Jihad and the Conflict between Islam and Christianity

THE SHADE OF SWORDS

Jihad and the conflict between Islam and Christianity

M.J. Akbar

Book Review

By
Mehr Islam (BSMS5)

Introduction

Jihad is a religious duty of Muslims. In Arabic, the word Jihad means "struggle". Within the context of the classical Islam it refers to struggle against those who do not believe in the Islamic God. However, the word has even wider implications. Jihad means "to struggle in the way of Allah". The "greater jihad" is the inner struggle by a believer to fulfill his religious duties. The "lesser jihad" is the physical struggle against the enemies of Islam. This physical struggle can take a violent form or a non-violent form. The violent form translate jihad as "holy war".
The profession of faith is the shahada: Lailaha il-Allah, Muhammad ur Rasul Allah. There is but one Allah and Muhammad is His Prophet. Those who become martyrs for Allah are the shaheed. The martyr smiles his way to death and death opens the door to paradise. Jihad is the trademark of Islamic history. Allah promised victory to the Muslim, but only if the believer kept faith with him. Most Muslim governments now are undemocratic and unrepresentative about the needs of the community. In the 19th century Indian Muslims declared jihad against the British which made them think that rebellion was compulsory in Islam. The British protected their empire by playing Muslim anguish off against Hindu anger. Which resulted in a partition and Pakistan was born in 1947. Pakistan should have become a model modern Muslim nation. But it became a civilian chaos after which there was martial law which resulted in military chaos and another partition. After 1971 there was democracy which was so dictatorial that the citizens happily agreed to the return of military rule.

Life of Prophet Muhammad SAW

The first chapter briefs us about the life of the Prophet, from the day of revelation till the battle of Nehawand against the Persians in 642.
In between it explains that the inheritance of a powerful history influences the political consciousness of Muslims. A community that is spread across so many geographical locations through different cultures will readily unite for any threat from powerful enemies. It was the Quraysh before now it is the Christian West, this conclusion has been formed over a millennium. All empires rise and fall, but the Muslim believes in a three-phase cycle: rise, fall, and renewal. Since an empire is the achievement of man, corruption is unavoidable. The Prophet foresaw this when he said best Muslims were those who saw progressive decline of their empire. He understood the ability of power to corrupt, he said: ‘the closer you are to government, the further you are from God.’ The chapter also mentions what the Prophet said about jihad. As he was once asked if it was true that the ones who died for the cause would go to heaven, the Prophet agreed that it was true and added, ‘Know that paradise is under the shade of swords.’ He said that a single spell of fighting in Allah’s cause was better than all the world, and a place in paradise as small as a bow was better than all the world and whatever was in it. The Prophet urged Muslims to seek Firdaus, the highest and brightest part of paradise, just bellow Allah’s throne. Allah had reserved one hundred grades of paradise only for the martyrs.
Islam’s principles are clear: La iqra fi ad din (there shall be no compulsion in religion) and Lakum dinakum wa layeddin (your religion for you, and mine for me).
The lessons of jihad enumerated by Abdullah Yusuf Ali:
1. Numbers do not count, but faith, determination and the blessing of Allah;
2. Size and strength are of no avail against truth, courage, and careful planning;
3. The hero tries his own weapons, and those that are available to him at the time and place, even though people may laugh at him;
4. If Allah is with us, the enemy’s weapon may become an instrument of his own destruction;
5. Personality conquers all dangers, and puts heart into our own wavering friends;
6. Pure faith brings Allah’s reward, which may take many forms; power, wisdom.
The parallels with the twenty-first century are not hard to find. The Quran scorns those Muslims who shy away from a just war. Fighting does not mean selfish aggression, and the highest censure is reserved for the bully and the oppressor. Conversely, there is no higher form of sacrifice than death in a jihad. The Muslim who turns his back during a war of jihad has only one destination, hell. The sermon dwells in detail on the rewards of the bargain: the souls of martyrs could live wherever they liked in paradise, all their sins forgiven; the martyr could intercede with Allah for seventy of his relatives.
In one of the chapters M.J. Akbar states, The last injunction that the apostle gave was in his words ‘Let not two religions be left in the Arabian peninsula’. (The apostle died on the twelfth Rabi-ul-awwal on the very day that he came to Medina as an emigrant, having completed exactly twelve years in his migration.) When the apostle was dead the Muslims were sore stricken. Within the brief two and a half years that he was Caliph, Abu Bakr fulfilled the last injunction of the Prophet.

