Islamic Jihad
A Legacy of Forced Conversion, Imperialism, and SlaveryBy M. A. KhaniUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2009 M. A. Khan
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4401-1846-3Contents
Chapter I Jihad: The Controversies.......................................................1Chapter II Basic Beliefs in Islam........................................................7Chapter III Life of Prophet Muhammad and the Birth of Jihad..............................13The birth and early life (c. 570-610).....................................................14Prophetic mission in Mecca (610-622)......................................................17Muhammad's campaign of terror against Meccans (623-630)...................................26Muhammad's Dealing with the Jews..........................................................42Muhammad's dealing with the Christians....................................................51Status of non-Muslims in Islam as accorded by Muhammad....................................67Muhammad's Jihad and its outcome..........................................................71Chapter IV Propagation of Islam: By Force or Peacefully..................................73The early wars for spreading Islam........................................................74Propagation of Islam: Quranic commands and prophetic model................................77How so many Hindus survied in India?......................................................92Why so many people in India are still Hindus?.............................................97How conversion took place in India?.......................................................99Deceptive propaganda about conversion.....................................................112Conclusion................................................................................146Chapter V The Arab-Islamic Imperialism...................................................147Islamic imperialism: Quranic commands & prophetic model...................................149The Perception of Islamic rule............................................................152Why Islamic rule is not colonialism?......................................................155Economic exploitation in Islamic expansion................................................158The cultural imperialism of Islam.........................................................164Contribution of Islam to conquered lands..................................................172Calling colonies home.....................................................................188Chapter VI Islamic Imperialism in India..................................................191The Islamic conquest and rule.............................................................194India before the coming of Islam..........................................................201Hindu-Muslim divide: A British invention?.................................................217Hindu-Muslim discord, Partition of India & British complicity.............................220The 1947 Riots and Massacres: Who is Responsible?.........................................225Islam's impact on the social, intellectual and cultural life of India.....................246Islam's impact on religious demographics: past & present..................................257Muslim rule and poverty...................................................................259Legacy....................................................................................263Chapter VII Islamic Slavery..............................................................267Quranic sanction of slavery...............................................................269The prophetic model of slavery............................................................271Slavery in the ancient world..............................................................272Enslavement by Muslims in India...........................................................274Enslavement by Muslims elsewhere..........................................................285The Ottoman 'Dewshirme'...................................................................288Status of slaves..........................................................................290Suffering of slaves.......................................................................291Fate of slaves............................................................................299Sex-slavery & concubinage.................................................................308Eunuchs and ghilman.......................................................................312Islamic slave-trade.......................................................................315European slaves...........................................................................320The Viking slave-trade & Muslim connection................................................322European slave-trade & Islamic complicity.................................................324Denials of Islamic slavery................................................................327Humane treatment of slaves in Islam:......................................................329Islam aggravated slavery:.................................................................331Slavery, theologically & historically, an integral part of Islam..........................332Special cruelty and casualty of Islamic slavery...........................................334Abolition of slavery & Islamic resistance.................................................335European struggle against Islamic slavery in North Africa.................................336Muslim resistance against the Ottoman ban on slavery......................................345Continuation & revival of slavery in Muslim countries.....................................346Muslims bring slavery to the West.........................................................349Conclusion................................................................................350Chapter VIII The Last Word...............................................................353Bibliography..............................................................................359
Chapter One
Jihad: The Controversies
'... one must go on Jihad at least once a year ... One may use a catapult against them when they are in a fortress, even if among them are women and children. One may set fire on them and/or drown them.' [Imam al-Ghazzali, the second greatest scholar of Islam after Muhammad]
'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.' [Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah, New York, p. 473]
The tragic 9/11 attacks in the United States have dramatically changed the world-a change, which will persist for a long time to come. Indiscriminate violence worldwide by al-Qaeda and like-minded Muslim groups in the name of 'Jihad' or Islamic 'holy war' against the infidels (non-Muslims) has plunged both the Islamic and non-Islamic world into a crisis of security and stability. There is also an ascending tide of puritanical Islamic revivalism among the wider Muslim populace globally. Both these trends pose an unprecedented threat to future security of the secular-democratic nations, both in the West and elsewhere. The violent Jihadi groups-aiming to establish puritanical Islamic rule globally, governed by the Islamic holy law (Sharia)-seek to destroy the modernist, secular-democratic and progressive world-order through indiscriminate violence, death, and destruction. The nonviolent puritanical Islamic revivalism, which has a wider appeal amongst Muslims, seek to achieve the same goal, albeit through different means: through ever-growing demand for the legislation Sharia and for the gradual suppression of practices and social behaviours in Western societies-freedom of speech, mixing of opposite sexes, and homosexuality etc.-deemed offensive to Islam.
