RUTHFULLY YOURS

With so much going on in the world as far as terrorist and terrorist acts go, it can be difficult for the average person to understand exactly what it is the Western world is up against. What is jihad? What’s the difference between a Muslim and an Islamist? Is political Islam the same thing as jihad? What is it that the jihadists ultimately wish to accomplish?

An excellent source for the answers to these questions and many more is the book Political Islam from Muhammed to Ahmadinejad – Defenders, Detractors and Definitions (Praeger Security International, 2010). Edited by Joseph Morrison Skelly, Ph.D., this collection of essays contains a wealth of information for the novice and more experienced student of current affairs alike.

After the introduction, the book is divided into five sections: “The Origin of Political Islam,” “Interpreting Political Islam,” “Jihad in Africa: Past and Present,” “Political Islam in Iran, Iraq and Palestine” and “Economic Reform and Reforming Islam.”

Skelly is an associate professor of history at the College of Mount Saint Vincent in New York City and an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve who has published several books and numerous articles on diplomatic history, international affairs and international terrorism. In his introduction, Skelly explains that the volume “examines a series of chapters in the evolution of political Islam from the era of the Prophet Muhammed to the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad” and that the essays “illuminate various stages in the politicization of Islam” (p. 3). The book has policy implications in several areas, Skelly writes, in part because “its contributions take the role of religion in society seriously, in contrast to broad swaths of the academic and diplomatic elite in the United States” and quotes Angelo Codevilla: “Ignorance of religion is perhaps the defining cultural characeristic of America’s foreign policy establishment.” (p. 11)

Space limitations prohibit me from examining all of the essays in this book, but I’d like to touch upon a couple of key portions.

“Balanced Opposition: The Tribal Foundations of Arab Middle Eastern Islamic Culture” by Philip Carl Salzman examines Arab and other Middle Eastern cultures as an approach to understanding life in the region, along with some of the political elements of Islam. In it, we learn that “prior to Muhammed, the tribes of northern Arabia engaged in ongoing raiding and feuding, fighting among themselves for the spoils of livestock, territory and honor. Muhammed’s genius was in finding a way to unite the myriad of fissiparous, feuding Bedouin tribes of northern Arabia into a cohesive polity.” This was accomplished in part by the idea of “submission – islam – to God and His rules … spelled out in the Quran and bound into solidarity Arabian tribesmen, who collectively became the umma, the community of believers” (p. 19).

Salzman also discusses the concept of Muslims versus infidels, explaining that “for the newly minted Muslims, Islam was god’s word and god’s way, and any other religion or belief was regarded as false” (p. 22). And despite our having “repeatedly been told of the tolerance that existed in the Muslim world, and of the flourishing of minorities under the enlightened guidance of Islamic law and Muslim rulers … the historical evidence for a darker picture is overwhelming and irrefutable” (p. 23).

A particularly important piece is “The Quaranic Concept of War” by Joseph C. Myers, who says that “to understand war, one has to study its philosophy, the grammar and logic of the opponent. Only then does one approach strategic comprehnsion. To understand the war against Islamist terrorism, one must begin to understand the Islamic way of war, its philsophy, its doctrine, and the meanings of jihad in Islam” (p. 73). This is a concept that is, sadly, too often ignored by those who make many of the policy decisions in the current War on Terror, or whatever it is being called at the moment. The title of the essay is taken from the book The Quranic Concept of War by Brigadier S.K. Malik of the Pakistani Army, which was originally published in 1979. Part of the discussion in this essay is the idea of umma, “a transcendent religious and cultural society reflecting the unity (tawhid) of Islam and the idea of one duty to live and become godly.” Myers quotes Allah B.K. Brohi from the book’s preface: “In Islam, of course, no nation is sovereign since Allah alone is the only sovereign in Whom all authority vests” (p. 77). This explains why many Muslims living in non-Muslim lands consider themselves to be loyal to Islam before being loyal to the nation in which they live, including those American converts to Islam who have either undertaken or attempted to undertake acts of jihad against their own country and other Western nations.

Perhaps one of the most confusing concepts to understand is that of jihad. We are told by “mainstream” Muslim groups that

“Jihad is a respected concept in Islam. Jihad does not mean flying planes into buildings. It does not mean blowing up subways … I just read a Tradition of the Prophet, it’s called a hadith … It said, ‘the best Jihad is to speak a word of truth to an oppressive ruler’ … Jihad in its military sense means a Muslim nation having a standing army, people in uniforms there to defend the borders, to prevent invasions, to do anything any normal army does, for any nation. That’s what a real Jihad is. It has to be called by a legitimate government… It’s like having the U.S. army only it’s in the Muslim context.”

In his essay “Takfir as a Tool for Instigating Jihad Among Muslims: The Ghanian Example,” Mohammed Hafiz says that “anyone who reads between the lines of the verses relating to jihad will realize that it was meant to serve two major purposes: first, as a tool for self-defense in the event of attack by the Meccan infidels; and, second, to clear away the obstacles that hindered Muslims from practicing their faith or propagating it appropriately. Of its several possible connotations, jihad is used in this chapter to refer to the use of force to change or correct what is considered a wrong practice.” He continues by saying, “It is worth acknowledging that in recent times there has been a growing tendency for adventurous groups to label and justify their violent attacks on innocent personas as jihad. In other words, the term jihad has been abused so much that it is fast losing its religious sanctity” (p. 149).

Although it is a collection of scholarly works, the essays are not written in the overly-wordy manner in which such scholarly pieces often are, and is therefore relatively easy for the layman to comprehend. I would highly recommend Political Islam from Muhammed to Ahmadinejad – Defenders, Detractors and Definitionsto anyone who wishes for a firmer understanding of Islam, the Islamist threat, and potential solutions to the danger it poses to our free and democratic way of life.