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Islam and ChristianMuslim Relations

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Jihd without apologetics

Christopher J. van der Krogt
a a

Religious Studies Programme, Massey University , Palmerston North, New Zealand Published online: 25 Mar 2010.

To cite this article: Christopher J. van der Krogt (2010) Jihd without apologetics, Islam and ChristianMuslim Relations, 21:2, 127-142 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09596411003619764

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Islam and Christian Muslim Relations Vol. 21, No. 2, April 2010, 127 142

Jiha d without apologetics

Christopher J. van der Krogt
Religious Studies Programme, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand Accounts of jiha d by Western scholars often seek to commend Islam by stressing the spiritual struggle against the self and limiting military jiha d to defence. On the basis of this interpretation, drawn from apologetic Muslim sources, writers such as John L. Esposito seek to discredit Muslim terrorists as having hijacked Islam and jiha d. The paper argues that in order to understand jiha d including terrorism perpetrated by groups such as alQaida it must be recognized as rmly rooted within the heterogeneous tradition that is Islam. Outsiders cannot apply moral criteria for distinguishing between legitimate and illegitimate expressions of Islam; nor should they adopt uncritically the criteria used by more congenial groups of Muslims. Espositos effort to defend Islam in the face of terrorism results in an inaccurate and inconsistent account of jiha d, both past and present. As this example shows, assumptions about the essential goodness of authentic religion impede rather than promote an understanding of the role of religion in the world. Keywords: Islam; jiha d; al-Qaida; terrorism; John L. Esposito; crusades; insider outsider problem

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In a characteristically combative article, Daniel Pipes criticized as an intellectual scandal (2002, 21) the way in which American scholars of religion interpret the Islamic word jiha d. Surveying the public statements (as distinct from academic publications) of over two dozen Muslim and non-Muslim scholars, he found that they overwhelmingly emphasized the peacefully inclined denitions of jiha d, primarily concerned with self-improvement and only secondarily requiring violence in defence of Islam if the word had any military signicance at all. Many academic scholars of religion, not least in the United States, have indeed long sought (quite reasonably) to present their students and the public at large with a positive image of Islam as the third member of the Abrahamic family of religions. A large part of their mission has been to counter the hostile views of Islam associated with scholars such as Pipes and Martin Kramer (2001), as well as with polemicists such as Andrew Bostom (2005), Robert Spencer (2005), and a host of conservative Christian writers and preachers. Pipess ndings, however, reect Henry Munsons observation: Many American specialists on the Middle East are so determined to rebut popular stereotypes about Islam that they idealize all things Islamic, especially militant movements commonly referred to as fundamentalist or Islamist (2002, 8).1 The most inuential exemplar of this approach is John L. Esposito, Founding Director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, author or editor of 35 books, and a regular media commentator on Islamic issues (Georgetown University 2009). His widely read textbook, Islam: The straight path, now in its third edition, has been translated into a number of languages, including Indonesian (Esposito 2003, x). Esposito tries to distinguish between real Islam, which is apparently assumed to be inherently good, and the corrupted, violent form of Islam that outsiders commonly mistake

Email: c.j.vanderkrogt@massey.ac.nz

ISSN 0959-6410 print/ISSN 1469-9311 online # 2010 University of Birmingham DOI: 10.1080/09596411003619764 http://www.informaworld.com

128 C.J. van der Krogt for the genuine article. Thus he criticizes the common failure to distinguish between the religion of Islam and mainstream Muslims and the extremists who hijack Islamic discourse and belief to justify their acts of extremism (2003, ix). In Unholy war: Terror in the name of Islam, Esposito repeatedly uses the epithet unholy war to denounce those Muslims who seek to justify violence against non-believers or allegedly apostate Muslims by describing their actions as jiha d. Usama bin Ladin, most notably, hijacks Islam, using doctrine and law to legitimate terrorism (2003, 22; cf. 117, 128, 148, 153). This article offers a critique of the views of Esposito and, to a lesser extent, other scholars, on the subject of jiha d, arguing that, for all their good intentions, their presentation of a sanitized interpretation of Islam actually impedes our understanding of this religious tradition and of its current adherents. Espositos approach to the study of Islam raises issues concerning the nature of religions and how outsiders should investigate them. The article will argue that we should not assume a priori that any religion is necessarily a force for good. Religious authenticity is not to be determined according to the moral preferences of contemporary Western academics, of Christians seeking rapprochement with Muslims, or even of contemporary Muslims reinterpreting their own past. As Munson writes, scholars, even when they are believers, should not try to pretend that people of the past conformed to the values of the present (2005, 235). To understand Muslims and the multiple meanings of jiha d, it is necessary to place them in historical context and to suspend moral judgement. Only then can the variety of contemporary Muslim views including jiha d as self-defence, jiha d as terrorism, and jiha d as moral improvement be appreciated as alternative expressions of a broad, multi-stranded religious tradition. Islamic warfare and the meanings of jiha d It will be useful to begin with a brief summary of the development of Islamic thinking about war and the changing meanings of jiha d. Forced out of Mecca in 622, the Prophet Muhammad and his followers migrated to Medina (Yathrib) and soon began to raid Meccan caravans. The Medinans, as well as other towns and tribes, were drawn into the conict, which did not cease with the capitulation of Mecca in 630. Indeed, it escalated and continued with the Arab or Islamic conquests after Muhammads death. Recent scholarship has emphasized the varied opinions among the scholars of the rst two Islamic centuries on the question of which Muslims were expected to ght against which unbelievers (Mottahedeh and al-Sayyid 2001; Bonner 2006, 97 116). By the third/ninth century, though, there was a broad scholarly consensus on the view developed by al-Shai (d. 204/820) that, under normal conditions, war against unbelievers was a communal obligation that could be fullled by representatives of the community (Morabia 1993, 199 200; Bonner 2006, 106 7, 115). Only when some part of the umma was in danger from the unbelievers would all Muslims in the region be individually obliged to ght. The Quran and other early Islamic texts use a range of words for armed conict (on the Quran, see Morabia 1993, 119 20). Q 2.216, for example, declares ghting (qita l) a duty even for those who hate it. Using another quranic root, scholars came to contrast the lands of the unbelievers, the da r al-harb or House of War, with the da r al-isla m or House of Islam, _ where, in principle, the Sharia prevailed and all lived in peaceful submission to Allah. War against unbelievers was justied for the purpose of extending the da r al-isla m at the expense of the da r al-harb and, when necessary, defending the former against the latter. The earliest _ Islamic writings on the life of Muhammad (the s ra literature) were largely accounts of his magha z , raids or expeditions. Muslim historians described the subsequent conquests beyond the Arabian Peninsula as futu h: literally the opening of the lands to the Arabs and their religion. _ Later Muslim scholars specializing in qh (Islamic jurisprudence) favoured yet another word, jiha d, as a technical term for such warfare against unbelievers.

