Let’s Face ISIS Reality And Drop The Sophomoric Armchair Theologizing. By Mollie Hemingway. The Federalist, February 5, 2015.
Lewis:
President Bush’s use of the term “crusade” in calling for a powerful joint effort against terrorism was unfortunate, but excusable. In Western usage, this word has long since lost its original meaning of “a war for the cross,” and many are probably unaware that this is the derivation of the name. At present, “crusade” almost always means simply a vigorous campaign for a good cause. This cause may be political or military, though this is rare; more commonly, it is social, moral or environmental. In modern Western usage it is rarely if ever religious.
Yet “crusade”
still touches a raw nerve in the Middle East, where the Crusades are seen and
presented as early medieval precursors of European imperialism – aggressive,
expansionist and predatory. I have no wish to defend or excuse the often
atrocious behavior of the crusaders, both in their countries of origin and in
the countries they invaded, but the imperialist parallel is highly misleading.
The Crusades could more accurately be described as a limited, belated and, in
the last analysis, ineffectual response to the jihad – a failed attempt to
recover by a Christian holy war what had been lost to a Muslim holy war.
At the
time of the Crusades, when the Holy Land and some adjoining regions in Syria
were conquered and for a while ruled by invaders from Europe, there seems to
have been little awareness among Muslims of the nature of the movement that had
brought the Europeans to the region. The crusaders established principalities
in the Levant, which soon fitted into the pattern of Levantine regional
politics. Even the crusader capture of Jerusalem aroused little attention at
the time, and appeals for help to various Muslim capitals brought no response.
The
real counter-crusade began when the crusaders – very foolishly – began to harry
and attack the Muslim holy lands, namely the Hijaz in Arabia, containing the
holy cities of Mecca and Medina where Mohammed was born, carried out his
mission, and died. In the vast Arabic historiography of the Crusades period,
there is frequent reference to these invaders, who are always called “Franks”
or “infidels.” The words “Crusade” and “crusader” simply do not occur.
They
begin to occur with increasing frequency in the 19th century, among modernized
Arabic writers, as they became aware of Western historiography in Western
languages. By now they are in common use. It is surely significant that Osama
bin Laden, in his declaration of jihad against the United States, refers to the
Americans as “crusaders” and lists their presence in Arabia as their first and
primary offense. Their second offense is their use of Arabia as a base for
their attack on Iraq. The issue of Jerusalem and support for “the petty state
of the Jews” come third.
The
literal meaning of the Arabic word “jihad” is striving, and its common use
derives from the Koranic phrase "striving in the path of God." Some
Muslims, particularly in modern times, have interpreted the duty of jihad in a
spiritual and moral sense. The more common interpretation, and that of the
overwhelming majority of the classical jurists and commentators, presents jihad
as armed struggle for Islam against infidels and apostates. Unlike “crusade,”
it has retained its religious and military connotation into modern times.
Being a
religious obligation, jihad is elaborately regulated in sharia law, which
discusses in minute detail such matters as the opening, conduct, interruption
and cessation of hostilities, the treatment of prisoners and non-combatants,
the use of weapons, etc. In an offensive war, jihad is a collective obligation
of the entire community, and may therefore be discharged by volunteers and
professionals. In a defensive war, it is an individual obligation of every
able-bodied Muslim.
In his
declaration of 1998, Osama bin Laden specifically invokes this rule: “For more
than seven years the United States is occupying the lands of Islam in the
holiest of its territories, Arabia, plundering its riches, overwhelming its
rulers, humiliating its people, threatening its neighbors, and using its bases
in the peninsula as a spearhead to fight against the neighboring Islamic
peoples.” In view of this, “to kill Americans and their allies, both civil and
military, is an individual duty of every Muslim who can, in any country where
this is possible, until the Aqsa mosque and the Haram mosque are freed from
their grip, and until their armies, shattered and broken-winged, depart from
all the lands of Islam, incapable of threatening any Muslim.”
Mohammed
himself led the first jihad, in the wars of the Muslims against the pagans in
Arabia. The jihad continued under his successors, with a series of wars that
brought the Middle East, including the Holy Land, under Arab Muslim rule and
then continued eastward into Asia, westward into Africa, and three times into
Europe – the Moors in Spain, the Tatars in Russia, the Turks in the Balkans.
The Crusade was part of the European counterattack. The Christian re-conquest
succeeded in Spain, Russia and eventually the Balkans; it failed to recover the
Holy Land of Christendom.
In
Islamic usage the term martyrdom is normally interpreted to mean death in a
jihad, and the reward is eternal bliss, described in some detail in early
religious texts. Suicide is another matter.
Classical
Islam in all its different forms and versions has never permitted suicide. This
is seen as a mortal sin, and brings eternal punishment in the form of the
unending repetition of the act by which the suicide killed himself. The
classical jurists, in discussing the laws of war, distinguish clearly between a
soldier who faces certain death at the hands of the enemy, and one who kills
himself by his own hand. The first goes to heaven, the other to hell. In recent
years, some jurists and scholars have blurred this distinction, and promised
the joys of paradise to the suicide bomber. Others retain the more traditional
view that suicide in any form is totally forbidden.
Similarly,
the laws of jihad categorically preclude wanton and indiscriminate slaughter.
The warriors in the holy war are urged not to harm non-combatants, women and
children, “unless they attack you first.” Even such questions as missile and
chemical warfare are addressed, the first in relation to mangonels and catapults,
the other to the use of poison-tipped arrows and poisoning enemy water
supplies. Here the jurists differ – some permit, some restrict, some forbid
these forms of warfare. A point on which they insist is the need for a clear
declaration of war before beginning hostilities, and for proper warning before
resuming hostilities after a truce.
What
the classical jurists of Islam never remotely considered is the kind of
unprovoked, unannounced mass slaughter of uninvolved civil populations that we
saw in New York two weeks ago. For this there is no precedent and no authority
in Islam. Indeed it is difficult to find precedents even in the rich annals of
human wickedness.