A poll in 2006 found some 40 percent of British Muslims wanted to be governed by Sharia laws, while some 60 percent of them wanted to see Sharia courts operate for the mediation of Muslim affairs. A recent study by the Center for Social Cohesion in the U.K. found some 4 percent of Muslim students in British Universities support killing to 'promote and preserve' Islam; 32 percent thought that killing was justified in the defence of Islam; 40 percent support the introduction of Sharia law for Muslims in Britain and 37 percent oppose it. Some 33 percent support the creation of a worldwide Muslim caliphate, with only 25 percent opposed to the idea. The study also found that extremism is on the rise amongst Muslims and young Muslims are religiously more radical than their parents' generation. Although Muslims currently constitute only about 3.5 percent of the British population, many aspects of Sharia law are unofficially practised widely in the Muslim community.
Under these circumstances, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, said in February 2008 that the introduction of Sharia law in the U.K. was 'unavoidable' and urged the government to consider its legal introduction. The British government has obliged to the popular demand of Muslims by making the ruling of a Sharia court legally binding in Britain in matters of divorce, financial disputes and even domestic violence. The Court, wrote the Daily Mail, claimed 'to have dealt with more than 100 cases since last summer, including six involving domestic violence, which is a criminal rather than civil offence, and said they hoped to take over growing numbers of 'smaller' criminal cases in future.' This is a step toward establishing Sharia laws in the U.K.
The Islamic 'Jihad' or 'holy war' stands for Fighting in the Cause of Allah, which Allah has introduced into the Islamic doctrine through a long list of verses in the Quran, such as verse 2:190. There are more than 200 divine verses of Jihad in the Quran. Osama bin Laden, the famous protagonist of violent Jihad in our times, defines his Jihadi campaigns against the infidels in religious terms as follows:
As to the relationship between Muslims and infidels, this is summarized by the Most High's (God's) Word: 'We renounce you. Enmity and hate shall forever reign between us-till you believe in Allah alone.' So there is an enmity, evidenced by fierce hostility from the heart. And this fierce hostility-that is, battle-ceases only if the infidel submits to the authority of Islam, or if his blood is forbidden from being shed, or if Muslims are at that point in time weak and incapable. But if the hate at any time extinguishes from the heart, this is great apostasy! Allah Almighty's Word to his Prophet recounts in summation the true relationship: 'O Prophet! Wage war against the infidels and hypocrites and be ruthless. Their abode is hell-an evil fate!' Such, then, is the basis and foundation of the relationship between the infidel and the Muslim. Battle, animosity, and hatred-directed from the Muslim to the infidel-are the foundation of our religion. And we consider this a justice and kindness to them.
Others have disputed this Muslim-to-infidel unidirectional and unrestrained hostility as the theological foundation of Jihad. Many moderate Muslims and scholars of Islam argue that the acts of indiscriminate violence, as perpetrated by al-Qaeda and like-minded Islamist groups, must not be called Jihad. Jihad, they claim, stands for a peaceful spiritual struggle, totally disconnected from violence. Like President Bush, they argue that Islam is a religion of peace and that violence has no place in it. It is also widely claimed, including by many non-Muslim scholars of Islam, that the hallmarks of Islamic history were those of tolerance, peace, and equality, which Christianity failed to offer to its Muslim (e.g., in Spain) and other non-Christian subjects (e.g., the Pagans and Jews in Europe and Americas).
Speakers at a Counter Terrorism Conference (February 19-21, 2008), organized by the East West Institute at Brussels, repeatedly argued that the term 'Jihad' must be dissociated from violence of al-Qaeda because, for most Muslims, Jihad 'originally means a spiritual struggle and they don't want it hijacked anymore.' Iraqi scholar Sheikh Mohammed Ali told the conference that "Jihad is the struggle against all evil things in your soul ... There is no jihadi terrorism in Islam." Emphasizing that Jihad can be a struggle for elimination of poverty, for education or for something very, very positive in life, General Ehsan Ul Haq, the former chairman of Pakistan's joint chiefs of staff, asserted that calling the terrorists Jihadists is either reflective of a "lack of understanding of Islam" or unfortunately "an intended misuse."
