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BOOK REVIEW
Religion as war
By Sreeram Chaulia
(A
review of M J Akbar's The Shade of Swords. Jihad and
the Conflict Between Islam and Christianity.
We went to the jihad filled with joy, and I would go again tomorrow.
If Allah had chosen me to die, I would have been in paradise ...
- Ijaz Khan Hussein, a Pakistani
pharmacist who fought in the latest Afghan war, when asked if he was
disappointed by the Taliban's defeat in January 2002.
Midway through this book, a contentious statement by one of M J Akbar's
great journalistic peers, Arun Shourie, flashed back to memory.
Addressing undergraduates at St Stephen's College, Delhi, in 1997,
Shourie said, "If you perform a thorough study of comparative religions,
then Islam emerges as the most fundamentalist and intolerant of all
world faiths."
By the end of the book, Akbar managed to convince me that there is
little to choose between Islam and Christianity in terms of fanaticism,
be it in literal and radical interpretations of the scriptures or in
their urge to violence. While the impulsive fury of jihad has become a
commonplace topic in present times, it is often forgotten that
Christianity has throughout much of history displayed no less militant
zeal and warrior mentality in furthering its claim over conquered
territories. The Shade of Swords sets the record straight and
reaches into the heart of what V S Naipaul calls the two central
"revealed religions", and their conflicting claims of universality and
one-upmanship.
Jihad: An invitation to die
Akbar's conceptual framework in the introduction derides "politically
correct" interpretations of Islamic texts as "the first trap to be
avoided". Most Muslims understand jihad as jihad al asghar, the war
fought on a battlefield, and not jihad al akbar (internal cleansing of
impurities). There is hardly any spiritual cleansing involved in jihad
against the "infidels" (kaffir), "apostates" (murtadd) and
"hypocrites" (munafiqeen). "Islam is essentially a soldier's
religion" (p.10). When Prophet Muhammad's follower, Umar, asked if it
was true that Muslims who died for the cause would go to heaven and
pagans to hell, the Messenger replied, "a single spell of fighting in
Allah's cause was better than all the world. Know that paradise is under
the shade of swords." (p.11).
The spirit of jihad entered Islam at the battle of Badr (AD 624), when
the Prophet led barely 300 believers against his enemies of the Quraysh
tribe who were three times stronger and miraculously defeated them. The
phenomenal success of Muslim arms in the centuries to come all derived
inspiration from Badr, where a heavily outnumbered force of the faithful
decimated a much stronger opponent because they received Allah's help in
the midst of battle. Jihad's wellspring rests on the conviction that
"Martyrdom is the Muslim's duty, victory is Allah's responsibility".
(p.9) The miracle of renewal and the return of victory are to be
believed in by those who survive and get defeated, for loss in one
battle is merely a temporary setback.
Islamic jurisprudence has, over time, also evolved theological
justifications for unrelenting jihad. Muslims remain content in the Dar
al Islam, where the Sharia rules all forms of social and religious
behavior, but when a Muslim is denied his right to live by his own
divine law, "then he is in Dar al Harb, or the House of War, and jihad
becomes obligatory upon him." (p.36). Verse 191, Sura 2, of the Koran
explicitly enjoins upon the ummah, the community of believers, to punish
enemies of the faith in this fashion: "And slay them wherever ye catch
them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out." Coupled
with what Akbar calls "The Medina Syndrome" (the perception that Islam
is perennially under threat from powerful enemies), the only answer for
pious Muslims in despair is "unity, faith and war".
Islam and the Christian threat
The fundamental ideological incompatibility between Islam and
Christianity rests upon respective non-acceptance of Christ and
Muhammad. Verse 171, Sura 4, of the Koran warns against Christian use of
the term "son of god" for Jesus. "Say not 'Trinity': desist … Jesus was
no more than a messenger of Allah, who is far above having a son."
(p.41). The Dome of the Rock inside the Al Aqsa mosque is a challenge to
Christians to renounce the Trinity and return to monotheism and Allah.
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, Dante Alighieri's poems confine him to the
"eighth circle of hell". By the medieval times, linguistic violence and
hatred for each other had become unbridgeable, with geographic
contiguity between the Caliphates and the Byzantine empire stoking the
fires of Holy War. Popes decided that "Christianity was in danger" and
the Church demanded its own martyrs. "One Jihad asked for another."
