Front Page Magazine
Sept 9 2005
The Legacy of Jihad
By Alyssa A. Lappen
FrontPageMagazine.com | September 9, 2005
Review: The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of
Non-Muslims, edited by Dr. Andrew G. Bostom, Prometheus, 759 pp.
It is only fitting that Andrew G. Bostom’s massive collection, The
Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims,
appears in time for the fourth anniversary September 11, 2001, for no
other collection since then has so well explained the theology and
philosophy behind those Islamic attacks on America.
The leaders of the free world have taken pains since late 2001 to
explain that Islam is a religion of peace. But in this far-ranging,
759-page collection of Muslim and non-Muslim eyewitness accounts,
scholarly Muslim theological treatises and superb historical surveys,
it appears that Islam has actually practiced a grisly jihad campaign
against non-Muslims from its earliest days, in the hope of satisfying
the Prophet Mohammed’s end goal: forcing the `one true faith’ upon
the entire world.
The somber tone of this monumental work — graced in its midsection
by a chronological summary of the first 500 years of Muslim
conquests, including color-coded maps and Islamic art — is set by
the cover, a 19th century-Islamic painting entitled `The Prophet, Ali
and the Companions at the massacre of the prisoners of the Jewish
tribe of Beni Kuraizah.’ As its name suggests, the art depicts the
slaughter of 600 to 900 Jewish men, who were led on Mohammed’s orders
to the market of Medina, where they were beheaded and their corpses
buried in trenches dug for that purpose. Their wives and children
were then enslaved.
After viewing these accounts, histories and art works, it is hard to
continue to believe that radical Islamists are in fact all that
radical. Rather, in the most logical way, this collection shows that
September 11 was not an aberration, but that Islam at its core seems
a faith bent upon the conquest and subjugation of non-Muslims.
Indeed, as many commentators here suggest, when one group of Muslims
assumes responsibility for jihad warfare — the only righteous kind
of war, in the Islamic view — the rest of the umma (Muslim
community) is relieved of this fard, or religious duty. Thus, if
radical Muslims believe they act on behalf of all Islamdom, Islamic
traditions also confirm that they do.
Bostom opens with a 124-page survey of jihad conquests and the
imposition of dhimmitude — the sociopolitical subjugation of
indigenous non-Muslim peoples vanquished by jihad campaigns. The
essay is the book’s longest section and serves as an excellent
guidepost for readers to determine which parts might most interest
them.
Beginning in the time of Mohammed himself, Bostom refers readers to
the early 20th century work of the late Columbia University professor
Arthur Jeffrey, who belittled as `the sheerest sophistry’ attempts in
some modern circles `to explain away all the Prophet’s warlike
expeditions as defensive wars or to interpret the doctrine of Jihad
as merely a bloodless striving in missionary zeal for the spread of
Islam…. The early Arabic sources quite plainly and frankly describe
the expeditions as military expeditions, and it would never have
occurred to anyone at that day to interpret them as anything
else….’
But it is not just on the say-so of Western scholars that Bostom
concludes, in the words of Mordechai Nisan, that the `praxis’ of
Islam was by the 1990s to `extend the Muslim presence and role into
the heart of Western civilization, after having constituted within
the Muslim lands themselves a formidable strategic world position.’
His arguments rest on the words, works and deeds of Muslims
themselves. America would benefit if our leaders would pay close
attention to Bostom’s conclusions and the works on which they are
based.
According to Maliki jurist Ibn Abi Zayd al Qayrawani (d. 996), `Jihad
is a Divine institution. Its performance by certain individuals may
dispense others from it. We Malikis maintain that it is preferable
not to begin hostilities with the enemy before having invited the
latter to embrace the religion of Allah except where the enemy
attacks first. They have either the alternative of converting to
Islam or paying the poll tax (jizya), short of which war is declared
against them.’
Hanbali jurist Ibn Tamiyyah (d. 1328) also supports the jihad: `Since
lawful warfare is essentially jihad and since its aim is that the
religion is God’s entirely and God’s word is uppermost, therefore
according to all Muslims, those who stand in the way of this aim must
be fought.’
