Getting Medieval on your You-Know-What

The Greater Jihad and the Lesser Jihad.
Part III of a Series—What Does Jihad Really Mean?

Speak of jihad as Islamic Holy War and some Social Justice Warrior, or perhaps an academic, will inevitably “correct” you. “Jihad is one of the most misunderstood concepts in Islam,” they’ll intone piously. “Americans," a word they utter with just a hint of contempt, “think of it as bloodshed, as a war of the Muslim against the unbeliever. But really jihad, which literally means ‘struggle’ or ‘exertion,’ is an internal struggle, a struggle against your own soul to overcome your weaknesses.” They might go on to explain that the internal struggle is the “Greater Jihad” while the war against the unbeliever, which is always defensive, is the “Lesser Jihad.” They're blissfully oblivious to the fact that even a “lesser” jihad is still a jihad, a religious obligation for Muslims, and that therefore they're contradicting themselves when they say that jihad isn't Holy War at all.

So what does jihad really mean?

In Part I of this series, I explored what the Quran has to say on the subject. I looked up every instance of the word jihad and its various forms (jahid, tujahidun, etc.). There were forty-one of them. I found that in the majority of cases, it was ambiguous. The Quran commands Muslims to “struggle (tujahidun) in the Way of Allah” without actually saying what that means. But in six cases it is clearly a conflict between Muslims and non-Muslims, and in two cases it is clearly an armed conflict. In no cases are there any reason to think it means an internal struggle.

However, despite pride of place, the Quran is not the only source of authority in Islam. The Hadith—the narratives about Muhammad and his Companions—are almost as important to the jurists. The use of the term jihad in the Hadith was the subject of Part II. This was a more ambitious project, as the search returned nearly 800 hadith containing some form of the word jihad. As in the Quran, many are ambiguous. I did find one hadith in which Muhammad describes a jihadist as “one who strives against his own soul.” But only one. The majority of the relevant narratives are clearly about violent conflict against the unbeliever. And they even state, in no uncertain terms, what the greatest jihad is:

It was narrated that ‘Amr bin ‘Abasah said: I came to the Prophet (May the Prayer and Peace of Allah be upon him) and said: “O Messenger of Allah, which Jihad is best?” He said: “(That of a man) whose blood is shed and his horse is wounded.” (Sunan ibn Majah, Book of Jihad)

Around the year 900, six collections of Hadith (seven according to the Maliki school of thought) had been canonized—designated the official collections that, together with the Quran, form the basis of the shari’ah in Sunni Islam.

But that didn’t end discussion about jihad (or anything else for that matter). Over the next few centuries, the Great Medieval Commentators of the Muslim religion would study, rehash, dissect, analyze and analogize the Law. What they had to say about jihad is the topic of this installment.

I wouldn’t have known where to start, had it not been for some helpful discussions with Andrew Bostom (in 2011! Where does the time go?) and his collection of Muslim and western writings on the subject, The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims, so let me give him a shout out right at the outset. The Legacy of Jihad is an excellent reference on the topic, and is available on Amazon.com.

We do, in the era of the Great Commentators, encounter for the first time the concept of a “greater” and “lesser” jihad in which the Jihad of the Soul is the greater. According to a 2005 article by Sh. G. F. Haddad, “Documentation of ‘Greater Jihad’ hadith,” it appears as a hadith in the Tarikh Baghdad (History of Baghdad) of al-Khatib al-Baghdadi (d. 1071),

The Prophet (Peace by upon him) and his Family and Companions (blessings and peace) returned from one of his expeditions and said: "You have come for the best. You have come from the smaller jihad to the greater jihad." They said, "What is the greater jihad, Messenger of Allah?" He said: "The servant's struggle against his lust."