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Islam and Christian Muslim Relations 129 Words derived from the Arabic root j-h-d refer to some sort of striving or endeavour and do not necessarily have anything to do with violence. Building on the etymological meaning of jiha d as struggle, Su writers came to refer to the struggle against the self ( jiha d al-nafs) as the greater jiha d (al-jiha d al-akbar). This effort to subdue ones own bodily lusts and wilfulness was a perpetual spiritual conict in the service of Allah, whereas ghting the external enemies of Islam was merely the lesser jiha d (al-jiha d al-asghar). According to Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani _ (d. 561/1166), This is the meaning of the Prophets saying God bless him and give him peace We have returned from the lesser jiha d (war) to the greater jiha d (self-control) (Williams 1971, 281). Muhammad was supposed to have said this to his followers on returning from a military expedition. This hadith (and its variants), which dates from the rst half of the third/ninth century, is not found in the canonical Sunni collections, though it nds an echo in the compilation of al-Tirmidhi (d. between 269/883 and 279/893; Peters 1979, 118; Cook 2005, 35 6). That is not to say that the notion of spiritual jiha d lacks antecedents in the Quran itself (Bonner 2006, 13 14, 22, 169). A number of ambiguous occurrences of the root j-h-d are traditionally interpreted as referring to the jiha d against oneself, and the term probably referred originally to other kinds of exertion as a demonstration of faith in Allah (Landau-Tasseron 2003). The two forms of jiha d were sometimes combined by ascetics living on the frontiers between Islamic and indel territories, a phenomenon sometimes referred to as riba t (Bonner _ to jihad 2006, 100 101; Rabbat 1995). However, when scholars specializing in qh referred without qualication, they invariably meant warfare in Allahs cause against unbelievers (Peters 1979, 10). In this sense, jiha d may quite reasonably be translated as holy war even though this is not a literal rendering (Crone 2004, 363; Munson 2005, 234). It is not necessary to review here all the renements to which the doctrine of jiha d was subject in the succeeding centuries, but a major new development took place under European colonial rule. In later thirteenth/nineteenth century northern India, the Muslim elite was forced to consider whether the country had reverted from the da r al-harb r al-isla m to the da _ and, as a corollary, whether it was appropriate to wage jiha d against the British. A consensus emerged that India remained part of the da r al-isla m because Muslims could still practise their religion freely there. Military jiha d, it was agreed, could only be defensive, and this new interpretation quickly spread to the Middle East (Peters 1979, 50 53, 113 14, 124 7; Bonner 2006, 159 61). In more recent times, so much emphasis has been given to the greater jiha d and to jiha d as defence that today many Muslims are affronted if one recalls that through most of their religions history, Muslim scholars advocated aggressive warfare against unbelievers. This changed perspective has been rmly repudiated by militant Islamists such as Sayyid Qutb (d. 1386/1966; Qutb 1978, 110 12, 114 16, 124, 138) who, with some reason, see it as a capitulation to Orientalist pressure. However, the militants own interpretation of jiha d, emphasizing as it does rebellion against allegedly apostate Muslim rulers, stands in the line of Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328) and his Wahhabi heirs (about whom more below). It is thus very far from the jiha d doctrine of most pre-modern Sunni ulama , who advocated obedience even to unworthy rulers and understood jiha d as warfare promoted by the ima m or ruler against unbelievers to extend the da r al-isla m (Sivan 1990, 90 94). For classical Sunni scholars, jiha d was meant to be conducted under the command of the ruler, never against him (Morabia 1993, 223 4, 298 302). Since the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan (1979 1989), jiha d s have re-directed their struggle against external unbelievers. They have done so because the unbelievers in question particularly Americans have attacked the umma directly (as in Afghanistan and Iraq) or by proxy, through enemies such as Israel. Bin Ladin can therefore justify his jiha d as defensive:

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130 C.J. van der Krogt It is no secret to you, my brothers, that the people of Islam have been aficted with oppression, hostility, and injustice by the Judeo-Christian alliance and its supporters (Lawrence 2005, 25). At the same time, though, the jiha d against the US is in part a logical extension of the jiha d against allegedly apostate governments such as those of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The militants have failed to defeat them, but bin Ladin hopes they will yet be weakened by attacks on the head of the serpent (Gerges 2005, 143 5). Esposito and the origins of militant Islamism Esposito outlines in some detail the Historical sources of revolutionary jiha d (2003, 41 64) from early movements such as the rst/seventh century Kharijites (Khawa rij) and the sixth/ twelfth century Assassins (the Niza r Isma l s) to Sayyid Qutb and modern militant Islamist groups. The Kharijites and Assassins are cited as early exemplars of how dissent could turn into unholy war, while traces of the militant piety and fundamentalist worldview of the former surfaced among the Wahhabis and others (Esposito 2003, 41). Ibn Taymiyya offered an important precedent for modern Islamists when he issued a fatwa against the Mongols, declaring them unbelievers despite their claim to be Muslims (Esposito 2003, 46; cf. Bonner 2006, 144 and Sivan 1990, 94 107) on the grounds that they ruled according to their own traditional law rather than the Sharia. More recently, a number of militant jiha d movements, including the Egyptian Islamic Jiha d headed by bin Ladins colleague Ayman al-Zawahiri, preceded al-Qaida itself (Esposito 2003, 71 117). As these are indeed all antecedents of bin Ladins al-Qaida, it is clear that todays Muslim terrorists have a long Islamic pedigree: they are part of a centuries-old revivalist tradition (Esposito 2003, 50). While this is historically a minority tradition, Esposito himself points out that in the fourteenth/twentieth century Hasan al-Banna (d. 1369/1949), Sayyid Abu al-Ala al-Mawdudi (d. 1400/1979), and Sayyid Qutb so effectively re-cast Islam as a comprehensive ideology that their perspective has been integrated unconsciously into the religious discourse of Muslims throughout the world who would normally dissociate themselves from Islamist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood and the Jama at-i Isla m (Esposito 2003, 50) of which the rst two gures were founders and the third a leading spokesman. Given this long tradition and its widespread current inuence, it is difcult to understand how militant Islamists can be said to have hijacked Islam. Esposito accepts that it was precisely Muhammads own pattern of hijrah and jiha d in the face of adversity, coupled with the concept of the ummah (the worldwide Islamic community) [that] has guided Muslims throughout the ages, including bin Laden and many terrorists today (2003, 5). Yet Esposito seems to be arguing that, ever since the time of the Kharijites, who emerged within a generation of the Prophets death, there has existed a kind of para-Islam, claiming to be the only genuine Islam but not actually authentic. Such an attempt to de-legitimize militant reformist Islam does not appear consistent with the acknowledgement that there is no essentialist or monolithic Islam (2003, 141). If the Kharijites and later Ibn Taymiyya, the Wahhabis, and modern jiha d groups were wrong to accuse others of not being proper Muslims (a pre-condition for undertaking jiha d against them), it scarcely behoves a non-Muslim scholar to come close to making a similar judgement about militant Muslims themselves. Esposito wrote Unholy war to explain why 11/9 occurred and to place the attacks within their broader context (2003, viii), but he nowhere gives a systematic account of the origins, development, or content of either the classical doctrine of jiha d or of the unholy war undertaken by dissident groups. He does not give any clear criteria for distinguishing between jiha d proper and its unholy perversions. While correctly observing that there is no single doctrine of jiha d that has always and everywhere existed or been accepted (2003, 64), Esposito argues

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Islam and Christian Muslim Relations 131 that the classical Sunni view and its more militant alternatives have both distorted original Islam. Even though Muhammad had to ght to protect the community at Medina, thereby providing a model for later generations, Both mainstream and extremist movements . . . have selectively used the pattern of hijrah and jiha d for their own purposes (2003, 28 32, 153, quoting p. 32).

The sword verses Thus, Esposito argues (2003, 35; 2005, 255), early military expansion and modern terrorism have been justied by a selective reading and misapplication of what are often referred to as the sword verse (Q 9.5) and the jizya verse (Q 9.29):
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Then, when the sacred months are drawn away, slay the idolaters [mushriku n] wherever you nd them, and take them, and conne them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they repent, and perform the prayer [sala t], and agree to pay the alms [zaka t], then let them go _ their way. Fight those who believe not in God and the Last Day and do not forbid what God and His Messenger have forbidden such men as practise not the religion of truth, being of those who have been given the Book until they pay the tribute [ jizya] out of hand and have been humbled. (Arberry 1964, 179, 182)

By focussing only on the instructions to ght and kill in these two a ya t (sometimes both called sword verses), Esposito says, both critics of the religion and some Muslims (including rulers and sycophantic scholars) have misrepresented Islam as an aggressive religion. The theory of abrogation (naskh) was invoked by such scholars to argue that these were Allahs nal instructions on the subject, superseding earlier, more irenic revelations such as Q 2.192: If they cease hostilities, there can be no [further] hostility, except towards aggressors (Abdel Haleem 2004, 220; on abrogation and jiha d, see Firestone 1999, 47 65). Esposito (2003, 35; 2005, 255) blames (unnamed) scholars for endorsing an interpretation of jiha d that suited the imperial ambitions of the early caliphs who offered them patronage. Now, the early Islamic conquests reached their apogee with the defeat by the Franks at Tours in 113/ 732 and the victory over the Tang Chinese at Talas River (in modern Kyrgyzstan or Kazakhstan) in 133/751. The power and inuence of the caliphate reached its peak in the reign of Harun al-Rashid (d. 193/809), who took pride in his own exploits as a muja hid. The military expansion of the da r al-isla m had already stalled, however, and subsequent waves of expansion could not match the achievements of the early conquests. Yet most classical Islamic qh was only written after this time: rather than composing subservient apologetics for continued military expansion, writers such as al-Mawardi (d. 449/1058) sought to uphold an ideal and excuse the Abbasid caliphs for not actually fullling it personally (Morabia 1993, 207 9). Unless they repudiated the achievements of the greatly revered rst generations of Muslims, moreover, Islamic scholars were bound to seek a religious justication in retrospect of the conquests. According to Esposito, offensive war, as actually conducted particularly in the rst century of Islam and as endorsed by the classical jurists, was in fact inconsistent with Q 9.5, which, along with Q 9.29, was traditionally read as a call for peaceful relations unless there is interference with the freedom of Muslims (2003, 35; cf. Esposito 2005, 255). Presumably, he is referring here to traditional tafs r (quranic exegesis) rather than siyar (the branch of Sharia law dealing with international relations), since most jurists endorsed aggressive jiha d. However, the exegetes too mostly understood Q 9.5 and 9.29 as on-going instructions to ght unbelievers (Landau-Tasseron 2003; Rubin 1984). Espositos Orwellian understanding of peaceful relations, furthermore, must be understood as including both forced conversion to Islam and political capitulation, which he characterizes as peaceful options even when chosen under threat of war (2005, 35).

