Interpretations of Jihad in South Asia

An Intellectual History

Tariq Rahman

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9783110550351
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Indian & South Asian History
• Index: History

In the wake of radical Islamist terrorist attacks described as jihad worldwide and in South Asia, it is imperative that there should be a book-length study of this idea in this part of the world. The focus of the study is the idea of jihad with its changing interpretations mostly those available in exegetical literature of key figures in South Asia. The hermeneutic devices used to understand the meaning of the Quranic verses and the Prophetic traditions relating to jihad will be the focus of this study. The main thrust of the study is to understand how interpretations of jihad vary. It is seen as being both defensive and aggressive by traditionalists; only defensive and mainly about moral improvement by progressive Muslims; and being insurrectionist, aggressive, eternal and justifying violence against civilians by radical Islamists. One purpose of the book is to understand how the radical interpretation came to South Asia. The book also explains how theories about jihad are influenced by the political and social circumstances of the period and how these insights feed into practice legitimizing militant movements called jihad for that period.

1Introduction

Since the attacks of September 11, 2011 (popularly referred to as 9/11), the term ‘jihad’ has become a household word. After every attack on targets in the Western world, be it the underground of London, Madrid, or Paris, or the 2016 March attacks in Brussels, Muslims, as well as people in the West who want good relations with them, insist that jihad means the quest for moral improvement and that, if one kind of jihad (the lesser one) does mean fighting, it is only in self-defence which is an internationally recognised right of all nations and peoples. Their antagonists dismiss these claims, arguing that jihad in practice as well as theory actually refers to aggressive warfare against non-Muslims. Among Muslims too, in an ironic twist, there are supporters of that argument. Indeed, Islamist militants have written tracts calling for unending war against the West (whom they call ‘crusaders’) and their supporters, i. e. rulers of Muslim countries. These are no mere theoretical concerns; these are matters of life and death. Hence, not only out of intellectual curiosity but also for practical reasons of policy-making, it is imperative that the interpretations of jihad should be understood for the world as a whole and, particularly, for flashpoints in it. And one of these flash-points, incidentally one in which the author happens to live, is Pakistan. Pakistan has been at the centre of violent jihādī activities for more than a decade. Afghanistan has been fighting a series of wars, which have been called jihad, for thirty years, and India has been the brunt of attacks by groups claiming to be jihādī in the last few years.

Giving precise definitions of the various interpretations of Islam is a difficult undertaking. However, some guidelines for the usage of terms which will appear in this work are necessary. Here the term radical Islamists is used for people or groups who believe it is justified to use violence to create an Islamic state or fight ‘Western’ powers which, in their perception, exploit Muslims or prevent Islam from gaining political ascendancy over the world. The terms jihādīs and Islamist militants are used interchangeably for groups actually using violent means as opposed to merely approving of such use. Other studies, generally by political scientists, often use the term, Islamism, for the terms given above. Islamism is defined by Volpi in his introduction to ‘political Islam’ as ‘the political dynamics generated by the activities of those people who believe that Islam as a body of faith has something crucial to say about how society should be organized, and who seek to implement this idea as a matter of priority’.1 Political Islam may not always lead to violence but sometimes it does. Hence the need for precise terms such as the ones used above for groups choosing to apply their ideas to change the world by violence in the name of Islam. Other terms used at places in this study are salafism and Wahhābism (or Wahabism as it is called in the popular press). The first is based on following the way of life of the pious early Muslims. The second is based on the thought of the 18th century religious reformer Muḥammad ‘Abd al-Wahhāb (1703–91) who preached a return to ‘original’ Islam since innovations– like mysticism and asking for the intercession of saints or worshipping at their tombs– he said, were akin to idolatry. Those who interpret the canonical sources literally are often labelled in the press as fundamentalists but this usage is disputed by Muslims. Labels like neo-fundamentalists and moderate Islamists are also used in the literature but remain imprecise and will, therefore, be avoided in this study. It is, however, wise to remember that these categories are neither immutable nor hermetic.2 Not only strict practitioners of the faith and radical Islamists shade into one another, but, in fact, all groups do. Indeed, it is true to say that ‘actual Islamist groups do not necessarily fall neatly into either of these ideal-type categories’. Moreover, ‘movements frequently change their identity over time, becoming more radicalized or more “mainstream”’.3 But our interest is in the ideas of those who believe in initiating wars, attacks, and armed insurrections with reference to ‘Islamic referents—terms, symbols and events taken from the Islamic tradition’.4 And this is because some of this kind of thought has influenced Pakistan in recent years. While we are not concerned with finding the causes or cures of radical Islamist thought or militancy, we are interested in tracing out the intellectual history of this interpretation in South Asia. For the purposes of this study, the term South Asia refers primarily to the Urdu-using part of what used to be British India and is also called the Subcontinent. Urdu is used for formal writing of the works, mainly exegeses of the Qur’an that we shall be dealing with from the Khyber Pass in present-day Pakistan up to the urban areas of Bengal as well as in the former states of Hyderabad, Rampur, and Bhopal. However, while we shall touch in passing upon the last three areas, our focus will be on the Muslim societies of north India and Pakistan. Essentially it boils down to the question of how jihad came to be interpreted in this manner. This is the central question of this book. But before answering this question let us give a brief introduction to what is available in the canonical sources, the Qur’an and the hadith (pl. aḥadīth), about war. Our major objective is to highlight interpretations of texts which are used by radical Islamists to justify their actions.