The Hidayah of Hanafi Shaikh Burdanuddin Ali of Marghinan (d. 1196)
intones,
It is not lawful to make war upon any people who have never before
been called to the faith, without previously requiring them to
embrace it, because the Prophet so instructed his commanders,
directing them to call infidels to the faith, and also because the
people will hence perceive that they are attacked for the sake of
religion, and not for the sake of taking their property, or making
slaves of their children, and on this consideration it is possible
that they may be induced to agree to the call, in order to save
themselves from the trouble of war….
The Shaafi jurist al-Mawardi (d. 1058) writes in the Laws of Islamic
Governance,
The mushrikun [infidels] of Dar al-Harb (the arena of battle) are of
two types: First, those whom the call of Islam has reached, but they
have refused it and taken up arms. The amir of the army has the
option of fighting them… in accordance with what he judges to be in
the best interest of the Muslims and the most harmful to the
mushrikun…. Second, those whom the invitation to Islam has not
reached, although such persons are few nowadays since Allah has made
manifest the call of his Messenger…it is forbidden to begin an
attack before explaining the invitation to Islam to them, informing
them of the miracles of the Prophet and making plain the proofs so as
to encourage acceptance on their part; if they still refuse to accept
after this, war is waged against them and they are treated as those
whom the call has reached.
And Maliki jurist and philosopher Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406), so often
quoted as a peaceful, likewise adopts a warlike tone: ` In the Muslim
community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the
universalism of the [Muslim] mission and [the obligation to] convert
everybody to Islam by persuasion or by force…. The other religious
groups did not have a universal mission, and the holy war was not a
religious duty for them, save only for purposes of defense….Islam
is under obligation to gain power over other nations.’
In addition to this far-reaching opening summary, the book provides
the juridicial texts, historical accounts, scholarly analyses and
eyewitness excerpts elucidating the jihad rationale as formulated by
Muslim sources and highlighting the global consequences of that
philosophy for more than 13 centuries.
In part two, for example, Bostom collects many jihadist teachings in
the Qur’an, such as Qur’an chapter 9, verse 29: `Fight those who
believe not in Allah nor the last day, nor hold that forbidden which
hath been forbidden by Allah and his apostle, nor acknowledge the
religion of truth even if they are the people of the book, until they
pay the Jizya with willing submission, and fell themselves subdued.’
These Qur’anic teachings fill two pages of text.
But Bostom does not stop there. He devotes his third chapter to the
classical and modern teachings of Qur’anic commentators on Chapter 9,
verse 29, some such as Al-Suyuti (d. 1505 CE), appearing in English
here for the first time. Al-Suyuti writes:
Fight those who don’t believe in God nor in the Last Day [Unless they
believe in the Prophet God bless him and grant him peace] nor hold
what is forbidden that which God and His emissary have forbidden
[e.g. Wine] nor embrace the true faith [which is firm and abrogates
other faiths, i.e., the Islamic religion] from among [for
distinguishing] those who were given the Book [i.e., the Jews and
Christians] until they give the head-tax [i.e., the annual taxes
imposed on them] (l’an yadinl) humbly submissive, and obedient to
Islam’s rule.
Also commenting on the Qur’anic chapter 9, verse 29 are al-Zamakshari
(d. 1144), al Tabari (d. 923), al-Beidawi (d. 1286), Ibn Kathir (d.
1373), Sayyid Qutb (d. 1966) and al-Azhar, al-Muntakhab Fii Tafsir
al-Qur’aan al-Kariim, 1985. Let no one say that Bostom has taken
these teachings out of context, for the classical and contemporary
commentators interpret this passage of the Qur’an in precisely the
same way as it appears.
In chapter four, the last in section two, Bostom focuses on jihad in
the Hadith, with commentary from Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, as
translated by the Muslim Students’ Association of the University of
Southern California.
In Bostom’s third, 110-page section, classical Muslim theologians and
jurists opine on jihad. These writings span the entire history of
Islam, beginning with 8th century commentators and continuing to 20th
century contemporaries. Bostom has gleaned writings of Malik B. Anas
(d. 795) from the Muwata, for example, Averroes (d. 1198) from the
Bidayat al-Mudjtahid, Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406) from The Muqaddimah, as
well as a 1915 Ottoman Fatwa.
