FEBRUARY 10 On Islam and Jihad

FEBRUARY 10 On Islam and Jihad A perusal of the Qur’an followed by a study of latter-day Muslim history will reveal a blatant contradiction between the two—that of principle and practice. Where recent developments in some Muslim countries bespeak the culture of war, the Qur’an, on the contrary, is imbued with the spirit of tolerance. Its culture is not that of war, but of mercy. At the very beginning of the Qur’an, the first invocation reads: “In the name of God, the most Merciful, the most Beneficent. Throughout the Qur’an, God’s name is thus invoked no less than 113 times. Moreover, Qur’an states that the prophets were sent to the world as a mercy to the people (21:107). The word ‘jihad’ has nowhere been used in the Qur’an to mean war in the sense of launching an offensive. It is used rather to mean ‘struggle’. The action most consistently called for in the Qur’an is the exercise of patience. Yet today, the ‘Muslim Mujahideen’ have equated “God is Great” with “War is Great.” In the light of on-going conflict, we must ask why so great a contradiction has arisen between the principles of Islam and the practices of Muslims. At least one root cause may be traced to historical exigency. Since time immemorial, military commanders have been accorded positions of great eminence in the annals of history. It is a universal phenomenon that the hero is idolized even in peace time and becomes a model for the people. It is this placing of heroism in the militaristic context which has been the greatest underlying factor in the undue stress laid on war in the latter phase of Islam’s history. With the automatic accord in Muslim society of a place of honour and importance to the heroes of the battlefield, annalists’ subsequent compilations of Islamic history have tended to read like an uninterrupted series of wars and conquests. These early chronicles having set the example, subsequent writings on Islamic history followed the same pattern of emphasis on militarism. The Prophet’s biographies were called ‘maghazi’, that is ‘The Battles fought by the Prophet,’ yet the Prophet of Islam in fact did battle only three times in his entire life, and the period of his involvement in these battles did not total more than one and half days. He fought, let it be said, in self-defense, when hemmed in by