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The Jehad - the Holy War

By

Sayyid Mujtaba Musavi Lari

Islam's aim, in its wars, battles and national
uprisings against polytheism and materialism, has not
been conquest, expansionism, imperialism or the seizure
of others' financial resources. The early impact of Islam
on Mecca caused loss to those vested interests which
profited from the service of the ancient idols in the
Ka'aba and the pilgrims who flocked to those shrines from
all the Arab world. These vested interests therefore
revolted against the spread of the new pure faith. The
Qureish cut off relations with the Prophet and his
adherents; and forced them to flee into the mountains,
where they hid starving, until they finally found refuge
in friendly Yathrib, 200 miles north.

Even here polytheists mounted further attacks. The
necessity to defend the believers and ensure the survival
of the faith forced the Prophet to elaborate and
elucidate the concept of a just war. His
raids from Yathrib (which from his adoption of it and its
adoption of him won the glorious name of Madinat-an-Nabi
meaning the City of the Prophet) were made to
prevent the Meccans mobilising large supplies of
ammunition and huge forces to attack and wipe out his
faithful few.

This concept of a just war led to that of,
the Jehad or Holy War, and
the first revelations on this subject to the Prophet are
enshrined in the Qur'anic texts (1) Sura XXII: Hajj-Pilgrimage
(verses 39 and 40): Those upon whom war is made by
unbelievers are granted permission to fight because they
are being oppressed (Verily God is most powerful to aid
them) and have been expelled from their homes in defiance
of right for the sole 'crime of saying 'Our Lord is
God'.

And (2) Sura II: Baqara -The Heifer
(verse 190): Fight in the cause of God against
those who attack you. But be careful to maintain the
limit, since God does not love transgressors. By
limit is meant that the force used must be
limited to that which is the minimum adequate to restrain
the evildoers who attack. The force used must never
exceed that limit in order to exact revenge or impose an
imperialistic conquest.

As a world faith for everyone everywhere, Islam knows
no geography; but must extend to every last soul in every
last region of the world, and carry them its word of
truth. History shows that no established order was ever
replaced by a new superior order without some warfare.
Examples are the revolutions in France, India, America,
Russia, China. Since Islam sets out to change men's
living and thinking, and to end radicalism and
exploitation, it is to run into opposition from people
with vested interests in corruption. Indeed, the more
successful it is in winning adherents by word of mouth
and of pen, the fiercer is the reaction of those who find
themselves losing their hold on people they have
previously victimised. In the end the victory of arms
confirms the earlier victory already registered by
propaganda appealing to men's reason and conscience.

Addicts of uncleanness, dishonesty and power work up a
violent resistance in the endeavour to stifle the new
faith and the sound society it is producing, which is
putting them out of business. Since they refuse to attend
to sense they must attend to the sword. As the Prophet
expressed it, according to The Book of the Jehad
and its Methods. Goodness and blessing
flourish where law wields the sanctions of force to
prevent ill-doing. For alas, there are people who will
not submit to what is right unless they feel that
sanctions threaten penalties for transgression.

When freedom of thought and of choice of the best way
of life is taken from men, force, either of police or of
army, must be called in. It was to reduce oppressors and
tyrants to subjection, in order that the oppressed might
be freed to listen to the challenge of Islam, that the
first Muslim battles took place. The masses must be given
freedom to make their own choice; for without that the
truth cannot come to control societies, nations and the
world. As it is written in Sura IV. Nisa'a-Women
(verse 75): Why should you not take up the Jehad
in God's cause, and for the cause of the weak in Mecca,
your own men, women and children, who cry out: Our
Lord! rescue us from this town of oppressors; and raise
up for us a protector, coming from Thee to aid us'?

Islam does not war against people. It wars against
oppression, tyranny and wrong. These false ideas it seeks
to root out, and to replace them by the superior ideas of
purity and faith. It seeks not to win over enemies, but
to win enemies over to its - that is God's - side, in the
eternal battle between good and evil. For humanity faces
the choice between self-annihilation through evil on the
one hand or the kingdom of God on earth through obedience
on the other. There is no third way. To serve or to seek
anything other than God and His will is idolatry The
worship of possessions, pelf, or power is as much
idolatry as sacrificing to stock and stone. It is a
negation of man's true nature and destiny.