132 C.J. van der Krogt Both Q 9.5 and 9.29 do indeed call for the establishment of peace but only peace with victory for the Muslims. In the case of the mushriku n, peace could only be established if they repented, worshipped, and gave alms. As Q 9.11 explicitly says, the performance of sala t and _ zaka t (later characterized as two of the ve pillars of Islam) would make the polytheists brothers of the Muslims in religion. Indeed, enquiring mushriku n were to be granted safe conduct to learn about Islam before deciding whether to accept it (Q 9.6). However, if after four months grace (Q 9.2, 5), they still refused to accept Islam, they were to be killed wherever the Muslims found them. Q 9.5 demands the forced conversion or slaughter of unrepentant polytheists. Similarly, Q 9.29 offers peace to the People of the Book only once they have been humbled and have agreed to pay jizya; that is, in the traditional interpretation, when they have accepted Islamic rule and acknowledged their inferior status by paying tribute or, as it later became, a poll tax (Crone 2004, 370 71; Bonner 2006, 88 9). Peace with People of the Book (originally Jews and Christians, but the category was greatly extended over time to Zoroastrians and others) was conditional on their accepting dhimm (protected) status as subjects of the Islamic state. While they could practise their religion (unostentatiously), they had to pay a poll tax ( jizya) and suffer other indications of their second-class status, such as sumptuary laws (Kister 1964; Morabia 1993, 263 8; for a recent discussion, see the relevant chapters in Berkey 2003).

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The Islamic conquests Given Espositos criticisms of the classical jurists who endorsed aggressive jiha d, one would suppose that the expansion of Islam under the early caliphs was another example of unholy war, yet the many forms of jiha d have included, where necessary, armed struggle to spread Gods rule and law (Esposito 2005, 34). Indeed, The Muslim community was required to engage in the struggle to expand the dar al-Islam throughout the world so that all of humankind would have the opportunity to live within a just political and social order (Esposito 2003, 35). The word required here presumably means by divine command a command to establish Islamic rule even where it was not wanted, as explained in the words attributed by the historian al-Tabari (d. 310/923) to Rabi ibn Amir, a Muslim envoy to the Persian general Rustam:
Allah has sent us and brought us here so that we may free those who desire from servitude [iba dat] to earthly rulers and make them servants of God, that we may change their poverty into wealth and free them from the tyranny of [false] religions and bring them to the justice of Islam. He has called us to bring His religion to all His creatures and to call them to Islam. Whoever accepts it from us will be safe and we shall leave him alone but whoever refuses we shall ght until we full the promise of God. (Kennedy 2007, 112; cf. p. 63)

This promise (for the Muslims) was paradise or victory. Such an idealized formulation of the conquerors intentions to spread true religion is a rarer occurrence in the sources than indications of ethnic pride (Kennedy 2007, 112) and is not actually accurate anyway. Non-Arabs who accepted Islam were not in fact liberated from all earthly rulers and left alone but were incorporated into the empire as clients of the Arab rulers. The impetus provided by the new religious ideology and the transformation of Arabian society it wrought must be central to any satisfactory account of the conquests (Donner 1981, 8 9, 267 71), but Espositos explanation of the conquerors motives owes more to modern apologetics than to critical historical investigation. Moreover, it would be tendentious to accept the rst half of the nal sentence in this quotation as representing real jiha d, but not the second half. The jiha d that established Arab Islamic rule over non-Muslims from the Atlantic to the Indus can scarcely be described as wholly defensive, yet when Esposito does refer to the content of the mainstream view of jiha d, he denies that it was explicitly aggressive in intent. He declares, without evidence, that jiha d is not supposed to include aggressive warfare

Islam and Christian Muslim Relations 133 (2005, 93; cf. p. 254) and alludes to a classical Islamic belief in jiha d as defense of Islam, distinguishing between a legitimate defensive jiha d as opposed to an aggressive unholy war of aggression (2003, 16, 41). In fact, classical scholars did endorse attacks on unbelievers on account of their unbelief (Landau-Tasseron 2008, 540, 543). As Patricia Crone argues,
In classical law, jiha d is missionary warfare. It is directed against indels, who need not be guilty of any act of hostility against Muslims (their very existence is a cause of war), and its aim is to incorporate the indels in the abode of Islam, preferably as converts, but alternatively as dhimm s. (2004, 364 5)

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The polymath Ibn Khaldun (d. 808/1406) wrote that 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 either by persuasion or by force (2005, 183). Esposito (2003, 67) says this is an unrepresentative view, though elsewhere he writes, with reference to the success of the Islamic conquests, that Islams universal mission had resulted in the spread of Muslim rule over Christian territories and Christian hearts (2005, 57; emphasis added). Ibn Khaldun was merely summarizing a centuries-long consensus among Sunni scholars, an understanding of jiha d that reected the early conquests. In the earlier words of the Muslim jurist al-Juwayni (d. 477/1085), jiha d was the forcible mission assisted by the unsheathed sword against wrongheaded people who arrogantly refuse to accept the plain truth after it has become clear (Crone 2004, 369). Jurists did not usually state directly that the ultimate object of jiha d was the conversion of even the People of the Book, but by Ibn Khalduns time everyone knew that this was the long-term effect of reducing Jews and Christians to dhimm status in the lands conquered and settled by the Arabs. As a philosopher of history writing just after the classical period, Ibn Khaldun was disposed to reect on the signicance of matters that earlier scholars, primarily jurists, had usually treated simply by expounding divine instructions gleaned, in principle, directly from the Quran and hadith a methodology that deliberately reduced the opportunity for inserting ones own reections. It is therefore quite misleading to assert that jurists and Quran commentators did not sanction jiha d merely on the grounds of difference in belief (Esposito 2003, 68); this assertion also contradicts Espositos claim that some scholars advocated expansionist jiha d to please their caliphal patrons. Jiha d and crusade Espositos interpretation of jiha d stands in striking contrast to his understanding of the crusades promoted by the medieval papacy. He observes that, for Muslims, the Christian West is epitomized by the armies of the Crusades (2005, 57).2 This may be so, but Muslim understanding of the crusades derives primarily not from historical memory but from nineteenth-century Western historiography, in which crusading to the East was interpreted as a forerunner of modern imperialism (Tyerman 2004, 199 206; Riley-Smith 2008, 63 78). Furthermore, Esposito is more inclined to criticize the Christian stereotype of Muslims than the Muslim stereotype of Christians. It is surely understandable, given the early success of the Islamic conquests and the subsequent gradual conversion of Christian dhimm s, that the European Christian response was, with few exceptions, hostile, intolerant and belligerent (Esposito 2005, 57). Esposito characterizes as a myth the view that the Crusades were simply motivated by a religious desire to liberate Jerusalem. Rather, Christian rulers, knights, and merchants were driven primarily by political and military ambitions and the promise of the economic and commercial (trade and banking) rewards that would accompany the establishment of the Latin kingdom in the Middle East (2005, 57).

