Comments on: Islam and War

By: Joshua Scholar

Joshua Scholar — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 06:32:20 +0000

Oops I wrote “greater Jihad” when I meant to write “lesser Jihad”.

By: Joshua Scholar

Joshua Scholar — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 01:31:45 +0000

Very good article – it’s unusual to read an article that both has a wide sweep and still gets the details right. I suspect that only a blogger could take the time to write an article that well.

One point that worries me is the dynamic of “greater jihad” being a communal duty. The fact that it is a duty seems to prevent Muslims from organizing against Jihad despite the fact that every robber who attacks non-muslims can call his crime a “jihad” (hell, in Darfor, they kill and rape black Muslims and call this a jihad).

When there is a move to oppose Jihadis it has to be disguised (which is why the Free Muslims Coalition has been a failure). When there were recent arrests of a california family that trained in Al Qa’eda camps, some Muslims did try to oppose the radicals in their mosque who had indonctrinated those kids, but rather than standing up and saying that terrorism is wrong, they said that such preaching “divides Muslims” and “sets fathers against sons”.

How can Muslims oppose terrorism if, among themselves, they don’t dare to oppose it on moral grounds?

By: lgude

lgude — Sun, 17 Jul 2005 14:49:25 +0000

Thanks for the response Callimachus. I don’t disagree with your original post or your response to my comment. As someone who had practiced Sufism and has some direct experience of the Greater Jihad – I wage it every day – I thought it worthwhile to make the point. For the record I am not a practicing Muslim but am a recognised as a student of Islam by my Sheikh so, you are right, I am not qualified to discuss the point from within Islam. But as someone who knows more than many outsiders I think it is worthwhile pointing out that even in the Islamic writings you quoted in your post that there are elements that could be used by anti extremist Muslims to reform the ‘matrix from which the problem grows’. As a further example of the kind of thing I mean the Muslims of Iraq found themselves, if not outnumbered, utterly at the mercy of Saddam and might argue that the US help is of good will toward Muslims – and therefore permissible. From reading Iraqi blogs some seem to think that way, while some do not. Bottom line – I think there may be a bit more hope here than many non Muslims think. Maybe – time will tell.

By: goy

goy — Sun, 17 Jul 2005 06:33:31 +0000

There’s something at work here, I think, that’s similiar to our collective national hesitation to utter the fact that most murders in the U.S. are between blacks (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/race.htm).

PC dictum has muzzled our ability to deal effectively with problems that appear to be essentially ethnic or racial in nature, and the one we face at present is exclusively that – at least with respect to the dogma that drives what we think of as ‘radical’ Islam. That’s why you won’t likely ever see a piece like this – excellent and incisive though it certainly is – in a national media outlet, let alone the Sunday NYT. That, and the author would be targeted in the same way Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands was targeted… and murdered in cold blood.

Ironically, radical (i.e., liberal) Islam appears to be that faction that would most likely coexist with social and political entities that violate sharia law. The moderate and certainly the conservative Islamists (think Iran) simply can not tolerate western liberalism in any form – to do so is heresy unless it is in the restrictive context of dhimmitude.

The proximity and tangibility of Western culture, as the world continues to shrink due to technology and the global need for oil, appears to have rekindled an Islamist resentment that has waxed and waned since the beginnings of the Ottoman Empire (~1300-1920).

IMHO, the resulting nature of present-day conflict arises from the manner in which many true believers, living in a self-imposed 13th century mindset, rationalize the almost unmeasurable difference between their quality of life vs. say – mine, sitting in a modest 8-room, air-conditioned home, sipping wine and munching on hummus pork rinds, with broadband, pay-per-view and images of naked babes only a few keystrokes away. Their rationalization, it appears, is found in sharia law: our way of life, and the social and political systems that facilitate it, insult God and simply can not be allowed to exist. And the same dogma that identifies this insult not only justifies violence as an answer – it encourages violence. What’s more, there are no civilians in this process, as Dr. Hani Al-Siba’i recently made quite clear.

So, while we PC westerners struggle to call a spade a spade, stare in ignorant disbelief at murderers like Mohammed Bouyeri, and choose instead to argue over idiotic, partisan topics like who “outed” Valerie Plame, all the while knowing how this diversion weakens our response to Islamist fascism, the Islamists point to western blasphemy and find ready converts among the poor and/or disaffected among them.

IMHO, the greatest mistake we can make right now is to even pay lip service to the Big Lie that OIF has somehow “created” a generation of terrorists. Those who, in profound ignorance of history, would push that canard in the interest of winning (back) a branch of government are risking far more than they realize. Islamic jihad began 1300 years ago. We can either teach it to get along with the rest of the world, or we can have Armageddon. And the more credence we give to folks complaining about humiliation of terrorists, the more we argue about WMDs, the more we allow self-anointed pundits and gadflies to dictate the national discourse, the closer we get to the latter. In the nuclear age, there’s no third alternative

By: Marc Schulman

Marc Schulman — Sat, 16 Jul 2005 16:30:51 +0000

Great post, Callimachus. I’d like to see it in the magazine section of the Sunday New York Times.

By: Callimachus

Callimachus — Sat, 16 Jul 2005 16:04:13 +0000

Igude, that seems true to me, too. But we can’t be the ones who preach that to the mass of Muslims. Heck, the jihadis would kill a sufi as willingly as they’d kill a kufir. We’re equally infidels to them — sufis are worse, probably, as apostates. There seems to be a red line drawn in many places (perhaps here) around the notion of “Islam is the problem,” but I’m not interested in red lines. Islamist terrorism is the problem. But Islam, the religion, is the matrix in which the problem grows, and the place where the solution has to happen.

By: lgude

lgude — Sat, 16 Jul 2005 14:53:47 +0000

The most memorable and important thing that a good friend and Sufi Sheikh said to me is: “The only Jihad you win, is the one on the inside.” i.e. the Greater Jihad. In my view the Islamists have forgotten the Greater Jihad and fallen into fanaticism and literal minded obsession with Lesser Jihad. Without the Greater Jihad, without sincere self reflection, there is no way to discover how to stop fighting – to stop the Lesser Jihad.

By: Justin Gardner

Justin Gardner — Sat, 16 Jul 2005 07:21:15 +0000

Parameters is great. A friend of mine who’s a screenwriter either subscribes to it or gets it and sends me along articles sometimes. I think they have very logical, honest looks at current military problems and it was refreshing to read.

By: Callimachus

Callimachus — Sat, 16 Jul 2005 00:33:55 +0000

Yes, that's a good introduction. And I'm glad to see that "Proceedings" is online. I hadn't noticed that before. I'll bookmark that next to "Parameters."

By: Cicero

Cicero — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 23:51:19 +0000

I recommend the following background reading. There’s some parallels between Islamic and Arab warfare.

The New Arab Way of War
by Captain Peter Layton, RAAF
March, 2003

http://www.usni.org/Proceedings/Articles03/prolayton03.htm