A similar account occurs in Al-Zuhd Al-Kabir by al-Khatib’s contemporary Abu Bakr al-Bayhaqi (d. 1066). In the next generation, Abu Hamid Ghazali (d. 1111)—with whom you’re familiar if you’ve read my novel The Thread of Reason—recounts this hadith in his massive encyclopedia of Islam, Reviving the Science of Religion (Vol. 3, Ch. 2 “Efforts for Good Conduct in the Ways of God”).

Despite such distinguished sources, the hadith is problematic. It doesn’t appear until four centuries after the death of Muhammad, and Bayhaqi says that the chain of transmission—the sequence of narrators between Bayhaqi and the prophet himself—“contains weakness.” The notion of chain of transmission is a core concept in Hadith scholarship, used to distinguish genuine hadith from fabricated ones. Furthermore, not only does this hadith not appear in one of the canonical collections, and therefore doesn’t carry the force of law, but it directly contradicts the hadith I cited above about the best form of jihad being that of a man whose blood is shed, which appears in the Sunan ibn Majah and does carry the force of law. Or as PeaceWithRealism.org put it, rather more bluntly, “Muhammad never made such a statement.”

In any case, the “Greater Jihad” hadith, the notion that jihad is an internal struggle, is not typical of what most of the Great Muslim Commentators of the Middle Ages have to say about the subject: that jihad is about getting medieval on your You-Know-What if you're an unbeliever. And they say it far less ambiguously than the Quran and the Hadith. They were writing law books, and they put the discussions about jihad in the same chapters as the regulations for conducting warfare. So the link between the two is unmistakable.

These legal manuals address such questions as whether jihad is purely defensive (absolutely not); whether it is permissible to kill non-combatants such as women and children (most authors say no) or monks and hermits (more of a controversy there); whether cruel weapons like mangonels, fire, and flooding are permitted (most authors say yes); whether it is permissible to kill prisoners (depends on the circumstances); whether one must kill the enemy with weapons or if it’s permissible to set them on fire (opinions vary); the laws governing plunder; and under what circumstances a retreat or a truce is permissible. It is generally agreed that the enemy must be called upon, before hostilities begin, to choose between conversion to Islam, submission to Muslim rule and payment of the jizya, or death. But there’s some debate as to whether one must call upon them to convert a second time before resuming hostilities after a truce.

Ghazali, for example, in his Kitab al-Wajiz fi Fiqh Madhab al-Imam Shafi’i (Book of the Summary of Jurisprudence of the School of Imam Shafi’i), writes,

One must go on jihad (i.e. warlike razzias or raids) at least once a year…one may use a catapult against them [non-Muslims] when they are in a fortress, even if among them are women and children. One may set fire to them and/or drown them…If a person of the ahl al-kitab [People of the Book, i.e. Jews and Christians] is enslaved, his marriage is revoked…One may cut down their trees…One may destroy their useless books. Jihadists may take as booty whatever they decide…they may steal as much food as they need.

As the title indicates, Ghazali’s book is an epitome of the work of Abu Abdullah al-Shafi’i (d. 820). Looking at al-Shafi’i’s own work is enlightening, because in his discussion of jihad he cites a number of verses from the Quran about warfare, even though they don’t specifically mention jihad. For example, 9:29 (which is also cited by many other authors in the context of jihad), “Fight against those who do not believe in Allah nor in the last Day, and do not make forbidden what Allah and His messenger have made forbidden, and do not practice the religion of truth, of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the jizya off-hand, being subdued.” Thus, in places where the Quran is ambiguous as to whether warfare=jihad, Imam Shafi’i connects the dots.

We tend to think of Averroes (d. 1198) as a philosopher rather than a scholar of shari’ah—the one true disciple of Aristotle in Islam—but he was a judge as well, and wrote several legal works, one of which, Bidayat al-Mudjtahid (The Beginning of Jurisprudence) has come down to us. In the chapter on jihad, he covers many of these same issues. In good, Aristotelian fashion, he gives a thorough account of the opinions on them prior to his. I highly recommend reading it (it’s in Dr. Bostom’s book) to get a flavor of what commentary on the shari’ah was like.

