The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror (6 page)

But again European Christendom was able to oust the invaders and again, now more successfully, to counter-attack against the realms of Islam. By this time the jihad had become almost entirely defensive—resisting the Reconquest in Spain and Russia, resisting the movements for national self-liberation by the Christian subjects of the Ottoman Empire, and finally, as Muslims see it, defending the very heartlands of Islam against infidel attack. This phase has come to be known as imperialism.

Even in this period of retreat, the offensive jihad was by no means abandoned. As late as 1896, the Afghans invaded the mountainous region of the Hindu Kush in what is now northeastern Afghanistan. Until then the inhabitants were not Muslim, and the region was therefore known to Muslims as Kafiristan, “Land of the Unbelievers.” After the Afghan conquest, it was renamed Nuristan, “Land of Light.” During the same period jihads of various kinds were conducted in Africa against non-Muslim populations. But for the most part, the concept, practice, and experience of jihad in the modern Islamic world have been overwhelmingly defensive.

The predominantly military use of the term continued into relatively modern times. In the Ottoman Empire the city of Belgrade, an advance base in the war against the Austrians, was given the rhyming title of
D
r al-Jih
d
(House of Jihad). In the early nineteenth century, when the modernizing ruler of Egypt, Muhammad ‘Ali Pasha, reformed his armed forces and their administration on French and British lines, he created a “war department” to administer them. It was known in Arabic as the Divan of Jihad Affairs (
D
w
n al-Jih
diyya
) and its head as the supervisor of jihad affairs (
N
zir al-Jih
diyya
). One could cite other examples in which the word
jihad
has lost its holiness and retained only its military connotation. In modern times both the military and the moral use of the term have been revived, and they are differently understood and applied by different groups of people. Organizations claiming the name of Jihad at the present day, in Kashmir, Chechnya, Palestine, and elsewhere, clearly do not use the word to denote moral striving.

Jihad is sometimes presented as the Muslim equivalent of the Crusade, and the two are seen as more or less equivalent. In a sense this is true—both were proclaimed and waged as holy wars for the true faith against an infidel enemy. But there is a difference. The Crusade is a late development in Christian history and, in a sense, marks a radical departure from basic Christian values as expressed in the Gospels. Christendom had been under attack since the seventh century, and had lost vast territories to Muslim rule; the concept of a holy war, more commonly, a just war, was familiar since antiquity. Yet in the long struggle between Islam and Christendom, the Crusade was late, limited, and of relatively brief duration. Jihad is present from the beginning of Islamic history—in scripture, in the life of the Prophet, and in the actions of his companions and immediate successors. It has continued throughout Islamic history and retains its appeal to the present day. The word
crusade
derives of course from the cross and originally denoted a holy war for Christianity. But in the Christian world it has long since lost that meaning and is used in the general sense of a morally driven campaign for a good cause. One may wage a crusade for the environment, for clean water, for better social services, for women’s rights, and for a whole range of other causes. The one context in which the word
crusade
is not used nowadays is precisely the original religious one.
Jihad
too is used in a variety of senses, but unlike
crusade
it has retained its original, primary meaning.

Those who are killed in the jihad are called martyrs, in Arabic and other Muslim languages
shah
d.
The English word
martyr
comes from the Greek
martys,
meaning “witness,” and in Judeo-Christian usage designates one who is prepared to suffer torture and death rather than renounce his faith. His martyrdom is thus a testimony or witness to that faith, and to his readiness to suffer and die for it. The Arabic term
shah
d
also means “witness” and is usually translated “martyr,” but it has a rather different connotation. In Islamic usage the term
martyrdom
is normally interpreted to mean death in a jihad and its reward is eternal bliss, described in some detail in early religious texts. Suicide, by contrast, is a mortal sin and earns eternal damnation, even for those who would otherwise have earned a place in paradise. The classical jurists distinguish clearly between facing certain death at the hands of the enemy and killing oneself by one’s own hand. The one leads to heaven, the other to hell. Some recent fundamentalist jurists and others have blurred or even dismissed this distinction, but their view is by no means unanimously accepted. The suicide bomber is thus taking a considerable risk on a theological nicety.

Because holy war is an obligation of the faith, it is elaborately regulated in the shari‘a. Fighters in a jihad are enjoined not to kill women, children, and the aged unless they attack first, not to torture or mutilate prisoners, to give fair warning of the resumption of hostilities after a truce, and to honor agreements. The medieval jurists and theologians discuss at some length the rules of warfare, including questions such as which weapons are permitted and which are not. There is even some discussion in medieval texts of the lawfulness of missile and chemical warfare, the one relating to mangonels and catapults, the other to poison-tipped arrows and the poisoning of enemy water supplies. On these points there is considerable variation. Some jurists permit, some restrict, some disapprove of the use of these weapons. The stated reason for concern is the indiscriminate casualties that they inflict. At no point do the basic texts of Islam enjoin terrorism and murder. At no point—as far as I am aware—do they even consider the random slaughter of uninvolved bystanders.