JIHAD, MARTYRDOM, WAR

Prophet Muhammad

 The most excellent Jihad is that for the conquest of self.

 The ink of the scholar is more holy than the blood of the martyr.

Karen Armstrong, Muhammad - A Biography Of The Prophet

 . . . there are also Christians there who feel it their duty to
 live alongside the oppressed and the destitute and engage in a
 dedicated struggle for a just and decent society. It is in this
 light that we should consider the Islamic jihad, which Westerners
 usually translate as 'holy war.' p. -- 165

Huston Smith, The Illustrated World's Religions

 Muslims report that the most inflexible image of Islam that they
 encounter in the West is that of a militant religion that has
 spread primarily by the sword. They see this as a prejudice, born
 of the thirteen hundred years in which Islam and Europe have
 shared common borders and much of the time fought over them. It is
 a stereotype forged by people who have seen Islam as their enemy.

 Grant, Muslims say, that the Koran does not counsel turning the
 other cheek, or pacifism. It teaches forgiveness and the return of
 good for evil when circumstances warrant, but these do not add up
 to not resisting evil. The Quran allows punishment of wanton
 wrongdoers to the full extent of the injury done. Extend this
 principle to collective life and you have the principle of a just
 or holy war, which the Koran also endorses. But these do not
 warrant the charge of militancy.

 As an outstanding general, Muhammad left many traditions regarding
 the decent conduct of war. Agreements are to be honored and
 treachery avoided; the wounded are not to be mutilated, nor the
 dead disfigured. Women, children, and the old are to be spared, as
 are orchards, crops, and scared objects. The towering question,
 though, is when war is justified. The Koran's definition of a Holy
 War is virtually identical with that of a Just War in the Canon
 Law of Catholicism. It must either be defensive or to right an
 horrendous wrong.

 Moving from theory to practice, Muslims claim that in one instance
 the two coincided. Muhammad adhered meticulously to the charter he
 forged for Medina, which -- grounded as it was in the Koranic
 injunction, "Let there be no compulsion in religion (2:257) -- is
 arguably the first mandate for religious tolerance in human
 history. Muslims admit that this exemplary beginning was not
 sustained, but as no histories are exemplary, the question reduces
 to whether Islam's has been more militant than that of other
 religions. As the charge that it has been has come primarily form
 Christianity, its history will serve here as the point of
 reference.

 In favor of Islam are the long centuries during which in India,
 Spain, and the Near East, Christians, Jews, and Hindus lived
 quietly and in freedom under Muslim rule. Even under the worst
 rulers, Christians and Jews held positions of influence and in
 general retained their religious freedom. It was Christians, not
 Muslims (we are reminded) who in the fifteenth century expelled
 the Jews from Spain where under Islamic rule they had enjoyed one
 of their golden ages. To press this example: Spain and Anatolia
 changed hands at about the same time -- Christians expelled the
 Moors from Spain while Muslims conquered what is now Turkey. Every
 Muslim was driven from Spain, or put to the sword, or forced to
 convert, whereas the seat of the Eastern Orthodox Church remains
 in Istanbul to this day. Indeed, if comparisons are the issue,
 Muslims consider Christianity's record to be the darker of the
 two. Who was it, they ask, who preached the Crusades in the name
 of the Prince of Peace? Who instituted the inquisition, invented
 the rack and the stake as instruments of religion, and plunged
 Europe into its devastating wars of religion?

 The safest generalization on which this discussion can end comes
 from the historians. Islam's record on the use of force is no
 darker than that of Christianity. -- p. 168-169

Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India

 . . . North Africa was torn with internecine conflicts between
 rival Christian factions, leading often to bloody struggles for
 mastery. The Christianity that was practised there at the time was
 narrow and intolerant and the contrast between this and the
 general toleration of the Moslem Arabs, with their message of
 human brotherhood, was marked. It was this that brought whole
 peoples, weary of Christian stirfe, to their side. . .

 This frequent intercourse [trade and cultural relations] led to
 Indians getting to know the religion, Islam. Missionaries also
 came to spread the new faith and they were welcomed. Mosques were
 built. There was no objection raised either by the state or the
 people, nor were there any religious conflicts. . .

 . . . The old Alexandrian schools had been closed by Christian
 bishops and their scholars had been driven out. Many of these
 exiles had drifted to Persia and elsewhere. They now found a
 welcome and a safe haven in Baghdad and they brought Greek
 philosophy and science and mathematics with them -- Plato and
 Aristotle, Ptolemy and Euclid. There were Nestorian and Jewish
 scholars and Indian physicians; philosophers and mathematicians. .
 .