134 C.J. van der Krogt No evidence is cited for this secularizing interpretation of the crusades, which is now rejected by most historians of the movement. While acknowledging that some crusaders may have deceived themselves, Norman Housley stresses the contemporary emphasis on purity of motive and observes that there is much evidence to back up the view that people who took the cross were far from being the unreective and greedy fanatics of one stereotypical view that still, regrettably, persists (2006, 79). Jonathon Riley-Smith, summarizing changes in crusading historiography since the rst (1987) edition of his authoritative textbook, notes the growing conviction that the materialistic explanations for recruitment are no longer sustainable (2005, xxv). Writing in 540/1146 to recruit English participants in the Second Crusade, the Cistercian abbot St Bernard of Clairvaux (recognized in 1830 as a Doctor of the Catholic Church) used a commercial metaphor to offer the remission of sin and entry to Paradise:
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Or are you a shrewd businessman, a man quick to see the prots of this world? If you are, I can offer you a splendid bargain. Do not miss this opportunity. Take the sign of the cross. At once you will have indulgence for all the sins which you confess with a contrite heart. It does not cost you much to buy and if you wear it with humility you will nd that it is the kingdom of heaven. (Mayer 1988, 100)

A remarkably similar proposition is offered by the Quran (4.74):

Let those of you who are willing to trade the life of this world for the life to come, ght in Gods way. To anyone who ghts in Gods way, whether killed or victorious, We shall give a great reward. (Abdel Haleem 2004, 57)

This is not an isolated parallel, as Albrecht Noth has shown (see Noth 1966, 143 6 for comparisons between Bernard and the Quran). While the religious signicance of crusading is now being re-afrmed, recognition that premodern jiha d was seldom if ever a war to enforce religious conversion, and was not limited to defence, entails recognition of its material motives. The purpose of the early conquests was to assert the hegemony of Arab Muslims over non-Arab, non-Islamic peoples. Even if they were invited to accept Islam, the purpose of ghting was not initially to convert them but to rule over and collect revenues from them (Crone 2004, 366 73). According to al-Tabari, an Arab commander reminded his troops on the eve of the Battle of Qadisiyya in 15/637 that Allah had already granted them the land of Iraq: He permitted you to take it three years ago, and you have nourished yourselves on it, eaten off it, killed its inhabitants, collected taxes from them, and taken them prisoners until today (Crone 2004, 366 7). Esposito himself (2005, 35) acknowledges this war aim in a passage rebutting the view that the conquests were wars of conversion. Both Christians and Muslims have interpreted their religion as a summons to war with an offer of material as well as spiritual rewards both understood as forms of divine bounty. Drawing upon the Quran and numerous hadiths, classical writers expounded in great detail the rules for dividing the spoils of war (Morabia 1993, 236 46; Mawardi 1996, 140 57). Citing Q 3.145, al-Mawardi advised the commander To promise the hardy and valiant among them [his men] Gods reward if they value the other world, and earthly reward and a share of the spoils if they value this one (1996, 47). Rather than giving comfort to Muslim apologists (and to Muslim critics of the West) by presenting crusading as inherently wicked, and military jiha d as noble unless corrupted, Espositos goal of helping Westerners to understand Islam in general and jiha d in particular would be more successfully advanced by acknowledging the comparable motives on both sides. The adherents of each religion should seek to understand the genuinely religious motivations in each others conceptions of war against unbelievers, and neither should indulge in moral triumphalism. Their proclivity to do so should not be abetted by scholars.

Islam and Christian Muslim Relations 135 Disqualifying militant jiha d: other writers Espositos accounts of jiha d have been discussed at length not because he makes any claim to be a specialist on the subject, but because he is the most prolic promoter of the view that military jiha d is essentially defensive. Esposito has contributed hugely to a more positive appreciation of Islam among Westerners, but, as I have sought to show, this achievement is marred by an unhelpful presentation of jiha d. Yet it is important to realize that the apologetic interpretation of jiha d offered by Esposito is echoed in many other publications intended for scholars, students, and the reading public. Thus a recent, sustained examination of juristic writing on jiha d by John Kelsay (2007) is vulnerable to a number of criticisms comparable to those directed here against the writings of Esposito (Landau-Tasseron 2008). The Oxford dictionary of world religions emphasizes the distinction between the greater and lesser jiha ds and stresses that jiha d in the military sense can only be defensive (Bowker 1997, 501). In Islamic studies: A history of religions approach, Richard C. Martin downplays the historic signicance of jiha d as warfare. He says that the general meaning of the term is striving for moral and religious perfection; it is the form that patriotism and citizenship take in the Islamic umma (1996, 15). Nevertheless, since Islam regards itself as a universal religion, jihad can be in the service of the spread or defense of Islam and in this sense is often translated as holy war. Thus,
the cry of jiha d! has been raised from time to time in Islamic history, but it is the broader meaning of striving within the context of ones life and community for moral and religious perfection that is the main sense of this duty in Islam. (Martin 1996, 15; cf. p. 43)