Here, too, Bostom includes several works translated into English for
the first time. For example, the renowned Sufi master al-Ghazali (d.
1111) 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 drown them.’ The
marriages of slaves, al-Ghazali continues, are automatically
`revoked. One may cut down their trees…. One must destroy their
useless books.’ This belies the all-too-common notion that Sufism is
peaceful.
Similarly, Ibn Qudama (d. 1223), writes, `Legal war (jihad) is an
obligatory social duty (fard-kifaya); when one group of Muslims
guarantees that it is being carried out in a satisfactory manner, the
others are exempted.’ Almost everywhere, the author is belligerent.
`It is permitted to surprise the infidels under cover of night, to
bombard them with mangonels [an engine that hurls missiles] and to
attack them without declaring battle (du’a).’
Al-Hilli (d. 1277), likewise, writes on the traditions concerning the
tax on certain infidels, who have not been enslaved or murdered. The
Persian scholar Muhammad al-Amili (d. 1621) has been translated from
Farsi concerning Jihad holy war: `Islamic holy war against followers
of other religions, such as Jews, is required unless they convert to
Islam or pay the poll tax.’
Concerning the jihad warfare in India, Ziauddin Barani (d. 1357)
writes in the Fatawa-i Janandari,
The Muslim king will not be able to establish the honour of theism
(tauhid) and the supremacy of the Islam unless he strives with all
his courage to overthrown infidelity and to slaughter its leaders
(imams), who in India are the Brahmans. He should make a firm resolve
to overpower, capture, enslave and degrade the infidels. All the
strength and power of the king and holy warriors of Islam should be
concentrated in holy campaigns and holy wars; and they should risk
themselves in the enterprise so that the true Faith may uproot false
creeds and then it will look as if these false creeds had never
existed because they have been deprived of their glamour.
Bostom turns next, in his 117-page Part 4, to ten Jihad overviews by
important 20th century scholars. Clement Huart writes on the law of
war, Nicolas P. Agnides on the classification of persons under
Islamic law (which appeared in Mohammeden Theories of Finance from
Columbia University Press in 1916) and John Ralph Willis on the jihad
ideology of enslavement. Several of these works appear for the first
time in English.
These writings are no easier to dismiss than the classical Islamic
works themselves, for the modern historians also rely heavily on
classical jurists and commentators, as indicated in a bevy of
footnotes gracing the final pages of each essay. Fagnan’s `Jihad or
Holy War According to the Malikite School,’ published in Algiers in
1908, rests for example on the work of Sidi Khalil (d. 1365-1366), as
elucidated by several Muslim commentaries. Edmond Fagnan writes,
The holy war conducted each year on the most dangerous front, even if
there is risk of an attack by bandits, constitutes, just like the
visit of the Ka’ba…, a duty of showing solidarity, which is
incumbent upon every free male who has attained the age of puberty
and is of sound mind and body….
In the case of a sudden invasion, holy war becomes a personal duty,
even for a woman or for the neighbors [of the believers who are being
attacked] if they (i.e. The latter) are too weak, as well as for
those who hold the title of imam.
According to Roger Arnaldez, whose essay `Holy War According to Ibn
Hazm of Cordova’ was published in a French collection in 1962, what
interests this Andalusian classicist about the past `is a privileged
moment of history at which the law eternally intended by God was
revealed in universal and definitive formulations. Despite the most
obvious evidence, the commandments given to the Prophet are not, in
his view, relative to the Prophet’s time…. These commandments,
rather, are valid as such for all times.’
W.R. W. Gardner’s essay, `Jihad’ appeared in the 1912 edition of the
acclaimed scholarly journal, Moslem World. He observes,
The question of what jihad is cannot be settled by reference alone to
the etymology of the word jihad….The Koran plainly teaches in many
passages,..the duty of fighting for the Faith or ‘in the way of God,’
by using the world qatala, and El Zamakhshary, commenting on 2.186,7,
says, ‘Fighting in the way of God is jihad for the glorifying of his
word and the strengthening of the Religion.’ And whatever may be the
etymological meaning of the word jihad, there can be no gainsaying
the fact that it is sometimes used in the Koran in the sense of
warlike actions, a warfare for the sake of the Faith. And when one
asks what the teaching of Mohammedanism is concerning jihad, the word
is employed in this latter sense.