Therefore, before embarking on hostilities, Islam
always sends a herald to the enemy bearing the invitation
to accept Islam and make peace on the spot. Thus, when
the Muslim armies entered Iran, the Muslim
Commander-in-Chief sent a messenger to the General Rustam
Farukhzaad inviting him to a conference at which the
Muslims explained why they were there, saying: We
have come to free your people from slavery to false
deities and vain superstition and to lead them to the
freedom of worship of the One God. In His Apostle's Name
we invite you, as you will face the dreadful day of
judgment, to be saved and replace your dark and inane
customs with the justice and equity of the true
Faith.

These conferences lasted three days. All the Muslim
spokesmen promised that should be left to run their own
country in peace if they accepted Islam as they were
being invited to do.

It is related, in the book above quoted on the Jehad,
Volume 2, page 421, that the Prophet said to Ali:
Never be the aggressor who starts a war. First
invite your enemy to turn to the true God. If God leads
one person through you to enter the life of faith, that
will be of greater benefit for you than if you owned all
that the sun shines upon.

Islam's aim is that the knowledge of God should cover
the earth as the waters cover the sea, and His kingdom
extirpate violence and lust and degradation and
oppression and injustice; and to this end Muslims are
prepared to give their lives in peace or if necessary, in
war. As it is written in the first verse of Sura XXXVII: Saffat
-Those ranged in ranks. By those who
range themselves in ranks and so are strong against evil
and in proclaiming God's message 'verily, verily your God
is One'.

Similarly, in Sura VIII: Anfal -The
spoils of war (part of verses 47 and 67) the
Prophet sternly rebuked some of his fellow-fighters who
followed the dark customs of the age of ignorance after a
victory saying to them: Be not like those who
started from their homes insolently and to be seen of
men. Your lusts are for the goods and delights of this
world while the Lord desires for you an eternity of
joy.

In his book entitled War and Peace in
Islam, Dr. Majid Khadouri writes on page 214:
Islam changed the old Arab conception of the 'Darul-Harb'
or House of War into that of the 'Dar-ul-Islam' or
House of Islam, which truly sought to minister Islam to
the people of the world. Its first success was in uniting
the nations which accepted it within themselves, so that
civil wars ceased. It went on to found a family of
Islamic nations at peace with each other. It aims to
bring that blessing to the whole world. Thus the aim of
the Jehad is peace on earth, and that will be its
final result.

Western Crusaders developed their concept of chivalry
from the conduct of the Muslim paladins in war. One great
principle was that the lives of the many poorer folk
should be saved by settling the issue of the dispute in a
single combat between two champions each chosen to
represent his own side.

A whole range of courteous attitudes and actions was
developed to govern such contests. They were carried over
into the peaceful contests called jousts, in
which knights fought each other to show their prowess
before their monarch and their people, and also to
practice against the day when they would be meeting the
champion of an opposing army in serious warfare. The
chivalrous and knightly conduct towards the fallen foe,
which these contests taught, altered the entire manners
of renascent Europe as it emerged from the barbarism of
its latest invaders from the North. Ransoms were exacted
and paid with honour.

Muslim armies were forbidden to cause the destruction
of property, the burning of houses, the wasting of crops
and pastures, the filling of wells or the deprivation of
food. Mercy must be shown to the conquered. The utmost
consideration must be manifested towards the enemy's
children, aged, women and sick, whether mentally or
physically afflicted.

Professor Muhammad Hameed-ulla of Paris University in
his book on The Prophet and War (p.9) writes:
The Arabia which acknowledged the Prophet and Islam
is a peninsula of over one million square miles in area -
the size of all Europe west of Russia. Yet no more than
150 persons lost their lives in the reduction of that
entire peninsula, so that in the course of ten years a
maximum of 15 deaths per annum because of fighting must
be reckoned. Few other conquerors in history can show
such a record.

The Prophet, sending his troops to fight, is reported
by the book on the Jehad (Volume 2, p.424) to have
addressed them in the following terms: 'Go in God's name
for God's cause with God's aid, and act as God wishes you
to act. Show no treachery or falsehood towards His
commands. Mutilate no one. Show mercy to the aged, the
incapable, women and children. Only when it is inevitable
cut down a tree. Grant sanctuary to any prisoner from the
least to the highest in order that they may hear the word
of truth. Whose follows that truth becomes your brother.
If he refuses, release him to go to his home when peace
is made. At all times and in every situation pray for
God' s help and obey His guidance about your
conduct.

