increasingly vital. Thus, the second wave, beginning in the 8th century, carried Islam west to the Atlantic, and then turned north, crossing the Strait of Gibraltar, overwhelming the Visigothic kingdom of Spain, and eventually reaching southern France, as well as east to the borders of India and China. Suddenly, the Arab armies constituted the most powerful military machine that the world had ever seen.

The only comparable conquests in human history are those of the Mongols in the thirteenth century, who burst forth from the steppes of Central Asia, and ultimately abolished the Baghdad caliphate and conquered the Middle East of that time. And yet these conquests, though more extensive than those of the Arabs, owed less to Mongol military superiority than to the political weaknesses already inherent within the caliphate by that time. Although resentment against the Mongol invasion made itself strongly felt in the Islamic lands, jihad reprisals became unnecessary, owing much to the fact that the Mongol invaders, by eventually accepting Islam and being assimilated into the Muslim social order, acknowledged the superiority of its culture. They did so, moreover, at the very time when that social culture could be regarded as firmly forged and ready for a challenge. And so, from ferocious conquerors, the Mongols became the most docile and appreciative of pupils, as well as the most lavish of patrons, with the resulting effect that the only areas occupied today by the Mongols are the ones held prior to the time of Genghiz Khan. These new students of Islam went on to continue the powerful tradition of Arab arms in the expansion of their empire of faith. Similar experiences of assimilation had awaited Turkish invaders previously. And so, thus, in the 15th century, the legacy of the famous Arab eruption was reborn in the Ottomans, who took Constantinople, invaded the Balkans and besieged the gates of Vienna.

Bernard Lewis, a historian of Islam who has been called the “quintessential orientalist”, who is somebody who offers astonishing insight with only a few words, something that I can’t even do with a thousand, explains in his book, The Political Language of Islam, why classical Arabic usage has no term corresponding to holy war:

“While, however, the translation “holy war,” like “holy law,” is in some measure a distortion, it is by no means, as are some other such attributions, a mere invention. Both renderings, “holy war” and “holy law,” rest on a certain basis of fact. In Western parlance, the adjective “holy,” preceding the word “law,” is necessary, since there are laws of other origins. In Muslim parlance, the adjective is tautologous. The shari’a is simply the law, and there is no other. It is holy in that it derives from God, and is the external and unchanging expression of God’s commandments to mankind.

“It is on one of these commandments that the notion of holy war, in the sense of a war ordained by God, is based. The term so translated is jihad, an Arabic word…”.

It is the overriding religious sanction that lies behind this historical legacy, which, in one fell swoop, Muslims like Zayed “My American Jihad” Yasin, somehow feel they can do entirely away with. If Islam is going to move on towards being a religion that is plugged into reality, then studiously ignoring any proper diagnosis of the numerous problems that have plagued its past will not lend itself to any meaningful prescription for future development. And the fact is that those Muslims who are increasingly satisfied with wallowing in their own pools of self-pity are making the arrival of such a diagnosis look increasingly unlikely.

The Islamic concept of “jihad” has always reverberated in the hearts and minds of Muslims throughout Islamic history. The fact remains that a considerable proportion of the successive ruling dynasties of the caliphs, along with their representatives in the provinces, and some of the greater empires in the later medieval period, such as those of the Mongols, the Mamluks, the Ottomans, the Safavids, and the Mughals, had their origins in military conquest or revolutionary movements, within which religious motives were often interwoven. Indeed, alarums of war often impinged on the lives of Muslim peoples in such situations. It would therefore seem somewhat premature, arrogant, and indeed profoundly foolish, to imagine that such history is not part of the proper discourse on the concept of “jihad”. In their haste to inflate their self-pity out of all proportion for public consumption, such self-deluded Muslims unwittingly reveal their profound lack of knowledge about Islam itself. To cast as irrelevant what essentially is established history, is nothing less than hurling a great insult at the legacy of an otherwise great civilisation, which few others have matched in terms of its extent and longevity, or its resiliency and tenacity, or managed so consistently to incorporate and accommodate so many disparate elements and minds.

By uncritically casting “jihad” as a “struggle for moral self-improvement and action”, a notion that, in light of this historically legacy, is palpably false, such Muslims trivialise the very nature of Islam itself. By refusing to recognise that being a Muslim does not mean that one can automatically shield oneself from outside criticism of Islam, they unwittingly trivialise Islam, its powerful influence, and its past status as one of the few great civilisations of history; thus belittling the historical legacy of the Prophet himself, as probably the most influential person in all of human history.

Maybe these Muslim graduates should wear a big sign hanging around their neck: “By The Way, I Have Absolutely No Clue Of What I’m Talking About”, go back to school, and learn a little about Islam first before thinking about making wild and foolish pronouncements.
posted by Adil 4:45 PM

Friday, May 17, 2002

 
I'll be with you in a couple of minutes....
posted by Adil 9:14 AM

Wednesday, May 01, 2002

 

Solidarity

There is now a website for the London Israel rally, at http://www.israelsolidarity.org.uk, which is scheduled to be taking place on 6th May.

Thanks to Louise for the link.
posted by Adil 1:48 PM

 

The Myth of Palestine

I just saw this over on Andrea's Ye Olde Blogge: An excellent article written by a Lebanese American clearly explaining why the phrase "occupation of Palestine" is entirely wrong-headed:

The Palestinians speak the same language, follow the same religion, manifest the same culture and eat the same cuisine as all other Arabs. They are really Arabs who happen to live in a region called Palestine.

Palestine is not – and never was – the name of a country, or the name of a people.

It is the name of a region – just like Siberia is a region, not a country. There is no Siberian country, nor is there a Siberian people. It is a region. Just like the Sahara is a region, not a country. There is no Saharan country, nor is there a Saharan people. The Arabs living in that region are Libyans, Moroccans, etc. It is a region.

...Imagine if the Mexican-American community in California, whose numbers are greater than the number of Palestinians in the West Bank, decides tomorrow to claim that the United States is occupying their land, because they live there and they want their own Mexican state. Imagine if, when the U.S. government says, "No, you can live here, but you cannot have sovereignty, you cannot have your own state," they start sending suicide bombers, shooters, mortars, etc. into the rest of the country. What do you think would happen?

If you haven't already, I would urge you to check this out.
posted by Adil 10:54 AM