After presenting a 500-year chronology and maps, Bostom moves on to
his final three sections — on jihad campaigns in the Near East,
Europe, Asia Minor and on the Indian subcontinent; jihad slavery and
Muslim and non-Muslim chronicles and eyewitness accounts of jihad
campaigns. These in many ways outshine everything that the editor
presented earlier, for here, he clearly elucidates the ravages of
jihad campaigns as experienced by their victims.
The sixth section, on Jihad campaigns, begins with an essay by
Demetrios Constantelos, which collects eyewitness accounts of Greek
Christian and other early observers of jihad. Damascus fell in 635,
Jerusalem in 638, the same year as Antioch, and in 646 Alexandria
became an Arab possession. The coastal areas of Palestine, Cyprus,
Egypt and Syria swiftly followed. Sophronios of Jerusalem describes
`the sword of the Saracens’ as `beastly and barbarous…filled with
every diabolic savagery.’
Clearly, the Arab conquest was very violent as well as decisive.
Constantelos reports on Sophronios: advancing Saracens left behind
them `a train of destruction and havoc, with bloodshed everywhere and
abandoned human bodies devoured by the wild beasts of Palestine’s
deserts. He writes of the ‘villainous and God-hating Saracens,’ who
run through places and capture cities, who reap or destroy the crops
of the fields, who burn down towns and set churches on fire, who
attack monasteries and defeat Byzantine armies, winning one victory
after another.’ John of Nikiu in about 700 C.E., likewise described
the terrors of the Arabic Muslims. The Islamic conquest `put to the
sword all that surrendered, and they spared none, whether old men,
babes or women.’
But that was only in the beginning. Bloodletting continued on every
continent the Muslims touched. Aram Ter-Ghevondian describes the
Armenian rebellion of 703, as related by such sources as Ibn-al-Athir
and a 10th century Arab author named Muhammad
ibn-Abdullah-ibn-Aasam-al-Kufi as well as Byzantine historian
Theophanes. In one instance in about 705, the Muslim leader Muhammad
`massacred, enslaved and wrote a letter to the nobility (Ashraf) who
are called freemen (ahrar), gave guarantees and promised to give
honors. Hence they gathered in their churches…and he ordered to
encircle the churches with fire-wood, closed the doors on them and
burnt all of them.’
C.E. Dufourcq describes `The Days of Razzia and invasion’ in a 1978
chapter that first appeared in a French collection on daily life in
medieval Europe under Arab domination (another, now in English for
the first time). After dominating Iberia, the Arabs transversed the
Pyrenees and ravaged lands north of the foothills. In Aragon’s Segre
Valley, squadrons explored the Ariege River. Before 720 they attacked
Narbonne, from which they carried off church riches and many slaves.
They were driven back from Toulouse in 721 but in 725 attacked
Carcassone. Other targets included the Rhone Valley, Nimes, and
Viviers (a place still called Les Sarasins), Macon and Chalon, and
Autun (which `has never been able to return to its former state since
that destruction’), Dijon and Langres. By 731, the Arabs were 100
kilometers from Paris. They burned all the Bordeaux churches in 732.
Fortunately, Charles Martel stopped them not far from Poitiers.
But in 734 or 735 in the Mediterranean, Dufourcq continues, they
attacked Arles and Avignon. From Provence and Italy, sailors attacked
Ostia on the Tiber, and pillaged the basilicas of Saint Peter and
Saint Paul. Marseilles was devastated in 838 and again in 848 and
920. From 857 on, the Roman seaboard was attacked annually. In
Syracuse in 878, the Church of the Holy Savior was filled with women,
children, the elderly, the sick, the clerics — all of them
massacred. In 934 or 935, Arabs slaughtered all the men in Genoa and
loaded the city’s treasures onto their ships.