Similarly the Imam Ali, when the army of Mu'aviye came
to attack him in Iraq, gave his final command to his
troops as follows: if your foe takes to flight on
the field of battle, pursue him not nor slay him. Persons
who have lost the power to defend themselves or have
fallen wounded on the field of battle must not be harmed.
Women must be respected and must not be caused to be
afraid or to be troubled.

In war it sometimes happens that the enemy does
something which moves a Muslim to a desire for revenge',
but the Muslim is bidden in such a case to return to his
first aims and basic principles and to fight against the
desire to transgress against the truth and against that
excellence which he has been tempted to forget, and to be
first of all victor over his own passions, which is the
true victory, prerequisite for an Islamic victory in war.

We were all brought up on the story of the Imam Ali
laying an opponent prone and sitting on his chest to
reason with him about the true faith : whereat the foeman
spat in the saint's face. Ali at once rose and walked
away. His followers asked him why , and he said: I
felt rage rising in my heart at that man's insult, and
was tempted to slay him on the spot. If I had done so, it
would not have been a just execution of a recalcitrant
infidel because of his invincible ignorance, but an act
of personal revenge under the impulse of passion. What is
the good of my seeking to reason with him and bring him
to a true faith unless I am living that true faith with a
pure heart and free from pollution myself?

In the Holy Qur'an such an attitude is enjoined in
many places, for instance in Sura II: Baqara -
The Heifer (verse 194): If anyone
transgresses against you requite him with an exactly like
action and restrain yourself for God; and know that God
is with those who so restrain themselves.

Or again Sura V. Ma'ide - The Table
Spread (verse 9): 'O ye who believe! Stand out
firmly for God, as witnesses to fair dealing, and let not
others' hatred of you make you depart from justice and
swerve towards wrong. Be just: for justice is next to
piety. And fear God; for God knows all you do.'.

And again, in the same Sura (verse 3): 'Let not
the hatred of some who shut you out of the sacred mosque
lead you to transgression and hostility. Help one another
to righteousness and piety, not to sin and rancour. Fear
God, for punishment is God's and He is strict with
all. Or, in connection with conflict between
believers, Sura XLIX: Hujarat 'The Inner
Apartments (verse 9). Should a group of
believers split into two opposing parties, make ye peace
between them. If the violence of one against the other
goes beyond bounds, bring force to bear on the group
which is transgressing so badly, until it once again
complies with God's commands. When such compliance has
been exacted, then make peace between the two parties
with justice. Be fair in arbitrating, for God loves those
who are fair.

The emphasis of this passage on the blessing God gives
to peacemakers, and His command that Muslim fighters
should be peacemakers, even if they have to use force to
bring the recalcitrant to heel, rather than ask the weak
to forgive and to renounce his rights as is too often
thought godly, is particularly worthy of remark.

Islam enjoins renunciation of one's own rights in the
interests of peacemaking, while still recognising that
human nature is bound, willy-nilly to feel resentment at
injuries. It calls on believers to replace the passion of
resentment with the greater passion for God's will, and
with obedience to His calling to end division, violence
and the use of force on earth. It is in the light of this
command that Islam has always showed the utmost
compassion towards nations which it has conquered, and
exerted itself to give them that true sense of real
independence which comes to people whose hearts are fixed
on God and who live to make His will regnant upon earth,
starting with their own community.

The people of Homs closed the gates of their city in
the face of the army of Heraclius. They told the Romans
that the Muslim rule with its justice and law courts was
preferable to the tyranny and force they feared.

When the Muslim army under the command of Abu 'Ubeida
entered the territory of Jordan the Christians of those
parts sent a letter to the Muslims which read as follows:
O Muslims! You are preferable to the Byzantines for
us, even though they are of the same creed as ourselves.
You are more trustworthy, more just, more kindly, more
beneficent to us. They not only took dominion over us but
also plundered our houses.