These are not fringe figures or bastions of a medieval past who are no longer relevant today. Imam al-Shafi’i was the founder of one of the four great schools of law that comprise Sunni Islam. Even today the Shafi’i school predominates in East Africa, Indonesia, Yemen, and parts of Egypt and Turkey.

Abu Hamid Ghazali has been called “the greatest Muslim after Muhammad.” His work was bedside reading for Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, and has been quoted in ISIS propaganda.

Averroes was not only a prominent jurist and one of the most significant philosophers in the history of Islam but, thanks to his role in reintroducing Aristotle to Europe, one of the most significant philosophers in the history of the world.

These three just represent the tip of the iceberg. Over a period of 600 years, al-Fazari (d. after 802), al-Tabari (d. 923), al-Qayrawani (d. 996), al-Mawardi (d. 1058), Ibn Hazm (d. 1064), Sheikh Burhanuddin Ali of Marhginan (d. 1196), Ibn Qudama (d. 1223), Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328), Ziauddin Barani (d. 1357), Ibn al-Khatib (d. 1374), and Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406) all wrote about jihad in a similar vein. As Darío Fernández-Morera points out in his book The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise, which I reviewed a while back, most of these Great Commentators not only present the warfare-against-the-unbeliever view of jihad, but that’s the only view they present.

These scholars were respected figures in a civilization that revered scholars. Many had the ears of kings. So what they wrote didn’t merely get sealed in books and stored harmlessly in libraries. People acted on them, with real world consequences. If we have any doubt about how to interpret them, we need not confine ourselves to the words on the page. We can look at how their contemporaries interpreted them, by how they put them into practice. In Professor Fernández-Morera’s words,

Now, it is certainly possible that, for centuries, the medieval Muslim scholars who interpreted the sacred Islamic texts, as well as Muslim military leaders (including perhaps Muhammad himself when he led his armies into battle against infidels unwilling to submit), misunderstood (unlike today’s experts in Islamic studies) the primarily peaceful and “defensive” meaning of “jihad,” and that, as a result of this mistake, Muslim armies erroneously went and, always defensively, conquered half the known world. Or perhaps these conquering Muslim armies were, somehow, merely “exerting” themselves “to resist temptation and overcome evil.” Nevertheless, what the correct understanding of the term is according to today’s expert academic interpreters matters little for what actually happened.

In the final installment of this series, I'll address what modern commentators have to say about jihad.

Michael Isenberg drinks bourbon and writes novels. His latest book, The Thread of Reason, is a murder mystery that takes place in Baghdad in the year 1092, and tells the story of the conflict between science and shari’ah in medieval Islam. It is available on Amazon.com Please follow Mike on Facebook and Twitter. Subscribe to Islam: the Good, the Bad, and the Everyday

Yes, jihad is violence

(mostly).
Part II in a Series.
By Michael Isenberg.

Today marks the anniversary of a tragedy.

Sixteen years ago, Muslim terrorists hijacked four airplanes and turned them into weapons with which they cruelly murdered almost three thousand people. As President Trump said in his speech this morning (he was talking specifically about the victims of Flight 77, but his words apply to all victims of terror), “Every one of them had a family, a story, and beautiful dreams. Each of them had people they loved and who loved them back. And they all left behind a deep emptiness that their warmth and grace once filled so fully and so beautifully.” (It’s a touching speech; read it in its entirety at whitehouse.gov.)

In the wake of that terrible day, many of us took on new missions. Some confronted terror on the battlefield—the bravery of the men and women who chose that path is inspiring. Others confronted terror by gathering intelligence or building weapons. And still others, myself included, attacked the ideology of terror at its roots. And the roots are the doctrine of jihad.

