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December 12, 2005
Future Jihad #2
uture Jihad #1
This continues my discusion of FUTURE JIHAD: Terrorist Strategies against America, by Walid Phares.
Chapter One is titled The Historical Roots of Jihad. It's 29 pages, one of the longest in the book.
Phares was raised in Beirut, Lebanon. He read about jihad in middle school. When he came to the West, he was amazed that high-profile professors, respected journalists, and political activists were trying to diffuse the tension in the word and deflecting its historical sense, and making it into something spiritual rather than literal.
Phares's warning is clear: "[I]n the Middle East, for the most part, the term retained its age-old, unreconstructed meanings. Jihad is not benign, and the West's denial of that fact is terribly ironic...The United States was paving the way for its own defeat, by blurring its vision, confusing its mind, and moderating its reactions to the early danger signs, not to mention the terrorist strikes."
Phares spends many paragraphs and pages on the linguistics of the word. It's a complex affair to genuinely translate the meaning to Western audiences. Unlike the West, which has systematically separated theology and politics to create pluralistic democracies that provide a haven for a variety of different religious impulses, jihad united political and theological action. It's origin is in the 7th century, advanced by early Muslim leaders, and founding a political state around the religion of Islam.
"From historical accounts, including (but not only) religious texts and references, jihad was a state of mobilization in the interest of the Muslim umma (nation) as it developed its military and strategic dimension."
The followers of Mohammed had organized themselves into both a political and military institution. One that molded religion and the state into one entity.
"[Jihad] is a call to mobilize resources, energies, and capabilities of individuals in the service of the higher cause." There is no personal jihad. All jihad is the global jihad. It is universally part of the Muslim community. The Middle East breathes its meaning in a way that the West does not fully appreciate. So a call to jihad is always global, and always in the defense of and advancement of, the Islamic nation.
Jihad is traditionally launched under two conditions:
1) Defensive--When the umma was in physical danger of being attacked,2) Offensive--To promote, propogate, and conquer for Islam. Whereas the Jews were divinely ordered to march to the Promisedl Land, the Muslims were ordered to expand universally, to encompass the entire world.
Phares reminds us that, unlike Abraham, Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Prophet Mahammed was a military commander. The early war waged on Mecca until it surrendered was the first comprehensive jihad.
Jihad has been instituted as a duty in Islam. It has the duty both to shield and to expand its followers. Islamic religious authority has never refuted holy war. Consequently, "it is difficult to prevent the use of religion to legitimize today's "jihadist" warfare.
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Posted by witnit at December 12, 2005 10:25 AM
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