(p.63)
The book of jihad in the Hadith (sayings of the Prophet) contains a
legend that Muhammad had predicted in his own lifetime that the first
Muslim army to invade Caesar's city (Constantinople) would be forgiven
all their sins. In the opening tussle for Jerusalem (AD 636), Umar's
troops wrested the initiative from Heraclius' superior numbers when
"blinding sandstorms blew straight into the eyes of the enemy". Yet
another "help from the heavens" against the Jaddals (followers of the
Muslim equivalent of anti-Christ).
By AD 730, jihadis had taken Andalusia (Spain), scorched the Goths and
were tantalizingly close to Paris, so much so that historian Edward
Gibbon wondered whether the day might arrive when "the interpretation of
the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits
might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the
revelation of Muhammad". (p.51) But the tide turned against Islam by the
11th century, marked by victorious Crusaders reclaiming Jerusalem and
mass slaughtering Muslims and Jews. As a mark of savage celebration, the
Christians did not remove the rotting bodies from Al Aqsa until
Christmas. "Their stench has not gone nine hundred years later," says
Akbar, commenting on the outrage that memory still causes in the
indoctrinated minds of mujahideen. (p.71) One of Islam's greatest
warriors, Saladin the Kurd, gained his revenge in the 12th century and
had the satisfaction of getting the Khutba (mosque sermon) read from Al
Aqsa in 1187, demanding vengeance against infidels and preaching victory
had come not from swords or tactics, but from Allah.
Christians under the Ottoman Empire
After the seat of Islamic power shifted to the Ottoman Turks in late
medieval times, Mehmet II revived the jihad against Constantinople,
egging his soldiers on to the Prophet's prophecy that ghazis
(Allah's warriors) will attain paradise. Even though the Ottoman empire
was at times based on tolerance towards Ahl-i-Kitaab (people of the
book, Jews and Christians), Mehmet and his successors ensured that no
"Christian fifth column" would join hands with the European powers. In
edicts reminiscent of the Taliban, minorities were ordered to wear
distinguishing headgear and told that "the attitude of non-Muslims
should be one of humility and abjection". (p. 89). Orders were given for
officials to go to Christian territories like Bosnia to kidnap young
Christian boys, circumcise and convert them to Islam and train them as
elite Praetorian guards (Janissaries). Ironically, it was the revolt of
the Janissaries that triggered the decline of the Ottomans and led to
several defeats for Islam. Students of Islamic history in Pakistani
madrassas (religious schools) are today taught about this
treacherous nature of the infidels.
Green Crescent over Delhi
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, Manat, which escaped the Prophet's wrath, was now
resting in the Hindu temples of Gujarat. "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." (p.101) Mahmud's exploits in
India, colorfully recorded by chronicler Al Beruni, were as follows,
"Utterly ruined the prosperity of the country, and performed wonderful
exploits by which the Hindus were tuned into atoms of dust scattered in
all directions." (p.103)
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. And the
language of victory was the same too, "Between the first and second
prayers, there was a miracle … the right and left of the army of Islam
rolled back the left and right of the doomed infidels." (p.106)
Likewise, Babur's grandson, Akbar, wrested victory against Hemachandra
from the jaws of defeat in the second battle of Panipat (1556), leading
Abul Fazl to exclaim later that it was "Allah's divine wrath against the
infidel, a victory for jihad."
While jihad in the Indian subcontinent was primarily waged against
Hindus, the "Christian scourge" was an ever-present threat. Vasco da
Gama, the Portuguese martial navigator sent to explore the sea route to
India, "took pleasure in torturing Muslims by pouring boiling fat on
their skins." (p.118). Alfonso Albequerque followed in his predecessor's
footsteps and reported back to Lisbon in 1510 that he had slain 6,000
Muslims in four days. "No matter where we found them, we did not spare
the life of a single Muslim, we filled the mosques with them and set
them on fire." (p.120) 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".
Muslim separatism and loss of glory
As the seats and appurtenances of power slipped away from the Mughals
into the hands of the infidel British, Indian Muslims increasingly took
the jihad route as the only way of surviving in Dar al Harb. Shah
Waliullah (1703-62), one the earliest theoreticians of the Christian
menace in South Asia, analyzed that in the moment of despair, there was
only one answer: jihad. He invited Afghan marauder Ahmad Shah Abdali to
invade India and oust the Cross, "so Muslims may obtain rescue from the
hand of the unbelievers". Like Waliullah, Jamaluddin Afghani, an Iranian
mullah, went around the subcontinent preaching that the
Western-Christian advance from Africa to India can be reversed by
pan-Islamism and jihad supported by science and technology. Waliullah's
pupil, Sayyid Ahmad Barelvi, took the struggle one step further and
launched an "eternal jihad" against kaffirs and troubled the British,
the Sikhs and the Hindu rulers of North West India endlessly in the 19th
century. The Barelvi-inspired Risala-Jihad war song, ranting "fill the
uttermost ends of India with Islam, so that no sounds may be heard but
Allah! Allah!", struck terror in British hearts during the 1857 revolt.