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While this may well be so among Muslims today, the effect of such an explanation is to ignore the historic priority of violent over spiritual jiha d (and of offensive jiha d over defensive) and to place contemporary militant Islamists beyond the pale of authentic Islam. As Martin himself has written more accurately elsewhere, the term jiha d as such, when left unqualied, almost always refers to the jiha d of armed struggle and justied violence (1987, 9). David Wainess introductory text, like Martins, skims quickly over Muhammads involvement in raiding and warfare after the hijra. The Prophet was given permission by Allah to ght against the Quraysh (who had persecuted the Muslims), and he also assumed responsibility for defending Medina from external assault and internal dissension or subversion (Waines 2003, 20). Waines acknowledges that the intermittent raids, skirmishes, and occasional battle[s] over the next few years . . . were the formative experiences of the nascent Muslim community (2003, 20), but his account does not mention the conicts with the Jews or indicate how Muhammad created precedents for the establishment of Islamic rule over all those whom the Muslims could conquer. The word jiha d is rst used later in an axiom attributed to the Prophet to the effect that its most meritorious form was a piously conducted pilgrimage (Waines 2003, 92 3). There are other allusions to military jiha d, for example as an impractical communal obligation initiated by the caliph (Waines 2003, 100), but contemporary Islamist terrorists are described as hijacking the faith (Waines 2003, 284). The glossary, however, says that jiha d is usually translated as holy war against indels as well as meaning the effort directed toward overcoming ones inner passions and imperfections of the soul (Waines 2003, 316 7). As these examples illustrate, prioritizing the greater jiha d is a common strategy among Western scholars seeking to promote a positive appreciation of Islam (Cook 2005, 39-44; Munson 2005, 235). Reviewing examples of this tendency (from Esposito and others) and the lack of evidence for the greater jiha d beyond the writings of Sus and apologists, David Cook notes with justication that The at statement is the refuge of scholars who believe in the essentially irenic nature of jiha d, while the footnote is the response of those who do not (2005, 41).

136 C.J. van der Krogt Islam without judgement Pipess ally Martin Kramer (2001, 48 52) has also denounced the treatment of Islam by American scholars, exhibiting special opprobrium for the inuential Esposito including ad hominem attacks on his credentials. Esposito, Kramer says, fullled the demand for sympathetic texts on Islam that reformatted Edward Saids anti-Orientalist message with an ear to the American mainstream, by presenting Islam in categories acceptable to Westerners. In particular, Esposito portrayed Islamist movements as nothing other than movements of democratic reform, most of them having rejected violence as counterproductive (Kramer 2001, 50, responding to Voll and Esposito, 1994). Attempts by scholars of religion to write empathetically, if not apologetically, about Islam go back well before Edward Said turned Orientalism into a pejorative term. Fifty years ago, Wilfred Cantwell Smith argued that no statement about a religion is valid unless it can be acknowledged by that religions believers (Smith 1959, 42). Later in the same article, he paraphrased this as the proposition that a statement about religion, in order to be valid, must be intelligible and acceptable to those within (1959, 52). By religion, he meant the faith in mens hearts (1959, 42), for the student of religion, has not to do with religious systems basically but with religious persons; or at least with something interior to persons (1959, 35). While asserting that Anything that I say about Islam as a living faith is valid only in so far as Muslims can say Amen to it (1959, 43), Smith acknowledged that even an insider can speak with nal authority only for himself (1959, 43, n. 24). On the external data about religion, however, an outsider can by diligent scholarship discover things that an insider does not know and may not be willing to accept (1959, 42). He gave the example of historical change that is often unrecognized by believers, adding that the insider can speak authoritatively only for the present (1959, 42 3). Smiths inuential proposal leaves open the questions of which Muslims opinions matter and how one should deal with faith claims concerning history. In a religion based on a book that appeared in a particular historical context (the Quran) and on the exemplary tradition (the sunna) of an historic individual, the Prophet Muhammad, it is almost impossible to separate historical judgements from contemporary faith. Even when they disagree on specic doctrines and practices, Muslims typically build their religious claims on the interpretation of these historical sources. What constitutes authentic Islam is contingent upon a reading of history and there are alternative, even incompatible readings. While the Quran may be accepted as the uncreated word of Allah, its interpretation depends heavily on the alleged occasions of revelation, that is, on the historical circumstances to which a given portion of the scripture is supposed to refer. This is nowhere more important than in the case of warfare since, as we have seen, passages such as Q 9.5 and 9.29 are widely believed to have been revealed later than other, less belligerent passages and are therefore read as superseding them. Contemporary Muslims are divided on this very issue, and scholars of religion have no grounds for upholding the jiha d-as-only-defensive position as normative. Noting the range of views among Muslims concerning jiha d, Esposito asks, Which interpretations are correct? Which of the meanings promote positive improvements and reforms, and which have been exploited to justify extremism and terrorism? (2003, 27). These questions seem to assume that there is a correct version of Islam (and an orthodox interpretation of jiha d) and that authentic religion can only be constructive; any other use of religious ideas would constitute illegitimate exploitation, the manipulation of religion for wrongful motives and ends. Citing Jewish and Christian examples, Esposito assumes that Most people readily recognise distinctions between those who are true examples of faith and those who hijack the faith, as well as between the mainstream and extremists on the fringe (2003, 121).

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Islam and Christian Muslim Relations 137 In this approach, Esposito illustrates Robert A. Orsis comments about the expectations placed on scholars of religion by journalists, politicians, and others to make normative distinctions among religious behaviors in order to reassure people that only some are really religious while others represent perversions or distortions of true religion (Orsi 2005, 179). He notes that People want to be reassured, for example, that the men who ew planes into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, were not representatives of real or good Islam. Reviewing the origins and development of religious studies particularly but not exclusively in the USA, Orsi concludes that Both in content and method the academic study of religion has been preoccupied with the study and defence of good religion for a long time (2005, 189). By good he means acceptable in belief and practice to the prevailing domesticated modern civic Protestantism, and by religion he means the denominationally neutral version of Christianity recast as an ethical system (2005, 186). Religion, as Sam Gill has argued, has therefore been treated in an essentialist manner as preoccupied with the sacred or ultimate concern, whose attributes are goodness, purity, and unity. Religious studies is thus practised as the quest for these qualities in particular religious traditions and tends to overlook negative aspects of religion, such as violence (Gill 1994, 969 70; Orsi 2005, 190). Such an approach fails to understand religion on its own terms because religion at its root has nothing to do with morality; it does not unambiguously orient people toward social justice. It may do so, but Religion is often enough cruel and dangerous (Orsi, 2005, 191). Orsi challenges scholars of religion to enter into the otherness of religious practices in search of an understanding of their human ground whether or not they are disturbing, dangerous, or even morally repugnant (2005, 191 2). In the approach advocated by Orsi, Religious Studies is not a moralizing discipline; it exists in the suspension of the ethical, and it steadfastly refuses either to deny or to redeem the other (2005, 201).