In commemeration of September 11 then, here is the next installment in my series about jihad:

Every once in a while, social media erupts in a debate over what that word means. While the literal meaning is struggle or striving, jihad is often translated holy war—a violent conflict of Muslims against unbelievers. However, those of the Islam-is-a-religion-of-peace persuasion claim this is a misunderstanding. They say jihad is more of an internal struggle to master one’s own weaknesses and conquer one’s inner demons.

The latest round in the debate was kicked off by activist Linda Sarsour’s May address to the Islamic Society of North America, in which she called for jihad against the Trump Administration. She said in her remarks that what she meant by that was “a word of truth in front of a tyrant ruler,” or what many would call “speaking truth to power.” However, her critics insist that she was being disingenuous. Jihad means violence, they say, and Ms. Sarsour knew perfectly well she was calling for the violent overthrow of the American government.

In Part I of this series, I explored what the Quran has to say on the subject. I looked up every instance of the word jihad and its various forms (jahid, tujahidun, etc.). There were forty-one of them. I found that in the majority of cases, it was ambiguous. The Quran commanded Muslims to “struggle (tujahidun) in the Way of Allah” without actually saying what that meant. But in six cases it was clearly a conflict between Muslims and non-Muslims, and in two cases it was clearly an armed conflict. In no cases were there any reason to think it meant an internal struggle or speaking truth to power.

However, despite pride of place, the Quran is not the only source of authority in Islam. The Hadith is almost as important in forming the basis of the shari’a. The use of the term jihad in the Hadith is the subject of the present installment.

The word hadith literally means a narrative or a telling. In other words, a story. Typically it’s a story about something Muhammad did or said, but sometimes it’s about one of his companions. I’ve never seen an estimate how many hadith there are, but it must be in the hundreds of thousands. The intellectual effort that has gone into studying and authenticating them over the centuries is mind-boggling. In the early years of Islam, scholars compiled what they considered the most reliable hadith into six collections that were canonized. In Sunni Islam, these collections have the force of law. (A seventh, the Muwatta Malik, is also canon but only in the Maliki school of thought).

Analyzing what they have to say about jihad is a bit more of a challenge than analyzing the Quran. A search of the seven canonical collections, using the hadith database at sunna.com turned up nearly eight hundred narratives that contained some form of the word jihad. I read every one of them and eliminated uses of the word that clearly had nothing to do with the religious obligation of jihad—in various forms it can mean fatigue, poverty, judgment, and even sex—the versatility of Arabic is a wonder to behold. I also eliminated hadith that were narrated by a guy named Mujahid, which happens to mean jihadist.

That left me with 195.

As in the Quran, many were of little help. Eighty-eight, almost half, commanded jihad without saying what it meant. For example,

A man asked the Prophet "What deeds are the best?" The Prophet said: "(1) To perform the (daily compulsory) prayers at their (early) stated fixed times, (2) to be good and dutiful to one's own parents, (3) and to participate in Jihad in Allah's Cause." (Sahih al-Bukhari, Book on the Unity of Allah)

Others were more germane. One (and only one) even spoke of jihad as an internal struggle:

I heard the Messenger of Allah (may the Prayer and Peace of Allah be upon him) saying: "The Mujahid is one who strives against his own soul." (Jami` at-Tirmidhi, Book on the Virtues of Jihad)

The hadith that Ms. Sarsour referenced, about speaking truth to power, appeared five times (this is common since a particular hadith can appear in multiple collections or in different versions within the same collection):

Abu Sa'eed Al-Khudri narrated that the Prophet (may the Prayer and Peace of Allah be upon him) said: "Indeed, among the greatest types of Jihad is a just statement before a tyrannical ruler." (Jami` at-Tirmidhi, Book of al-Fitan)

So she didn’t make it up, and it has the force of shari’a behind it.