The Russians were equally embattled by sporadic Islamic "armies of
retribution" that intermittently sprang up without prior notice in the
Caucasus and Afghanistan, terrorizing garrisons and forts. Ghazi Mullah
and Imam Shamyl organized hordes of jihadis across Central Asia
declaiming that not a single pilgrimage would be accepted by Allah if a
Russian existed in their midst. The legend of Shamyl lives to exhort
holy warriors in Chechnya and Daghestan today.
Akbar opines 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. Muhammad Ali Jinnah could easily tap into the
Dar al Harb bogey in the 1940s, stretching the line of lament and loss
felt ever since the Mughals were sidelined after 1857. 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. (p.183) 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".
(p.175) Khilafat leaders were "relieved at a jihad that had become
violent" in the Moplah rebellion and never looked back at the unified
India chimera after that. Though Jinnah idolized the secular Mustafa
Kemal Ataturk, Akbar likens him as closer to Saladin, a saviour of Islam
when it was perceived to be in peril.
Jihad in the age of Osama
Osama bin Laden is in the tradition of the 11th century Iranian
Hasn-i-Sabbah, a mastermind of assassinations and guerrilla warfare who
commanded a network of missionaries and terrorists who were the most
feared force of the time. Christian crusaders like Richard II and Arab
emirs who permitted Christians to triumph were endlessly terrorized
through suicide missions remotely controlled by Sabbah from the Alamut
castle.
When bin Laden issues fatwas laying down "the ruling to kill the
Americans - civilian and military - is an individual duty for every
Muslim who can do it in any country", it is the spirit of Sabbah,
Saladin and thousands of other mythic warriors possessed by intense
hatred of Christianity. Bin Laden's constituency comprises Muslims the
world over who "possess a deep and powerful anger against the Christian
West, an anger provoked by slander against their beloved prophet, bred
by unceasing war, and now nurtured by Muslim impotence against Israel".
(p.192) The anger of the "Muslim Street" is not merely socio-economic,
as some are positing. Muslim anguish is about departed glory, contrasted
to Jewish revival after 2,000 years backed by the secular West. As has
often happened in the past, Muslim radicals have latched on to certain
enemies to explain the current decay in the holy lands and around the
world. They "need someone to blame, apart from themselves. America is
necessary". (p.198)
Conclusions
Akbar often muses through the book how Pakistan, a homeland for Muslims,
"turned jihad into an instrument of state policy from its inception" and
became "the breeding ground for the first international Islamic brigade
in the modern era". The answers only partly lie in the machinations of
the Pakistani army and intelligence and more substantially in the
"sources of anger" that have never deserted the Islamic mind. Pakistan's
anger against India is larger than the problem over Kashmir." (p.162)
The Taliban, who were until recently the firmest allies of the Pakistani
state and clerics, could not have been mistaken for soldiers of "true
Islam" and trained in Pakistan if it were not for this rage and Islam's
dependence on enemies to fortify itself. Violence against Pakistani
Christians like the Masihs under blasphemy laws cannot simply be an
issue of Sharia and theocracy. Since the recruitment for jihad is done
in the mind, Akbar advises America that it "cannot fight a battle in the
mind only with special forces and cruise missiles". (p.213)
The Shade of Swords is the most honest and candid survey produced
in print about the roots of rage in Islam and Christianity. 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. What is misguided to the dilettante columnist and careful
politician is actually "holy" for the initiated. The secular world can
ill afford to assume that the ghosts of jihad have been buried in the
recent Afghan war. They should never fail to reckon with the faithful
child who can walk with complete calm under the shade of swords.
The Shade of Swords. Jihad
and the Conflict Between Islam and Christianity.
By M J Akbar; Routledge Publishers, London. 2002. ISBN : 0-415-28470-8.
Price: US$ 25. 272 pages.
[Sreeram
Sundar Chaulia studied History at St.Stephen’s College, Delhi, and took
a Second BA in Modern History at University College, Oxford. He
researched the BJP’s foreign policy at the London School of Economics
and is currently analyzing the impact of conflict on Afghan refugees at
the Maxwell School of Citizenship, Syracuse, NY.]
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