Philip Hitti writes in Vol. 2 of his History
of the Arabs(p.638): Wherever the Islamic
army set foot, the people of those parts received them
with open arms and brought them viands and water, and
vied with each other in leaving their entrenchments to
join the Muslim - not difficult to understand for those
who realise what the tyranny of the Visigoths had
been!

Nor did the Muslims force peoples of occupied lands to
change their religion.

Islam arranged a system by which they guaranteed
freedom of religion to believers in any of the heavenly
books by forming them into Millats,
semi-autonomous communities within the state with the
right to their own forms of worship, to their customs at
birth, at marriage and at death, to their own schools and
the use of their own tongue if they had a language of
their own like Turkish, Armenian, Kurdish, or Aramaic.
They were exempt from the Zakat or
Tax in aid of the poor which was incumbent on
all Muslims. This exemption was because the Zakat
has a religious as well as a political side. Instead they
paid a poll tax because they were not Muslims. Payment of
the poll tax guaranteed their citizenship rights in the
whole community. Thus Islam guarded the tenderest
scruples of conscience of followers of the revealed
religions. It extended this care in its lawgiving to the
treatment of criminals, of civil causes, of commercial
matters, as well as the strictly religious side of life,
so that the minorities were free and safeguarded in the
following of their convictions.

In the Qur'an rules are laid down for the
relationships of Muslims with non-Muslims. If the
non-Muslims maintain a friendly attitude they are
well-treated, though of course hostilities must be
repulsed, whether overt or covert. But Muslims are
forbidden to begin aggression of either type. As it is
written in Sura LX: Mumtahana (The Believing
Woman Refugee) Who is to be tested (verses 8 and
9): God does not forbid you to deal kindly and
justly with those who are not hostile to your faith and
do not drive you out of your home. For God loves the
just. But God forbids you to turn to those who are
against your faith and drive you out of your homes or
support others in driving you out. Those who turn to such
do wrong.

Christian and Jewish minorities live under exemplary
conditions in Islamic countries, in a coexistence where
each respects the other's rights. When the Prophet first
came to Yathrib many Jewish groups lived there, and dwelt
alongside the Muslims without the least friction, a
condition which was continued by the Caliphs after the
Prophet's death. The Founder of Islam said:
'Whosoever harms a tribute-paying infidel living
amongst us has harmed me. And again: Beware!
whosoever injures a non-Muslim, or steals even a worn-out
piece of cloth or takes the smallest thing he owns
without his consent, will find me on the side of the
prosecution when he comes to trial on the Day of
Judgment.'

When the Imam Ali was Caliph he one day came across a
blind and helpless old man and asked for information
about him. His officials told him that the old man was a
Christian who in his youth and strength had been a civil
servant. The saint replied: 'You used him for work
when he was young and cast him off when he is old and
weak! He must be given a pension from the public treasury
to ensure his livelihood.

Dr. Laura Vacceia Vaglieri writes that the words of
the Prophet and the Fatwas (ex-cathedra decrees)
of the great Islamic jurisconsults show up the falsehood
of the story that Islam imposed its religion by the
sword. The Qur'an lays down that 'compulsion has no
place in religion.

The Prophet safeguarded the Christians of Nejran and
ordered that reverence should be shown for their place of
worship. He further ordered his commanders that even the
fleas in the houses of the Jews were not to be touched.
Adam Metz writes that the Muslims showed a respect for
synagogues and churches which no European land in
medieval times showed for synagogues and mosques. And
Professor Gustave le Bon writes that under Muslim rule in
Spain great Christian conferences were held in Seville
(AD 872) and Cordova (AD 852). Nor was any post under the
government or any other job forbidden to Jews or
Christians.

The Crusaders' capture of Jerusalem was a horror of
brutality. Pyramids of heads were constructed. 1,000
Muslims who had sought sanctuary in their mosque were
mercilessly put to the sword. Blood flowed knee-deep in
the Temple courts. Kenneth Clark writes that in the
history of mankind no worse warfare has been waged than
the brutal Crusades, with the Normans' lust for lands and
the Europeans' desire for the profits of the fruitful
Eastern luxury trades behind them.