Terrorizing inhabitants was a tool of their trade: As the 17th
century Algerian historian al-Maqqari noted, `Allah thus instilled
such fear among the infidels that they did not dare to go and fight
the conquerors; they only approached them as suppliants to beg for
peace.’
The Muslim invasion of India was similarly cruel, according to K.S.
Lal. Throughout more than 500 years in the Indian subcontinent,
Muslim invaders killed an estimated 70 million, slaughtering as many
as 500,000 to 600,000 at a time. They also took countless millions of
slaves, who were transported to Iran, Afghanistan and later to
Europe.
In the Balkans, the people suffered equal savagery, according to a
1956 essay by Dimitar Angelov, also in English for the first time.
The campaigns of Mourad II (1421-1451) and his successor Mahomet II
(1451-1481) in Serbia, Bosnia, Albania, and the Byzantine princedom
of the Peloponnisos, were particularly devastating. In 1459, invaders
destroyed the entire harvest and leveled the fortified towns. In
1466, the Albanians were forced to retreat and fight from
inaccessible regions; whole cities were again ruined. Plundering,
arson and repeated attacks reduced the rich agricultural region to
wilderness. Famines and epidemics ensued.
All this is to say nothing of the incessant slave-taking and the
brutal devshirme tribute; Balkan families were forced to pay a tax in
the form of their eldest or most able sons. Bostom devotes 60 pages
to slavery alone.
Then we come to the eyewitness accounts, which fill five chapters and
nearly eighty pages. According to an 1148 account by Solomon Cohen,
for example, the Almohads swept through Tlemcen in the Maghren,
killing all those in it. All the cities in North Africa were taken:
`One hundred thousand persons were killed in Fez on that occasion and
120,000 in Marakesh…..Large areas between Seville and Tortosa [in
Spain] had likewise fallen into Almohad hands.’
Likewise, a 13th century Hindu account called the Kahandade Prabandha
tells of the invasion of extensive regions, including Malwa, Gujarat,
Ranthamnhor, Siwana, Jalor, Devagiri, Warangal, Ma’bar and
Ramesvaram. In Bhinmal,
Orders were issued clear and terrible: ‘The soldiers shall march into
the town spreading terror everywhere! Cut down the Brahmanas,
wherever they may be–performing homa or milking cows! Kill the
cows – even those which are pregnant or with newly born calves!’ The
Turks ransacked Bhinmal and captured everybody in the sleepy town.
Thereafter, Fori Malik gleefully set fire to the town in a wanton
display of force and meanness.
As Ibn Warraq notes in the forward, Dr. Bostom is the first scholar
to have had translated from Arabic into English the works of
al-Bayadawi, al-Suyuti, al-Zamakhshari and al-Tabari, as well as
works by Sufi master al-Ghazali, Shiites al-Hilli and al-Amili. He
also includes representatives from the four schools of Sunni
jurisprudence: Averroes and Ibn Khaldun (Maliki), Ibn Taymiya and Ibn
Qudama (Hanbali), Shaybani (Hanafi), and al-Mawardi (Shaafi).
Warraq wonders, `Why did it take a non-specialist such as Dr. Bostom,
a scholar from another discipline — clinical epidemiology and
randomized clinical trials in medicine — to discover and have
translated for the first time this primary and secondary source
material?’
Ibn Warraq continues: As Bernard Lewis points out in his important
essay, `Pro-Islamic Jews,’ `The golden age of equal rights [in Spain]
was a myth…. The myth was invented by Jews in nineteenth century
Europe as a reproach to Christians.’ There are those, he says, who
contend that while Dr. Bostom may be right to expose history hitherto
simply denied, this was not the right historical moment to express
it. But, as Isaiah Berlin once wrote, an ideologue is someone
prepared to suppress what he suspects to be true. This disposition to
suppress the truth has engendered much evil.
Bostom’s work attempts to set straight the historical record. Let us
hope that Bostom’s monumental survey is read in every corner of U.S.
and European government, as well as by the masses who wish to learn
the truth on Islamic doctrines.