Since the 9/11 attacks, orchestrated by al-Qaeda in the name of Jihad, Muslims as well as many non-Muslim scholars and academics, have come out in force to defend this nonviolent notion of Jihad. Daniel Pipes has quoted several examples of the positive portrayals of the meaning of Jihad, which are summarized below.
Zayed Yasin, president of the Harvard Islamic Society, in a speech, entitled My American Jihad, at the University's 2002 commencement ceremony, said, "Jihad, in its truest and purest form, the form to which all Muslims aspire, is the determination to do right, to do justice even against your own interest. It is an individual struggle for personal moral behavior ..." Harvard dean Michael Shinagel, probably with no knowledge of Islamic theology, gave an emphatic endorsement of Yasin's definition of Jihad as a personal struggle for promoting "justice and understanding in ourselves and society." Professor David Mitten, advisor to the Harvard Islamic Society, defined true Jihad as "the constant struggle of Muslims to conquer their inner base instincts, to follow the path to God, and to do good in society."
There are many in the U.S. academia propagating this view on Jihad. Professor Joe Elder of the University of Wisconsin sees Jihad as a "religious struggle, which more closely reflects the inner, personal struggles of the religion." To Professor Roxanne Euben of Wellesley College, "Jihad means to resist temptation and become a better person," while Professor John Parcels of Georgia Southern University sees Jihad as a struggle "over the appetites and your own will." To Professor Ned Rinalducci at Armstrong Atlantic University, Jihad's goal is: "Internally, to be good Muslim. Externally, to create a just society." For Professor Farid Eseck at New York University, Jihad amounts to "resisting apartheid and working for women's rights." To Bruce Lawrence, eminent professor of Islamic studies at Duke University, Jihad may amount to "being a better student, a better colleague, a better business partner. Above all, to control one's anger." To him, even non-Muslims should inculcate the worthy virtue of Jihad; the United States, for example, can emulate the virtue of Jihad by reviewing her foreign policies for promoting justice for all in an unjust world.
Against this nonviolent and anything-good-one-does notion of Jihad, al-Qaeda and numerous radical Islamist groups triumphantly claim that their act of violence against the infidels, particularly the West and West-leaning/allied Muslim individuals, groups and governments, is Jihad. They often justify their claim with references from the Quran and examples from the life of Prophet Muhammad. Obviously, there is a great deal of disagreement or denial about this extremist discourse of Jihad.
It is undeniable that, out of misconception or not, the violent Islamist groups-with their unquestioned belief that they are fighting in the cause of Allah-will continue unleashing violence and terrorism against innocent men, women and children in the years and decades to come, causing incalculable damage and destruction to human life and society. Indisputably, Muslims are now a substantial and established group in almost every nation in the world. Due to high birth-rates amongst Muslims, their continued influx from the overpopulated Islamic world and decline of the native population, they may become, according to current demographic trends, the dominant religious group in many Western countries by the middle of this century. If the current tide of ascendant violent radicalism continues to thrive amongst Muslims, the stability of the tolerant, civilized world may face peril in the not-too-distant future. To secure the stability of the modernist, secular-democratic and progressive future of the world, nations must work unitedly for countering the ideology and activities of these radical Islamist groups, using both military and ideological means.
As violent Islamists wreak havoc around the world, more so in Islamic countries, understanding the 'true meaning' of Jihad, their central cause, is of central importance for both Muslims and non-Muslims in order to devise effective counter-measures against them. Without understanding what Jihad truly means, it is impossible for authorities and the people to devise effective remedies against the growing violent trend in the name of Jihad amongst Muslims.
This book is a small effort to give readers an idea of what Jihad truly means. It goes through the life of Prophet Muhammad as he progressively received revelation from the Islamic God (Allah) as contained in the Muslim holy book, the Quran. It will examine when and under what circumstances, Allah introduced the concept of Jihad into Islamic doctrines. It will demonstrate-based on the Quran, authentic prophetic traditions, and original biographies of Prophet Muhammad-how the Prophet of Islam had applied the doctrine of Jihad as he founded the Islamic creed during the last twenty-three years of his life (610-632 CE). Having thus made a sense of the religious foundation and prophetic model of Jihad, it will examine how this prototypical model of Jihad was perpetuated by Muslims through the ages of Islamic domination.
