“Azad gave some of his most eloquent depositions on jehad as Islamic ethics in
the service of Congress’ anti-colonial politics. The Indian national struggle
was a jehad because the British were waging a war to exterminate Muslims. If
Muslims had any spark of faith left in them, they would befriend snakes and
scorpions rather than make peace with the British government, he asserted.
Referring to the Prophet’s constitution at Medina, in which Muslims and
non-Muslims were described as one nation, Azad asked Muslims to perform their
religious duty by uniting with Hindus.”
BOOKS
Jehad and the truth
A.G. NOORANI
A fascinating survey of the evolution of the concept of jehad.
THE HINDU PHOTO ARCHIVES
THE highest form of jehad is to speak the truth in the face of an unjust
ruler.” This one saying of Prophet Muhammad suffices to demolish the myth about
jehad, fostered, alike, by the fundamentalists and very many in the West and,
not to overlook, in India. Ijtihad (reason) is one of the recognised sources of
Islamic law, the sharia. Ijtihad is jehad of the mind. Jehad means exertion.
Ayesha Jalal renders a service by her erudite study of jehad in Islam; the
perversion of the concept by the ulema (clergy) in the service of rulers as
they embarked on military campaigns of imperialist expansion, armed with fatwas
(rulings) sanctioning them as jehad in the cause of Islam; the invocation of
jehad in the struggle for freedom from colonial rule; and its cynical revival
in our times by bodies such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Al Qaeda.
The focus is on South Asia. The author, born in Pakistan, is the Mary
Richardson Professor of History at Tufts University in the United States. She
is a highly respected historian of South Asia. Unlike some expatriate scholars,
including many from India, who act as apologists for their country, Ayesha
Jalal rightly prides herself on her detachment and objectivity. It would,
however, be unjust to her work to concentrate on her strictures on the Lashkar
and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and neglect her thesis, which
constitutes its core.
It was in the desire to gain a deep understanding of religion as faith that she
launched her research for the book: “My exploration of the literature on the
subject immediately brought home to me the intrinsic connection between the
concept of jehad as endeavour and the Muslim faith. Far from being a passive
and mindless activity, submission (Islam) assumes dynamic effort and reasoned
self-control against the personal inclinations and social tendencies preventing
a believer from heeding God’s commands, and thereby destroying any internal or
external sense of balance and proportion…. It is commonplace to assert that the
sacred and the temporal in Islam are inextricably intertwined. However, the
interplay of ethics and politics in the unfolding of Muslim history has not
been subjected to critical scrutiny. One way of remedying that oversight is to
train the spotlight on the much-contested idea of jehad and its practice. To
what extent was a concept
that is at the heart of Islamic ethics transformed in shifting historical
contexts as a consequence of temporal imperatives?”
The author discusses jehad in pre-colonial South Asia: the jehad waged by
Sayyid Ahmad of Rai Bareilly (1786–1831), jehad in colonial India and as
anti-colonial nationalism. The last chapter is on the subversion of the concept
as a justification for terrorism. With her familiarity with the primary sources
in Urdu, she brings to life the debates conducted by the adherents and the
critics. Particularly useful for the English reader is her discussion of Sayyid
Ahmed, who fell in battle at Balakot, about 18 miles (29 kilometres) from
Manshera in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan. Among the first
militant groups that surfaced in Kashmir in 1989 was Operation Balakot of Azan
Inquilabi. Such was the hold that Sayyid Ahmed’s example had come to acquire
over the minds of the jehad-prone. It is, however, to the very first chapter,
“Jihad as Ethics, Jihad as War”, that the reader must pay particular attention.
Even in the early years of Islam, “some Muslims questioned the application of
the concept of jehad to wars fought by temporal rulers that had nothing to do
with struggle for the cause of God. One popular tradition justified the
reservation. Upon returning from one of the early wars in defence of the newly
established community, the Prophet Muhammad is said to have told his companions
that they had come back from waging jehad al-asghar, or the lesser war, to
fight the jehad al-akbar, or the greater war against those base inner forces
which prevent man from becoming human in accordance with his primordial and
God-given nature. This tradition was not included in any of the authoritative
collections of hadith during the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates, an omission
that in itself reveals the mindset of the compilers and the political climate
of the times.”