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Religion and motivation When different believers prioritize diverse and even irreconcilable goals for their religion, the most protable contribution of scholars is to explain why such variations exist, not to advocate some and de-legitimize others. Only if it is assumed that the goal of Islam is to establish peace without resorting to aggression can one claim that militant Islamists have hijacked their religion. Of course, many apologists for Islam do indeed characterize it as above all a religion of peace, but as a recent International Crisis Group report observes, Islam is not so much a religion of peace as a religion of law (2005, 1b). This is an historical observation, not a normative judgement, and religious studies scholarship (as a non-normative approach to religion) is primarily concerned with religions as they actually develop in history, rather than with how one might prefer them to be. I am not suggesting that we should refrain from ever critiquing religions, but simply that part of our task is to explain morally objectionable phenomena, such as terrorism carried out in the name of Islam, by fully acknowledging their grounding in the broader tradition rather than using essentialist criteria to dismiss them as corruptions of that tradition.3 There is no reason to assume a priori, as apologetic writers do, that religions cannot motivate people to commit what outsiders consider morally abhorrent deeds. There is even less reason to assume that religions only motivate their adherents to actions that accord with modern Western liberal values. In this context, it is worth recalling Clifford Geertzs classic denition of religion as:
(1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of facticity that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic. (1993, 90)

138 C.J. van der Krogt This denition, when taken out of context, may appear to neglect the communal dimension of religion, which is crucial for understanding jiha d as the defence and expansion of the da r alisla m, but Geertz was writing about culture, and his denition applies to communities, not just individuals. His stress on the motivational role of religion is surely valid. If it is not, those of us who study the social signicance of religion had better reassess the value of our occupation. Religious symbol-systems (any world religion may be said to include a variety of such systems) have their own internal logic that motivates their adherents to act in ways that may be either admired or abhorred by outsiders. Considering the role of religion in history, Patrick Collinson, like Geertz, holds that it serves as a motivating precipitant, provoking action by individuals and groups which would not have been taken without it (Collinson 1999, 153). In addition to creating a bond among its adherents (the international umma is a good example), religion also provides legitimation, licensing as just conditions and acts (sometimes atrocious conditions and acts) which without it might have been deemed unlawful (Collinson 1999, 153). Collinson cites examples from the British Civil Wars of the seventeenth century, including Cromwells massacre at Drogheda. Elsewhere, alluding to the English Civil War and aspects of the French Revolution, Collinson observes that the modern historian seems to be more prepared than ever to give due weight to religion as an historical agent . . . Even the Crusades and the Wars of Religion now turn out to have been about religion after all (1999, 151). As a religion, Islam inuences behaviour for good or ill by promoting certain sets of beliefs and values. What has been described as the Muhammadan paradigm (Ruthven 2006, 76) as found in the Quran and the authoritative hadith collections, is full of military conicts between the Prophet and his supporters and their polytheistic, Jewish, and Christian enemies. Indeed, the earliest written accounts of the life of Muhammad were principally concerned with the raids and battles that dominated the nal 10 years of his life (Bonner 2006, 37). This does not mean that Islam is essentially or inherently violent, but the sunna of the Prophet can certainly legitimate and inspire violence. It is scarcely surprising that some contemporary Muslims have practised jiha d as terrorism, just as Muslims in the past have used the tactics and technology available in their own time. Islam is not just one homogeneous phenomenon but, like any great religious tradition, it offers a rich collection of resources that are drawn upon as occasion seems to demand. All use of religious traditions is necessarily selective because they are so diverse, with some elements incompatible with others, that only some aspects of them can be drawn upon in any given context. In practice, moreover, religious traditions combine with other features of culture, individual personalities, and material, political, and social circumstances to shape worldviews and to endorse actions. Esposito acknowledges that The use of concepts like jiha d and martyrdom to justify suicide bombing provides a powerful incentive: the prospect of being a gloried hero in this life and enjoying Paradise in the next (2003, 100). He immediately goes on to show with examples that contemporary Muslim scholars are divided over the legitimacy of suicide bombing and the killing of innocents. Rather than conclude that Islam could therefore motivate Muslims to either peaceful or aggressive acts, he attributes global terrorism to political and economic causes (2003, 128). It seems to be assumed that religion either inspires good or is distorted (hijacked) to legitimate militant responses to the despair caused by poverty, political corruption, and imperialism. On this account, genuine Islam itself seems incapable of motivating anyone to morally evil deeds. Certainly, whether Islam is in fact construed as a call to militant jiha d will depend on the context and concerns of the Muslims involved. Those Muslims who consider their own rulers apostates (and perhaps the stooges of militant Christian or secular states hostile to Islam) draw a parallel with the conict between Muhammad and the Quraysh of Mecca. Militant Islamists

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Islam and Christian Muslim Relations 139 judge their own societies or governments to have succumbed to a state of ja hiliyya, barbaric ignorance comparable to that of Mecca before its conversion. Sayyid Qutb (1978, 93 8), quoting Ibn Taymiyyas disciple Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 750/1350), elaborated a paradigmatic sequence of stages, based on the model of the Prophet, from the emergence of an Islamic community in a ja hil context, via hijra and jiha d, to the establishment of Islamic rule. The appeal of such a programme lies not merely in its derivation from the sunna of the Prophet. Its attraction derives also from promising a solution to widespread disillusionment with failed secular ideologies, corrupt authoritarian regimes, the inequitable distribution of wealth, and the loss of independence by Muslim populations, for example in Palestine and Kashmir. No explanation for the hold of militant jiha d ideology would be complete without due attention to these secular issues, but Islam in general and the term jiha d in particular provide more than simply a language with which to articulate political grievances. For many Muslims, membership of the international umma is more politically signicant than their citizenship of contemporary states, whether they view these as articial constructs (a legacy of European imperialism) or whether they are disaffected members of a diaspora community. In the video released after his suicide in the 7 July 2005 London bombing, Mohammad Sidique Khan, born in Leeds of Pakistani parents, declared to the British public in his Yorkshire accent:
Your democratically elected governments continuously perpetuate atrocities against my people all over the world. And your support of them makes you directly responsible, just as I am directly responsible for protecting and avenging my Muslim brothers and sisters. (BBC 2005)

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Usama bin Ladin interprets American interventions in the Middle East as a clear proclamation of war against God, his Messenger, and the Muslims (Lawrence 2005, 60) not merely against the citizens of the countries immediately affected. He is claiming to speak and act on behalf of the worldwide umma, a community dened by religion.