Still, the majority of hadith about jihad are clearly talking about violent conflict against the unbeliever. Many of these (45) refer to jihad as something you leave your home for. Or something that you die for (28). Or if you survive, something you get spoils of war for (17). Or all of the above:

I heard the Messenger of Allah (may the Prayer and Peace of Allah be upon him) say: “Allah has promised the one who goes out in His cause and does not go out except with faith in Me and for Jihad in My cause, that he is guaranteed to enter Paradise no matter how, either he is killed, or he dies, or he will be brought back to his home from which he departed having acquired whatever he acquired of reward or spoils of war.” (Sunan an-Nasa'i, Book on Faith and its Signs)

Women can challenge their inner demons or speak truth to power. But going to war is more problematic and a substitute was found.

Narrated Aisha (mother of the faithful believers [she's the girl who according to tradition married Muhammad when she was six and consummated the marriage when she was nine. Because she was so young, she outlived him by many years and became well-respected as the go-to woman for the inside scoop. She was therefore the narrator for many, many hadith]): I said, "O Allah's Apostle! Shouldn't we participate in Holy battles and Jihad along with you?" He replied, "The best and the most superior Jihad (for women) is Hajj [pilgrimage] which is accepted by Allah." Aisha added: Ever since I heard that from Allah's Apostle I have determined not to miss Hajj. (Sahih al-Bukhari, Penalty of Hunting while on Pilgrimage)

Muhammad also made exceptions for the elderly and the disabled.

Finally, I found twenty-one miscellaneous hadith where jihad is clearly discussed in the context of battle. For example,

It was narrated that ‘Amr bin ‘Abasah said: I came to the Prophet (May the Prayer and Peace of Allah be upon him) and said: “O Messenger of Allah, which Jihad is best?” He said: “(That of a man) whose blood is shed and his horse is wounded.” (Sunan ibn Majah, Book of Jihad) The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, stimulated people for jihad and mentioned the Garden. One of the Ansar was eating some dates in his hand, and said, "Am I so desirous of this world that I should sit until I finish them?" He threw aside what was in his hand and took his sword, and fought until he was slain. (Muwatta Malik, Book on Jihad)

So yes, in the hadith, the ideas of jihad as inner struggle and speaking truth to power can be found. But in general, jihad is exactly what its critics say it is: armed conflict against the unbeliever.

The great collections of hadith were completed around the year 900. In the next installment of this series, I’ll look at what later medieval commentators had to say on the subject.

Michael Isenberg writes about the Muslim world, medieval and modern. His forthcoming novel, The Thread of Reason, is a murder mystery that takes place in Baghdad in the year 1092 and depicts the battle for the Muslim soul between those who embrace science and tolerance, and those who would throw in their lot with mysticism and persecution instead.

So what DOES jihad mean?

Part I: What the Quran says.
By Michael Isenberg.

I confess I’m not very fond of Linda Sarsour. The Brooklyn-born activist, former head of the Arab-American Association of New York and co-chair of the 2017 Women’s March, makes me think of Delores Umbridge in a hijab. In my humble opinion, her speeches have as many laughs in them as a dictionary. Or maybe it just bugs me that despite her dearth of humor, she’s actually a rather gifted speaker, but she's chosen to put those gifts in the service of causes with which I disagree.

In any case, her recent address to the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) set off a firestorm of controversy because of her call for “jihad” against the Trump administration. While writing this post, I subjected myself to the torture of listening to her speech in its entirety so that you, my dear reader, wouldn’t have to, and could focus merely on the relevant section:

There was a man who once asked our beloved prophet Muhammad, salla Allahu alayhi wa sallam [May the prayer and peace of Allah be upon him], he said to him, “What is the best form of jihad or struggle?” And our beloved prophet Muhammad, salla Allahu alayhi wa sallam, said to him, “A word of truth in front of a tyrant ruler or leader, that is the best form of jihad,” and I hope that we, when we stand up to those who oppress our communities, that Allah accepts from us that as a form of jihad that we are struggling against tyrants and rulers not only abroad in the Middle East or in the other side of the world, but here in these United States of America where you have fascists and white supremacists and Islamophobes reigning in the White House.