There is, of course, no Quranic sanction for jehad as it is understood by most
in the West – armed struggle in the name of religion. “The Quran itself defines
jehad in terms that are much broader than the political uses made of it in
response to the exigencies attendant on Arab expansion. What was spread by the
sword was not the religion of Islam but ‘the political dominion of Islam’.
Instead of paving the way for an egalitarian and just order, the expansion of
Islam was a secular process that, even when drawing upon religious ideology,
rarely managed to achieve the ideals prescribed in the Quran and underscored in
the practice of the Prophet. Notwithstanding changes in Islamic jurisprudence
and theology in response to political developments from the end of the seventh
century on, mystical, ethical, poetic, and philosophical Muslim literature
attest to the indissoluble connection between jehad and the quality of a
believer’s faith and
actions.”
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali is one of the great authorities on Islamic thought. “Like
the Sufis, he focusses on the inner spiritual jehad, which he likens to a
battle between the armies of good and evil. Good conduct based on self-control
and sincere effort in the way of God is described as constituting half of
religion, and being of greater merit than ritual worship. In addition to
including the famous tradition in which the Prophet makes a distinction between
the greater and the lesser jehad, Ghazali quotes him as saying: ‘Fight your
passion with hunger and thirst. Its merits are equal to those gained by Jehad
in the way of God…. Shorn of its inner dimensions and reduced to perpetual holy
war against non-Muslims, jehad is a recipe for dis-equilibrium and an inversion
of a key concept in Islam.’”
THE HINDU PHOTO LIBRARY
"Abul Kalam Azad (seen here with Jawaharlal Nehru) gave some of his most
eloquent depositions on jehad as Islamic ethics in the service of Congress’
anti-colonial politics."
Hinduism recognises the concept of a just war (dharma yudh) as does the
Judeo-Christian tradition. In Islam, too, the just war must be distinguished
from jehad proper, which is a spiritual, moral and intellectual struggle. It
has many layers, and ethics lie at its core.
The historical survey is fascinating. Since the fatwa (ruling) by the ulema
(clergy) is regarded as an essential pre-condition to the launch of a jehad, it
is necessary to recall that during British rule fatwas had become, in many
quarters, commodities for sale and purchase, including by the British rulers.
Falsehoods
In South Asia none exposed the falsehoods retailed in the name of jehad as
thoroughly as did Maulvi Chiragh Ali, colleague of the founder of the Aligarh
movement, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan. He was far more critical of Muslim jurists than
most. His was a comprehensive refutation of Muslim orthodoxy in law as well as
in theology. “It was a crying shame that morality had become concretised for
Muslims in external rituals instead of being ‘a certain disposition of heart
towards God and man’. Far from confining ‘practical morality and piety’ to the
ritual exertions of believers, the Quran ‘lays the foundation of that
far-reaching charity which regards all men as equal in the sight of God and
recognises no distinction of races and classes’. These teachings were capable
of keeping ‘pace with the most fully and rapidly developing civilisation’ if
‘rationally interpreted’ and ‘enforced by the sentiment of a nation’….
“The essence of Chirag Ali’s argument was that Islam was being judged by the
standards of the sharia, created by men, rather than the ethical principles of
the Quran. The division of the world between Dar-ul-Islam (abode of Peace) and
Dar-ul-Harb (abode of War) was a construct of legists that had no basis in the
Quran. Even the detractors of Islam conceded that the real meaning of jehad was
exertion and striving in a noble cause. Only in the post-Quranic period had
Muslim legal scholars developed the theory of unprovoked war, tribute taking,
and conversion to Islam at sword point. The Quran sanctioned only defensive
wars under the most adverse circumstances, and it strictly prohibited
aggression…. Striking out at the religious guardians, Chiragh Ali asserted that
the sharia had not been held sacred or unchangeable by enlightened Mohammedans
of any Moslem country and in any age since its compilation in the fourth
century of the Hejira.” His
classic A Critical Exposition of the Popular Jihad was written in 1805. It is
doubtful if any Muslim scholar in South Asia would care or dare to write a work
as courageous, as erudite.