After the Prophet SAW

Blood and confusion travel together in this phase of Muslim history, as they tend to do at times when the rudder is lost. Within fifty years of the Prophet’s death, there were three men in close proximity to one another, each claiming to be Caliph. For Muslims, Muhammad is a man and the last prophet in a sequence that begins with Adam and includes Jesus; for Christians, Jesus is divine, and the final redemption of mankind. It is consequently incumbent upon the Church to declare Muhammad an impostor. To do anything else would be to make Christianity a 611-year-old religion and Christ’s mission could not be deemed eternal. The Quran repeatedly tells Christians to return to the monotheism of Abraham, renounce the concept of the Trinity, and accept Muhammad as the Last Messenger. The Quran venerates Jesus; for the Church to return the compliment would be suicide. Ideologically, Muhammad and Jesus also offer two radically different constructs of the ideal, a fact that has been used to spawn a swarm of negative images about the former. The Quran explains that different Prophets were relevant for different times, with different degrees of honour. Allah spoke directly to Moses, who spent forty years in the wilderness fighting the disbelief of his own people. Moses was given the Book, but not mastery of the sword. David was born a shepherd, but became warrior, king, musician, poet, and Allah’s Caliph. Jesus was given the holy spirit, but no weapons for war, his mission was peaceful. Muhammad, as the last Messenger, combined the characteristics of all the Prophets, as his mission was greater than that of any of his predecessors. Christians, on their part, sullied Muhammad as an impostor, a libertine and an evil counselor who tricked the Arabs. Equating Muhammad with the devil and anti-Christ.
'The first eight chapters explain the doctrinaire and historical roots of the conflict between Islam and Christianity: the wars that began from virtually the lifetime of the Prophet for political control of the known world, and the spill of hatred into literature and rhetoric, leaving wounds more permanent than the fortune of battle...'

Mughal Empire and British Rule

Afghan warlord Mahmud of Ghazni's sacking of the Somnath temple in AD 1026 was based not just on jihadi logic but on the belief that the pre-Islamic idol. "In destroying Manat, he had carried out what were said to be the very orders of the Prophet. He was therefore doubly a champion of Islam." When Babur ordered a jihad against Rajputs at the battle of Khanwa in 1527, his intention may have not been mere looting and iconoclasm, but the language for galvanizing soldiers was the same as Mahmud's. Babur gave orders for two jihads: one against the ‘pagan’ and the other for spiritual cleansing. He renounced alcohol and prayed to Allah. Last, that he was father of one of the greatest emperors of India, Akbar, who was Babur's grandson, wrested victory against Hemachandra from the jaws of defeat in the second battle of Panipat, leading Abul Fazl to exclaim later that it was "Allah's divine wrath against the infidel, a victory for jihad."
When the British finally eliminated fellow European competition for India, the Sultan of Bengal, Siraj ud Daula, suffocated 43 Englishmen to death in Calcutta (infamous as the "Black Hole" incident). Even though the British were less crusading in their expansionism, Akbar notes that the Black Hole "added a moral zeal to their cause".
Akbar claims that the Muslim separatist claim in the Indian subcontinent was a direct result of the faltering fortunes of political Islam in South and Central Asia. Muslims in India began viewing themselves distinctly as a minority only after the Christian takeover of Delhi. "Jinnah fertilized a fear from the Islamic subconscious" and successfully spearheaded the partition of India that led to the creation of Pakistan in 1947. Gandhi had attempted harnessing jihad into a non-violent path during the Khilafat agitation of the early 1920s, but "the Muslim mind could not understand the sanctity of non-violent jihad for the liberation of the holy places".

The Age Of Osama

President Musharraf asked for an end to the culture of jihad that had wounded Pakistan more than it had hurt anyone else. He told the extremist clergy that they must stop encouraging gullible young men into martyrdom. Pakistan had not taken the responsibility for jihad across the world. He would not allow mosques to be misused and seminaries to become schools for hatred; he would end the rule of the Kalashnikov. Pakistan would not become a theocratic state, he asserted. No one would be allowed to carry on any jihad, including the jihad in Kashmir, from the comfort of Pakistan, he declared; that era was over.
Osama emerged out of the Afghan experience with an unshakeable conviction, which he repeated to anyone who would listen: with insignificant numbers and limited capability, a jihad could defeat even the greatest empire in the world. If the Soviet Union could be humbled, then the same spirit could renew Muslim power and confront Islam’s more powerful enemy, America, the superpower that had usurped the oil wealth that Allah had given to Muslims. When Osama returned home to Saudi Arabia, he was welcomed as a hero by its government and the people. Osama began to see himself as a new Caliph, or imam, who would safeguard Muslim interests across the world. The Taliban, and Al Qaida, and many organizations with a similar dream, can survive without a government, or even a country, because the recruitment is done in the mind. You cannot fight a battle in the mind only with special forces and cruise missiles. On 7 October 2001 the United States of America answered 11 September. It declared war on the Taliban, Osama bin Laden, and terrorism. The defeat of the Taliban and Osama was complete, but not decisive. Conclusion

The book concludes by providing a background on Iraq, Iran and Saddam Hussein. Akbar explains that the conflict between Islam and Christianity has acquired myriad shapes over fourteen hundred years: indoctrine, culture, and of course on the battlefield, from the fall of Jerusalem to the Caliph Omar in 637 CE to the presence of British and American troops in Pakistan and Afghanistan in 2002. The cause of bitter wars between Christians and Muslims has also been unearthed. Lack of sensitivity and respect towards each other’s religious figures fuelled war after war between Christians and Muslims.
Akbar has resolved any doubts about the contemporary relevance of perceived injustices of history and set at rest apologist arguments that the "revealed religions" do not in themselves contain the sparks of bitter hate and that only a few "misguided" zealots have distorted peaceful faiths. The only stance that MJ adopts is that of his conclusion- knowing Muslims the world over, jehad, not in its first meaning, as the struggle to know God, but in its second, that of fighting the unbeliever, is not yet done.