Since this is a blog about Islam, I’ll leave aside the questionable proposition that the White House is crawling with fascists, white supremacists, and Islamophobes, and whether they “reign” over us, and confine myself to the stuff about jihad.

In response to conservative critics who accused her of inciting violence, Ms. Sarsour claimed that her remarks were taken out of context. “I sent not a call to violence,” she wrote in the Washington Post, “but a call to speak truth to power and to commit to the struggle for racial and economic justice.” In all fairness, the text of the speech seems to back her up. But conservatives remain skeptical. During an appearance on Fox Business last week, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, said in no uncertain terms that “jihad” means “armed struggle.” He called Ms. Sarsour “dishonest” for saying otherwise.

This debate—what does “jihad” really mean?—flares up from time to time; Ms. Sarsour merely set off the latest round. Often translated “holy war,” "jihad" is an Arabic word whose literal meaning is “struggle.” But whether that is necessarily an armed struggle against an enemy, or could be a struggle to speak truth to power, or even an internal struggle against our own personal demons, well…it’s complicated.

As with everything in Islam, the jumping off point is the Quran.

It’s well known that there are many verses in the Quran which command Muslims to make war on unbelievers. But these verses generally use the word “qatl” rather than “jihad.” “Qatl” means to battle or fight, and is related to the word for “kill.”

So where does “jihad” appear in the Quran? According to the online concordance at corpus.quran.com, it appears forty-one times in various forms (jihad, jahid, tujahidun, etc.). The majority of these are ambiguous as to what jihad actually is. Verse 61:11 is typical: “Believe in Allah and His Messenger and struggle (tujahidun) in the Way of Allah with your wealth and your soul.” The verse doesn’t actually say what the “Way of Allah” is. I suppose you could make the argument that since other verses say to fight the unbeliever, that’s the Way of Allah. Armed conflict. But you could equally say that fasting, or the haj, or abstaining from wine, or any of the other privations Islam imposes on its adherents is the Way of Allah, and therefore what jihad is all about. Or all of the above.

In another half a dozen verses, jihad is clearly a conflict between Muslims and non-Muslims. For example, 25:52, “And do not obey the unbelievers, and struggle (jahid) against them with a Great Jihad.” But the text doesn’t specify whether it requires armed conflict, or whether a vigorous debate would suffice.

However, there are two passages, 2:216-218 and 9:14-16, which bring the words “qatl” and “jihad” together. The passages are similar in how they use the two terms; in the interest of space I'll just quote the second one:

Fight them [qatiluhum] and Allah will torment them at your hands and disgrace them and make you victorious over them and soothe the breasts of the believers, and take away wrath from their hearts. And Allah turns away from sin those whom he wants. And Allah is knowing and wise. Do you reckon that Allah would leave you when he doesn’t yet know who among you would struggle (jahadu) and who would not take anyone for a friend besides Allah, and His Messenger, and the faithful.

It would seem here that we finally have a passage that uses the word “jihad” in terms of all out sword-clanging, blood-flowing, kill-or-be-killed holy war. Albeit if someone really wanted to be stubborn about it and continue to insist that “jihad” means struggle with oneself, they could claim that the second half of the passage is a different topic from the first half.

The bottom line then, is the Quran is not a lot of help in understanding jihad. There are a couple places where it definitely seems to mean a clash of arms, but most of the time, it’s ambiguous, leaving the door open to other interpretations.

Despite pride of place, however, the Quran is not the only source of authority in Islam. There’s also the Hadith, the collected sayings of Muhammad. I cover what they have to say about jihad in Part II of this series.

 

Michael Isenberg writes about the Muslim world, medieval and modern. His forthcoming novel, The Thread of Reason, is a murder mystery that takes place in Baghdad in the year 1092 and depicts the battle for the Muslim soul between those who embrace science and tolerance, and those who would throw in their lot with mysticism and persecution instead.

Photo credit: AP