Islāmic teachings on war

This is an informative paper from the Army War College site about Islāmic religious teachings on warfare: Islamic Rulings on Warfare by Youssef H. Aboul-Enein and Sherifa Zuhur (Oct 2004) (*.pdf file).

Islamic law, with its official "rulings" about war, had not yet come into being in the first Islamic century and slowly evolved, carrying overlapping layers of corrective interpretation. A key and continuous theme was that war was to be waged in accordance with religious principle - bellum pium (literally, pious war,or war in accordance with God ’s will) as well as bellum justum (just war). A second theme and debate concerned the nature of the injunction to jihad. Muslims define the requirements of Islam as being binding and collective duties, or individual duties. Jihad has been defined as being both a collective and an individual duty. Hence interpreters write that if Islam, or the Muslim community, is attacked, jihad is incumbent upon all Muslims and is required even of those who are normally noncombatants. Then, the nature of an attack, whether imminent and literal or the drawn out cultural onslaught of the West in tandem with specific political or military actions such as the war in Iraq, could alter the understanding of the jihad duty.

However,the requirement to participate in a jihad could be met in several ways: by waging war a) with the heart, b) with the tongue, c) with the hands, and d) with the sword. Jihad also means a personal struggle to live as a true Muslim. When jihad is considered a collective duty, there is no need to have a religious or political official proclaim it. However, from the standpoint of an individual duty and a just pursuit of war, this should occur.

Tags: islam, jihadism