 Mahmud's raids are a big event in Indian history, . . . Above all
 they brought Islam, for the first time, to the accompaniment of
 ruthless military conquest. So far, for over 300 years, Islam had
 come peacefully as a religion and taken its place among the many
 religions of India without trouble or conflict. . . Yet when he
 [Mahmud] had established himself as a ruler . . . Hindus were
 appointed to high office in the army and the administration.

 It is thus wrong and misleading to think of a Moslem invasion of
 India or of the Moslem period in India, just as it would be wrong
 to refer to the coming of the British to India as a Christian
 invasion, or to call the British period in India a Christian
 period. Islam did not invade India; it had come to India some
 centuries earlier. . .

 As a warrior he [Akbar] conquered large parts of India, but his
 eyes were set on another and more enduring conquest, the conquest
 of the minds and hearts of the people. . . throughout his long
 reign of nearly fifty years from 1556 onwards he laboured to that
 end. -- p. 227 - 259

Indan Ambassador M. N. Masud, Understanding Islam

 Why did they [the people of the largest Muslim country, Indonesia,
 an archipelago of some 3000 islands] embrace Islam? It could not
 have been force or the threat of it because, as far as I knew, not
 one Muslim soldier from abroad ever landed with a sword in his
 hand to conquer the heathen land. -- p. 2

Akbar S. Ahmed, Living Islam

 Foreigners who are aggressive, ignorant, barbaric and unwelcome.
 Foreigners who are forever advocating their way of life and
 prepared to advocate it by brawling and fighting; foreigners with
 embarrassing and uncouth manners. Are we talking of Muslim
 immigrants as seen by Europeans in the late twentieth century? No.
 These are Europeans almost a thousand years ago in the Muslim
 lands of the Middle East. They came as individuals and as armies
 and as soldiers of fortune.

 Muslims were not their only target; local Christians and Jews were
 also among their victims. In one instance their behaviour plumbed
 new depths. It was in the St Sophia church in Istanbul. They
 violated women, drank, and stripped the church bare. An eyewitness
 of the fourth Crusade was horrified: 'I Geoffrey de Ville
 Hardouin, Martial of the court of Champagne, am sure that since
 the creation of the universe, a plundering worse than this has not
 been witnessed' (Efe 1987: 18). Compare this to Mehmet the
 conqueror's entry when, with humility and awe, he fell to his
 knees, taking the dust from the floor and wiping it on his turban
 as an act of devotion (Efe 1987). Christians here have a saying:
 'Better the turban of a Turk than the tiara of the Pope.'

 As for the unfortunate Jews, they would be massacred by the
 Christians on their way to the Crusades and massacred by them on
 their way back from the Crusades. Not surprisingly Muslims thought
 that here was a civilization doomed to barbarism and backwardness
 for ever. -- p. 64

Washington W. Irving, Tales Of The Alhambra

 As conquerors [Muslims], their heroism was equaled only by their
 moderation, and in both, for a time, they excelled the nations
 with whom they contended. Severed from their native homes, they
 loved the land given them as they supposed by Allah and strove to
 embellish it with everything that could administer to the
 happiness of man. Laying the foundations of their power in a
 system of wise and equitable laws, diligently cultivating the arts
 and sciences, and promoting agriculture, manufactures and
 commerce, they gradually formed an empire unrivaled for its
 prosperity by any of the empires of Christendom . . .

 The cities of Arabian Spain became the resort of Christian
 artisans, to instruct themselves in the useful art. The
 Universities of Toledo, Cordova, Seville, Granada, were sought by
 the pale student from lands to acquaint himself with the sciences
 of the Arabs and the treasure lore of antiquity. -- p. 52

HRH, The Prince of Wales, Islam And The West

 . . . we have underestimated the importance of 800 years of
 Islamic society and culture in Spain between the 8th and 15th
 centuries.

 Many of the traits on which Europe prides itself came to it from
 Muslim Spain. Diplomacy, free trade, open borders, the techniques
 of academic research, of anthropology, etiquette, fashion,
 alternative medicine, hospitals, all came from this great city of
 cities. Mediaeval Islam was a religion of remarkable tolerance for
 its time, allowing Jews and Christians to practice their inherited
 beliefs, and setting an example which was not, unfortunately,
 copied for many centuries in the West.

John Edwards, History Today

 On the second day of January [1492] I saw Your Highnesses' royal
 banners placed by force of arms on the towers of the Alhambra . .
 . and in the same month . . . Your Highness, as Catholic
 Christians and princes devoted to the holy Christian faith and the
 furtherance of its cause, and enemies of the sect of Mohammed and
 of all idolatry and heresy, resolved to send me, Christopher
 Columbus, to the . . . regions of India. -- vol. 42