There are references to war and fighting in 183 verses of the Qur’an. The ones used for analysis in this book (given in Table 1) are given in English translation in Annexure B. The relevant gist of the other Quranic verses mentioned in the text is given parenthetically in the form of brief abstracts. The number given above varies in other counts because some verses which seem to describe historical events dealing with war or conflict are added by some while not by others. The word which is mostly used for warfare is qitāl (78 occurrences). It is derived from the root -q.t.l- which is translated both as fighting and killing. This number is disputed by others since, for instance, Asma Afsaruddin counts fifty-four ‘lexemes from the third verbal form of the root qtl ’.5 The Encyclopaedia of the Qur’ an, however, counts only forty-four occurrences from the -qtl-root.6 This is mainly because one can count only lexemes relating to war as it relates to Islam and Muslims or to anyone. Moreover, one can count the occurrences of the lexemes in verses relating to fighting or all verses. I count words derived from the root -q.t.l- referring to all meanings of it: you fight/kill; you are fought with/killed; killing/fighting, and so on. However, words used from the same root in verses not relating to fighting have not been counted. The word jihad, from the root -j.h.d- which is translated as effort and endeavour7(27 occurrences), does not necessarily refer to fighting. Indeed, five occurrences of the word refer to oaths, leaving us with thirty-six. ‘Only ten out of the thirty-six’ references to jihad signify or are ‘unequivocally interpreted as signifying warfare’.8 Thus, there are instances when the term Jihad has been used for peaceful struggle in the Qur’an (see Annexure A). For instance, the following verse of Sūrah al-Furqān (Q. 25) mentions only struggle (jihad) but not fighting (qitāl).

So do not believe in the infidels but ‘undertake a Great Struggle against them’ (jāhidhum bihī jihādan kabīrā) (25: 52).

Here the imperative–as explained by most exegetes–is to struggle against the infidels with the Qur’an, which is called the ‘great struggle’ here.

However, at places it is clear that this struggle will involve the loss of both wealth and life. In such cases the words used are ‘wa jahadū bi amwālihim wa anfusihim’ which means ‘struggle with your wealth and selves’ (9 instances). This has generally been interpreted traditionally as the kind of effort which involves donating one’s wealth and enrolling among the fighters. Some of the verses using this word are obviously from a context of ongoing warfare. For instance, al-Ṣaff (Q. 61) instructs Muslims to ‘strive for God with their wealth and lives’ (61: 11); al-Tawbah (Q.9), which is about the war of Tabuk, mentions God’s appreciation of those who leave their homes and ‘struggle with their lives and wealth’ (9: 20). And 9: 41, about the same war, begins with ‘go forth heavy or light’ (infirū khifāfan wa thiqālan), and goes on to advocate striving with lives and property (see Annexure A). Fazlur Rahman (1919–1988), an American academic scholar of Islam of Pakistani origin, points out that the term jihad changes meaning from Mecca to Medina. In the former it refers to ‘a strong-willed resistance to the pressures of fitnah and retaliation in case of violence’. In Medina, however, ‘it is often equivalent to qitāl or to active war’.9 Besides, as Michael Bonner brings out, the words ribāt, ghazwā, and ḥarb have also been used. Ribāt refers to the ‘pious activity, often related to warfare’ as well as a fortified garrison in the face of the enemy. ‘Ghazw, ghazwa and ghaza’ come from offensive warfare or raids on the enemy; ḥarb simply means war and not necessarily one fought for religious reasons.10 So, out of the terms used for sacred war, the one normally used is that of jihad while it might more appropriately be qitāl. After all, as Patricia Crone points out, all classical schools of law do identify such war with reference to al-Baqarah (Q. 2)–‘prescribed for you is fighting, though it be hateful to you’ (2: 216). Here the word used is qitāl, not jihad. Indeed, she continues, ‘it is a bit of a mystery that jihad came to be the technical term for holy war’.11

Besides establishing the frequency of occurrence of derivatives of jihad and qitāl, the verses referring to war have been placed in separate categories in a chart given in Annexure A. These are: orders (for war as well as peace, exemption from war and so on); values (praise for the fighters), regulations (for distribution of booty etc), history (the wars of the Jews under Moses, the battles of the Muslims with the Quraish), and prognostication (that of the domination of Muslims subject to their piety).12

The Islamist militants who are fighting today in Pakistan and parts of Afghanistan and India are Sunnis, not Shī‘as (Shīites). Thus, we need to be concerned only with the Sunni interpretations of jihad for the purposes of this study. Although all Muslims consider the Qur’an and the hadith as the canonical sources of Islam, both are interpreted to yield discrepant meanings through hermeneutical methods which will be described in the following chapter.

Based on the two foundational sources mentioned above, there are books of jurisprudence which lay down recommended practices towards the treatment of prisoners of war, collection of poll tax (jizyah) from non-Muslims vanquished in war, and so on.13 For instance, ‘Ali ibn Ṭāhir al-Sulamī al-Naḥwī’s Kitāb aljihād is meant to incite his listeners to undertake jihad as this was the period of the Crusades.14 These traditional sources of law pertaining to jihad, and most importantly, treatises written on the subject in India, will be dealt with in detail in chapter 3.

Let us now turn to how jihad is understood in scholarly literature at present. Books upon books and articles upon articles have been written on this issue.15 Having already referred to Bonner’s comprehensive hist...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Translation and Transliteration
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Interpretation of the Qur’an and the Hadith
• 3 Jihad in Transition
• 4 Jihad and the Family of Shāh Walīullāh
• 5 Colonial Modernists
• 6 Jihad as Anti-Colonial Resistance: Emerging Trends
• 7 The Age of Mawdūdī
• 8 Radical Imports
• 9 Pakistani Radicals
• 10 Refuting the Radicals
• 11 Conclusion
• Annexure A: War–related Verses in the Qur’an
• Annexure B
• Annexure C
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index