It is worth noting beforehand that, in putting Allah's doctrine of Jihad into practice at the birth of Islam, Prophet Muhammad had established three major models of Jihadi actions:
1. Use of violence for the propagation of Islam,
2. Islamic imperialism,
3. Islamic slavery
The historical accounts of these legacies of Jihad will be discussed in separate chapters in this book.
Chapter Two
Basic Beliefs in Islam
A basic overview of the Muslim beliefs, summarised below, will be helpful in understanding the content of this book.
Muslims believe that Islam is the final monotheistic religion of the Abrahamic School. Allah, the Islamic God, Who is the same God as that of the Jews and Christians, had sent 124,000 prophets in succession to preach His guidance to humankind since the creation of Adam and Eve. Adam was the first and Muhammad was the last in this succession of prophets. Muhammad was the final prophet and the best of them all. He was the highest perfection of human life for all time. The final and best prophet also brought God's perfected, final divine revelation, the Quran and founded God's finalized religion, Islam. The earlier revelations and creeds sent by God, such as the Jewish and Christian scriptures and religions, are imperfect and inferior to the final one. Allah Himself asserts in the Quran that He sent Islam to abrogate and replace all other religions: 'He (Allah) has sent His Apostle (Muhammad) with the guidance and the (only) true religion that He may make it prevail over all the religions' [Quran 48:28].
Islam asserts that the Jewish scripture has been perverted or changed by the Jews over time [Quran 2:59]. Hence, it is canceled and must be abandoned. The Christian scripture gets a better evaluation in that, although considered inferior to Islam, it is still valid. The Quran asserts that Christians have forgotten some parts of their original scripture [Quran 5:14] and that they have misunderstood their teachings and wrongly consider Jesus as the son of God [Quran 5:72; 112:2; 19:34-35; 4:171]. It also asserts that Christians wrongly attribute Jesus as one of the Three-i.e., one of the three Gods or the Trinity [Quran 5:73; 4:171]. Although Christians practice their religion wrongly, Allah did not cancel Christianity altogether, but hopes that it would eventually be superseded by Islam [Quran 48:28]. Strangely, instead of sending Prophet Muhammad to explain how Jews had corrupted the Torah (Old Testament) or how Christians have forgotten and misunderstood the Bible (New Testament) and to correct those elements and sections, God chose to send down an entirely different religion with Prophet Muhammad at its head.
Islam is based on two foundational components: first, the divine revelation, contained in the Quran and second, the prophetic traditions, also called ahadith or Sunnah. The divine revelation is God's message to mankind in His own words contained unaltered in the Arabic Quran. During Muhammad's career of preaching and propagating Islam between 610 and 632, Allah passed His revelations in bits and pieces to Muhammad through His messenger, angel Gabriel. Muhammad was an illiterate man. Every time Gabriel came down with God's verses, he pronounced it to Muhammad until the latter memorized it word by word. Muhammad then got it written down by his literate disciples in order to keep them exactly as God's word. He got it memorized by a group of his favourite disciples. These revelations, after Prophet Muhammad's death, were compiled into what is known as the Quran. The contents of the Quran, therefore, are exact words of the Islamic God intended for guiding human life in this world exactly in the way He wants. Such a life would enable believers to gain access to Allah's Paradise after death and reap His endless bounties therein.
The second element, indeed, the other half of the Islamic creed, is the prophetic traditions: the sayings, deeds and actions of Prophet Muhammad, collectively called the Sunnah or ahadith. Since Muhammad was the best amongst God's numerous prophets and the embodiment of the highest perfection of human life ever to walk on the earth-the only way for Muslims, indeed for all human beings, to live a perfect human life for achieving Allah's bounties in Paradise is to walk in the footsteps of the Prophet.
In Islamic belief, Muslims who live their life as perfectly as that of Prophet Muhammad will enter Paradise without ever serving any time in hell. But it is almost impossible for a Muslim to emulate Muhammad's sinless life. Therefore, most Muslims will first serve some period of time, being roasted in the horrifying fire of Islamic hell. The length of their residence in hell will be determined by the quantum of sins they commit in this life. They will, thereafter, enter Paradise to live there for eternity.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Islamic Jihadby M. A. Khan Copyright © 2009 by M. A. Khan. Excerpted by permission.
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