Conclusion Esposito, like most scholars of religion, acknowledges the diversity of Islam and rejects essentialist interpretations in principle. However, because he is so concerned to counter negative stereotypes which have become even more pronounced since the emergence of al-Qaida he glosses over relevant evidence, resorts to strained interpretations, and runs into selfcontradiction. He wavers between acknowledging Islamic military expansion as a religious duty and condemning it as a corruption of Islam, accusing the scholars who endorsed aggressive jiha d of distorting the message of the Quran. He himself reads the Quran as offering peace when it actually speaks of forced conversion and the subjection of Jews and Christians to Muslim rule. He shows that militant Islamists have roots deep within the tradition of Islam, yet says they have hijacked the religion. Esposito seeks, as Kramer has observed, to present Islam in categories acceptable to an American readership, writing off the militancy of some Muslims as having no basis in Islam despite its long pedigree. The facts presented by Esposito do not sustain the conclusions he draws, evidently because his explanations are not grounded in the evidence but in an apologetic agenda. In investigating a religion that is not ones own, allowance must be made for the otherness and integrity of that religion: it is not something that should be construed according to the values or expectations of an outsider. Nor should a particular stream within that religion be taken as normative at the expense of variants the outsider nds less congenial. Believers naturally hold that authentic religion which they typically identify with their own beliefs and practices does indeed embody and promote all that is good, but here good could

140 C.J. van der Krogt well mean a range of attitudes very different from those of outsiders. In the case of Islam, moral good is likely to mean that which is commanded by Allah, and this may or may not coincide with the views of Christian or secular Western scholars about what is morally good. However atrocious their deeds, those who engage in jiha d as a religious duty in the service of Allah as striving with their selves (singular nafs) and goods in his cause (Q 4.95; 49.15) cannot simply be dismissed as hijacking Islam. For the scholar of religion, it is inappropriate to identify particular religions with moral goodness; the ethical and political values of an outsider have no bearing on what actually constitutes part of a religious tradition and what does not.4 While promoting dialogue and understanding between Muslims and others is a crucial task, it will ultimately be defeated if apologetics or advocacy displace critical engagement. If our empathy as scholars of religion extends to people with different beliefs, it should also extend to religious people with different moral values though to empathize is not to condone. Just as a modern historian can recognize that the crusades did not represent an aberration from Christian teaching (Tyerman 2004, 3), so it is time to recognize that all forms of jiha d, including military expansion against the lands of unbelievers, revolution against allegedly apostate Muslim rulers, and terrorist attacks against civilians, are not aberrations of Islam. As Cook observes, From an outsiders point of view, after surveying the evidence from classical until contemporary times, one must conclude that todays jiha d movements are as legitimate as any that have ever existed in classical Islam (2005, 64), apart from their disregard for legitimate Islamic leadership. I would suggest that jiha d as riba t may be taken as a signicant _ precedent for ghting indels without ofcial leadership. There is a prima facie case for recognizing as expressions of the Islamic duty of jiha d all acts of violence perpetrated in the name of Islam and justied with reference to the Quran and the sunna. Only Muslims can decide for themselves what counts as genuinely Islamic (this much I take from Smith). Outsiders have no basis for disagreeing with Muslims about what constitutes Islam, at least as long as what is presented as Islamic has some explicit connection with the teachings of Muhammad. For Muslims, Islam as a revealed religion is precisely and only what they believe Allah says it is, while to assert that Islam is dened by Allah is in fact to be a Muslim. Only an insider can justify a normative interpretation but that is to engage in theology, not religious studies or social science. As Ella Landau-Tasseron says in response to John Kelsay (2007), shar a reasoning is not a practice to be undertaken by an academic historian (Landau-Tasseron 2008, 550). For the non-Muslim, Islam is what it appears to be a multifarious phenomenon constructed by generations of human beings. Outsiders familiar with the tradition and its sources may distinguish between ordinary and unusual manifestations of Islam or even between attractive and repellent aspects of it (by the observers criteria), but their rst task is surely to understand. This cannot be achieved by dismissing as inauthentic forms of Islam grounded in the tradition yet abhorrent to outsiders and even to most insiders. After 11/9, many Muslims were quick to protest that Islam is a religion of peace and that the actions of the hijackers (even if they were admitted to be Muslims, which many Muslims deny) had nothing to do with Islam. Terrorism may have nothing to do with Islam as understood by such protesters, to be sure, but, as Ziauddin Sardar wrote after the 2005 London bombings, We must acknowledge that the terrorists, and their neo-Kharijite tradition, are products of Islamic history (2005, 12). This is not to deny that terrorism as practised by groups such as al-Qaida is a very modern form of warfare that also draws upon Western ideological and technological resources. Most non-Muslim scholars writing on Islam stress its variety and denounce essentialism, yet many do not consistently apply this insight when analysing controversial issues such as jiha d.

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Islam and Christian Muslim Relations 141 Acknowledgements I would like to thank Professor Ella Landau-Tasseron and the journals anonymous reader for their thoughtful critiques of this paper: whatever its remaining deciencies, it has proted from their advice.

Notes
1. It would be unfortunate if scholars who disagree with Pipess views on Islam and Middle East politics felt entitled thereby to dismiss his observations on the treatment of jiha d. Munson (2002) offers a succinct and discerning path between extremes. 2. To the extent that Muslims hold this perception, they may not be surprised when Western views of Islam are coloured by terrorism perpetrated by Muslims. 3. I am here assuming that it is not necessary to dispense with moral values as a human being while investigating religion in a non-normative manner as a scholar. 4. This article is concerned with overly apologetic accounts of jiha d by non-Muslim scholars and constitutes a plea for more balanced discussion. An equally detailed critique of overtly hostile accounts of jiha d most of which are not generated by the academy would be a different but thoroughly worthwhile project.

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