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| A Bestselling Author Offers a Different Definition of Jihad |
| 2007-02-20 |
| It seems that Emory University's newspaper recently ran a version of this ad sponsored by David Horowitz's Terrorism Awareness Project. Naturally, the ad (actually rejected by some university's publications, including New York University and Georgia Tech) sparked an ongoing controversy. With this letter, Robert Spencer jumps into the fray: In "Jihad Means Much More Than Violence" (Feb. 16), Will Caldwell objects to the David Horowitz Freedom Center's ad, "What Americans Need to Know About Jihad," as "propaganda," and calls for it to be censored. He asserts that "most in our community are educated enough to understand that statements like 'The goal of jihad is world domination' are completely ignorant and intentionally provocative." Unfortunately, however, jihad as warfare against non-believers in order to institute "Sharia" worldwide is not propaganda or ignorance, or a heretical doctrine held by a tiny minority of extremists. Instead, it is a constant element of mainstream Islamic theology. It is affirmed by all four principal schools of Sunni Muslim jurisprudence (madhahib): the Maliki, Hanafi, Hanbali and Shafi'i, to which the great majority of Muslims worldwide belong, as well as of all the other schools. These schools formulated laws regarding the importance of jihad and the ways in which it must be practiced, centuries ago. Ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani (d. 996), a Maliki jurist, declared: "Jihad is a precept of Divine institutionÂ….[Unbelievers] have the alternative of either converting to Islam or paying the poll tax (jizya), short of which war will be declared against them." Likewise, Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328), a Hanbali jurist who is a favorite of Osama bin Laden and other modern-day jihadists, taught: "Since lawful warfare is essentially jihad and since its aim is that the religion is God's entirely and God's word is uppermost, therefore according to all Muslims, those who stand in the way of this aim must be fought." The Hanafi school sounds the same notes: "If the infidels, upon receiving the call [to Islam], neither consent to it nor agree to pay capitation tax, it is then incumbent on the Muslims to call upon God for assistance, and to make war upon themÂ…" (Hidayah) The Shafi'i scholar Abu'l Hasan al-Mawardi (d. 1058) agrees, saying that if unbelievers "refuse to accept [Islam] after this, war is waged against themÂ…" All this is not merely of historical interest. A Shafi'i manual of Islamic law was certified in 1991 by the highest authority in Sunni Islam, Cairo's Al-Azhar University, as conforming "to the practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni community." This manual, Umdat al-Salik (available in English as Reliance of the Traveler), after defining the "greater jihad" as "spiritual warfare against the lower self," devotes eleven pages to the "lesser jihad." It defines this jihad as "war against non-Muslims," and spells out the nature of this warfare in quite specific terms: "the caliph makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians... until they become Muslim or pay the non-Muslim poll tax." Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), a pioneering historian and philosopher, was also a Maliki legal theorist. In his renowned Muqaddimah, the first work of historical theory, he notes that "in the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and (the obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force." In Islam, the person in charge of religious affairs is concerned with "power politics," because Islam is "under obligation to gain power over other nations." Extremists? Propaganda? No, this is the Islamic mainstream. Will Caldwell calls upon the Wheel "to provide the community with reliable and useful information." Reliable and useful information about jihad was in the ad and is in this letter. I'd be happy to discuss or debate this, and what can be done about it, with Will Caldwell or anyone else. Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch, a blog devoted to bringing public notice to the role jihad theology plays in the modern world. He is also the author of The Truth About Muhammad, a New York Times bestselller. |
| Posted by:ryuge |
| #1 congrats to the EmoryWheel for printing Spencer's letter the emorywheel last week printed a rebuttal to the Jimmy Carter debate-of-himself |
| Posted by: mhw 2007-02-20 15:10 |