The Crusaders held Jerusalem for 88 years, and lost it
again after that period to the Muslim armies led by the
great Kurdish General Selah-ed Deen Ayyoubi, whom the
Christians called Saladin. This was in October AD 1187
(AHL 583, Rajab month). Instead of massacring all the
Christians in imitation of the Christian massacre of its
Muslims 88 years before, peaceloving wise Saladin
proclaimed a public amnesty; and forbade the execution,
the plundering, or the torture of any Christian, so
adding another glorious page to the world fame of Islam.
The true spirit of Islam governed all its troops in this
as in its other wars. Saladin ordered a constitutional
security for all the inhabitants of Palestine. He gave
one dinar to every man and to every woman and two dinars
to every child, with the permission to settle where they
would. Security was greater in Jerusalem than in any
other city so that the Latin citizens preferred to stay
there. The Bishop, who had riches beyond the dreams of
avarice, said he wished to leave. Some Muslims asked
Saladin to keep him and divide his riches amongst the
Muslims, but he refused, saying. It is impossible
that I should perpetrate such a crime. I will take ten
dinars from him and no more.

The savagery shown by Christians in Andalusia in the
West was no less. After all the services which the
Muslims had performed for Spain, the religious leaders of
the victorious Christian army ordered the execution of
every Muslim, old and young, woman and man, at the
instigation of the Pope and of Philip II. Not one in four
of the Muslims escaped the ensuing massacre. Even some of
these were dragged before the Inquisition and condemned
for their beliefs.

John Davenport writes (p.133; Apology to
Muhammad and the Qur'an): Who can fail to
admire the chivalry shown by the Islamic rulers of Spain
or to wonder at the monuments of civilisation, both
architectural and cultural, which they have left behind
them? And who can fail to feel shame at the conduct of
Christians, the fanaticism and bigotry and ignorance and
barbarism which brought torture and oppression in its
train?

Georgi Zeidan narrates that the Christian conquerors
of Andalusia made Muslims, Jews and criminals carry
labels to make them known to all men wherever they went:
and even presented Muslims with a choice between
accepting Christianity or dying (p.282 of the 4th volume
of his History of Islamic Civilisation). He
adds that the Christians turned Muslims' mosques into
churches, deprived them of all freedom of religious
observances, destroyed their cemeteries, stripped them of
the necessities of existence, and smashed up their
hammams.

In the time of Henry IV of Spain the 4,000 defenders
of the town of Dulan were strangled by Christian hands.
Such was the Christian understanding of the blessing
proclaimed on peacemakers by the Messiah Himself? Is
modern imperialism in our civilised world much better?
Does it not tread underfoot the dignity and personality
of those under its dominion, and strip them of the
benefits of its vaunted civilisation?

Does it not enslave mind and soul and spirit as much
as the body of its underlings? In order to ensure its own
profits, does it not suppress all freedom of thought
amongst the masses, so that they may never even think of
raising a finger against their tyrants, and so that any
rising murmur of a demand for justice may be stifled
before it can be heard? Let the great powers mouth fine
words about peace as they will. When it comes to action
they set all that idealism aside. Even their so-called
diplomacy is merely an extension of their imperialistic
aims. Idealists can do no more than draw pictures on
water until moral conditions of peaceful coexistence are
established worldwide in a family of nations.

The units of a social structure are individual men and
women: a harmonious structure can only be built with
individual persons in accord with each other and each at
one with and within the self. Islam's primary endeavour
is, therefore, to create that inner peace within
individuals by filling hearts with the faith and
conviction that sets the conscience at peace, and which
streamlines all the gifts of brain and body in a harmony
of joint action towards a God-given end. Islam applies
faith practically, in such a way as to produce a world
which runs aright. For this reason its second task is to
guarantee an environment which will promote the certainty
that justice prevails; and, by obviating threats to
health and property, to make all feel secure.

Islam deprecates the exploitation of one class by
another. Islam instead advocates co-operation and mutual
aid in quiet neighbourliness and friendship. Islam
propounds norms of behaviour and trains its citizens in
serene living as these norms, practised, shape habits and
customs. Of course, the frailty of human nature and the
limitations of human ability, insight and purview,
prevent these ideals from being always and everywhere
realised Without error. Even the best of leaders can be
so busied with one set of events that he fails to notice
another series going awry, into error, division - even
into violence and oppression. But the will to redress the
wrong and put things right again is always there; and
above all, God's guidance and illumination exist to
enlighten consciences and inspire restitution, reminding
all that they will face their Judge at Doomsday.