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Contributors
Daniel Pipes- Contributor
Daniel
Pipes is director of the Middle
East Forum, a member of the
presidentially-appointed board of the U.S.
Institute of Peace,
and a prize-winning columnist for the New York Sun and The
Jerusalem Post. His most recent book, Miniatures:
Views of Islamic and Middle Eastern Politics (Transaction
Publishers) appeared in late 2003. His website, DanielPipes.org,
the single most accessed source of information specifically
on
the Middle East and Islam, offers an archive and a chance
to sign-up to receive his new materials as they appear. [go
to Pipes index]
 Jihad
through History
Jihad extremism...
[Daniel
Pipes] 6/6/05
In his just-released,
absorbing, and excellent book, Understanding
Jihad (University of California Press), David Cook
of Rice University dismisses the low-grade debate that has
raged since 9/11 over the nature of jihad whether it is a
form of offensive warfare or (more pleasantly) a type of moral
self-improvement.
Mr. Cook
dismisses as "bathetic and laughable" John Esposito's contention
that jihad refers to "the effort to lead a good life." Throughout
history and at present, Mr. Cook definitively establishes,
the term primarily means "warfare with spiritual significance."
His achievement
lies in tracing the evolution of jihad from Muhammad to Osama,
following how the concept has changed through fourteen centuries.
This summary does not do justice to Cook's extensive research,
prolific examples, and thoughtful analysis, but even a thumbnail
sketch suggests jihad's evolution.
The Koran
invites Muslims to give their lives in exchange for assurances
of paradise.
The Hadith
(accounts of Muhammad's actions and personal statements) elaborate
on the Koran, providing specific injunctions about treaties,
pay, booty, prisoners, tactics, and much else. Muslim jurisprudents
then wove these precepts into a body of law.
During his
years in power, the prophet engaged in an average of nine military
campaigns a year, or one every five to six weeks; thus did
jihad help define Islam from its very dawn. Conquering and
humiliating non-Muslims was a main feature of the prophet's
jihad.
During the
first several centuries of Islam, "the interpretation of jihad
was unabashedly aggressive and expansive." After the conquests
subsided, non-Muslims hardly threatened and Sufi notions of
jihad as self-improvement developed in complement to the martial
meaning.
The Crusades,
the centuries-long European effort to control the Holy Land,
gave jihad a new urgency and prompted what Cook calls the "classical" theory
of jihad. Finding themselves on the defensive led to a hardening
of Muslim attitudes.
The Mongol
invasions of the thirteenth century subjugated much of the
Muslim world, a catastrophe only partially mitigated by the
Mongols' nominal conversion to Islam. Some thinkers, Ibn Taymiya
(d. 1328) in particular, came to distinguish between true and
false Muslims; and to give jihad new prominence by judging
the validity of a person's faith according to his willingness
to wage jihad.
Nineteenth
century "purification jihads" took place in several regions
against fellow Muslims. The most radical and consequential
of these was the Wahhabis' jihad in Arabia. Drawing on Ibn
Taymiya, they condemned most non-Wahhabi Muslims as infidels
(kafirs) and waged jihad against them.
European
imperialism inspired jihadi resistance efforts, notably in
India, the Caucasus, Somalia, Sudan, Algeria, and Morocco,
but all in the end failed. This disaster meant new thinking
was needed.
Islamist
new thinking began in Egypt and India in the 1920s but jihad
acquired its contemporary quality of radical offensive warfare
only with the Egyptian thinker Sayyid Qutb (d. 1966). Qutb
developed Ibn Taymiya's distinction between true and false
Muslims to deem non-Islamists to be non-Muslims and then declare
jihad on them. The group that assassinated Anwar El-Sadat in
1981 then added the idea of jihad as the path to world domination.
The anti-Soviet
war in Afghanistan led to the final step (so far) in this evolution.
In Afghanistan, for the first time, jihadis assembled from
around the world to fight on behalf of Islam. A Palestinian,
Abdullah Azzam, became the theorist of global jihad in the
1980s, giving it an unheard-of central role, judging each Muslim
exclusively by his contribution to jihad, and making jihad
the salvation of Muslims and Islam. Out of this quickly came
suicide terrorism and bin Laden.
Mr. Cook's
erudite and timely study has many implications, including these:
- The current
understanding of jihad is more extreme than at any prior
time in Islamic history.
- This extremism
suggests that the Muslim world is going through a phase,
one that must be endured and overcome, comparable to analogously
horrid periods in Germany, Russia, and China.
- Jihad
having evolved steadily until now, doubtless will continue
to do so in the future.
- The excessive
form of jihad currently practiced by Al-Qaeda and others
could, Mr. Cook semi-predicts, lead to its "decisive rejection" by
a majority of Muslims. Jihad then could turn into a non-violent
concept.
The great
challenge for moderate Muslims (and their non-Muslim allies)
is to make that rejection come about, and with due haste. tOR
This piece
first appeared at New York Sun
copyright
2005 Daniel Pipes
§
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