Azad and Troll
The author’s rich tributes to Maulana Abul Kalam Azad are richly deserved. Like
some Christian priests in Latin America who developed the theology of
liberation in recent decades, Azad “grasped the wider ethical meanings of jehad
to make a forceful case for fighting colonial justice”. To the Reverend
Christian Troll goes the credit for bringing to light in 1988 Azad’s essay on
the mystic Sarmad written in 1910. In 1989, Troll wrote an essay on Azad’s
fascination with the mystic. Sarmad preferred death at the hands of Aurangzeb
to compromising his conscience. He is buried at the foot of the steps leading
to the Jama Masjid in Delhi.
A few yards away lies Azad’s elegant mausoleum. It is not ungenerous to point
out a minor error that has crept in. Azad’s masterly statement in court, later
published in a book entitled Qaul-e-Faisal (The Last Word), was not delivered
“at the Karachi trial” but at his trial in Calcutta before a Magistrate on a
charge of sedition. That was on January 24, 1920. Gandhi’s tribute defies
improvement. It was “an oration deserving penal servitude for life”. At the
Karachi trial in 1921, the Ali Brothers were tried by a Sessions Judge jointly
with the Sankaracharya of Sharada Peeth on the charge of suborning the army’s
loyalty to the Raj.
“Azad gave some of his most eloquent depositions on jehad as Islamic ethics in
the service of Congress’ anti-colonial politics. The Indian national struggle
was a jehad because the British were waging a war to exterminate Muslims. If
Muslims had any spark of faith left in them, they would befriend snakes and
scorpions rather than make peace with the British government, he asserted.
Referring to the Prophet’s constitution at Medina, in which Muslims and
non-Muslims were described as one nation, Azad asked Muslims to perform their
religious duty by uniting with Hindus.”
Mawdudi receives his just deserts from the author. Z.A. Bhutto’s compromises
with fundamentalists form a good illustration of the havoc a secular leader
creates when he yields to religious bigots. Zia-ul-Huq did worse and was helped
by the U.S. in Pakistan’s operations in Afghanistan. “Future members of Al
Qaeda were trained by American and British intelligence with the enthusiastic
help of Pakistan’s own Inter-Services Intelligence. With plenty of money to
back the cause, jehad was lucrative business for the merchants of death.” The
Lashkar “was created by ISI”. The secular Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front
(JKLF) was attacked by both Indian and Pakistani intelligence. “The
fragmentation of the jehad in Kashmir has caused its Pakistani paymasters to
lose control to smaller outfits operating under the direction of local
commanders.” One local commander called himself Shah Rukh Khan.
ANJUM NAVEED/AP
Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, founder of the Lashkar-e-Taiba. A file photograph.
The author interviewed the Lashkar’s founder, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, in Lahore
in November 2005. “The Lashkar-e-Taiba and its offshoots have been involved in
a series of suicide bombings in Kashmir and India. Though he denies the charge,
Hafiz Saeed has been quoted as saying that suicide bombing is the best kind of
jehad in the contemporary world. The attack on the Indian Parliament in
December 2001 and the targeting of civilians in New Delhi and Benares puncture
his claim that the Lashkar-i-Tayyiba attacks only Indian military personnel and
installations.” The denial was made in person to the author, but she points out
that it contradicted his statement in an interview with Mohammed Shahzad
published in the Friday Times of April 17, 2003.
Pakistan’s recent actions against the Lashkar are received with scepticism
because the organisation has been closely enmeshed with the establishment. The
author’s advice is frank: “If Pakistan is to adopt a moderate and enlightened
view of Islam, it cannot avoid an open debate on the ethical basis of the
Quranic concept of jehad. The military-dominated state has used jehad, which is
intrinsic to faith and ethics in Islam, to advance its strategic, economic, and
political ends. Such a shrewd strategic vision, backed by political denial and
policies of economic exclusion, violates elementary Islamic principles of
equity and justice. The army has capitalised on the jehadi industry to further
ensconce itself in the power structure. If Pakistan is to turn over a new leaf,
the army will have to drastically modify its strategic vision.” It will be a
long haul.•
With Regards
Abi
Knowledge is the best gift, and manner is the best transaction
- Ali
