The Pope was wrong on jihad, too
The need for a dialogue between Islam and the west has never been more acute than now. But Pope Benedict's recent use of a 14th century quotation describing Islam as 'evil and inhuman' is clearly not the best approach. The Vatican said the Pope - in an address at Germany's University of Regensburg this month - had meant no offence, but rather wanted dialogue. Still, in the eyes of many Muslims, his remarks only reinforced a false and biased view of Islam - one not conducive to dialogue.
In his lecture, the Pope made several references to Islamic theology. But his passing reference to jihad presented the stereotypical western view of the concept - which totally ignores extensive Islamic debates on the topic. The word 'jihad' appears in more than 40 verses of the Koran, with varying connotations. No single reading of the verses can claim primacy. It is surprising that a theologian of the pontiff's stature sees jihad as an Islamic holy war in the Christian tradition. In Islamic theology, war is never holy: it is either justified or not. If it's justified, Muslims who die are regarded as martyrs.
The meanings of 'jihad' in Islamic history have been profoundly influenced by the prevailing social, political and material conditions. In other words, it's not a fixed category of Islamic thought, but has a complex and contested history that refracts changing understandings about the scope and meaning of worldly action. The meanings of jihad in Islamic jurisprudence have included: personal striving to achieve superior piety; justifications for early Arab conquests of non-Muslim lands; a struggle for Islamic authenticity; resistance against colonialism; and now, the struggle against the perpetrators of what some Islamists have labelled the 'Muslim holocaust'.
For contemporary Islamists, jihad is neither simply a blind and bloody-minded scrabble for temporal power, nor solely a door from which to pass from this life into the hereafter. It is a political action in which the pursuit of immortality and martyrdom is inextricably linked to a profound endeavour to establish a just community in this world. It's a form of political action whose pursuit realises God's plan on Earth and immortalises human deeds. So jihad can be viewed as a revolutionary process in stages, proceeding from the spiritual to the temporal realm of politics.
This interpretation is counter to the prevailing conception in the west - and the one given by the Pope - which views jihad in terms of destruction and suffering inflicted by religious fanatics on civilian populations. It's seen as an expression of violent impulses born of religious conviction. This view ignores the political dimension of the action. It also overlooks the violence, genocide and coercion undertaken in the name of political convictions such as democracy - the war in Iraq is just one example.
Throughout history, humans inspired by faith have tried to achieve immortality through action. Modern-day Muslim jihadists have much in common with the 'constant warfare' waged by Puritan radicals of the European Reformation. The Puritan Christians, by linking military action and politics to scripture, were transformed into political revolutionaries, according to American philosopher Michael Walzer.
The irony of modern jihadists is that the west contributed to building structures and institutional frameworks that sustained their holy-warrior consciousness. These structures continue to exist to this day. In the 1980s, with the assistance of western governments, holy warriors were recruited from across the Muslim world to support the people of Afghanistan in resisting the occupation by Russian 'infidels'. US president Ronald Reagan called them freedom fighters battling an evil empire. But they have since turned into Frankenstein's monsters, taking on the task of destroying their one-time sponsors.
After defeating the Russians, the jihadists turned their attention to the sufferings of their fellow Muslims in other 'occupied' Muslim countries. In recent studies, I queried thousands of Muslims in Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Egypt and Kazakhstan. Their responses showed that seeking relief from such suffering is a significant component of contemporary Islamic consciousness.
To win its 'war on terror', the US is relying on the overwhelming economic and military superiority of the west. But that great imbalance of forces will likely continue to inspire the jihadists to improvise their own weapons and strategies. Thus the war on terror will go on in the foreseeable future.
It's impossible to understand many of the world's Islamist militant movements without comprehending the political nature of their action. To portray them as incarnations of evil and 'Islamic fascists' is counterproductive: that only reinforces the pervasive view in the Muslim world that the 'war on terror' is a 'war on Islam'. This acts as a powerful catalyst for recruitment.
If war is the failure of politics, then it would seem that political action is a prerequisite to prevent war. In the course of my research on Islamic consciousness, I was struck - especially in the Middle East - by an all-pervasive sense of humiliation arising from the inability of the Arab countries to match the military and economic superiority of Israel. This is a major underlying cause of Islamic militancy and terrorism. It's reinforced by the economic power and absolute technological superiority of the west compared to Muslim countries.
For militants, jihad is fundamentally a political action to establish a just society as ordained in the scriptures. It is ultimately a 'this-worldly' action - and therefore, one that is amenable to resolution through negotiations among equal citizens of a globalising world. Such dialogue would alleviate some, if not all, of the mutual suspicions between Islam and the west.
Riaz Hassan is ARC Australian Professorial Fellow at Flinders University in Australia. Reprinted with permission from YaleGlobal Online
