Cook on Jihad

Over at Jewish World Review, Daniel Pipes gives a favorable review of a new book by David Cook of Rice University, Understanding Jihad. (Yes. That David Cook! Apparently, he may not be such a big fan of women blowing themselves up after all.) Considering the fact that we are closing in on the fourth anniversary of the mass murders committed on September 11 of 2001, this is a worthwhile subject to revisit. The war against Islamofascism has, despite having been waged timidly, has gone well in many respects. The popularity of freedom and a desire for what is loosely called "democracy" is evident in the Middle East.

With peace breaking out all over the place, many might ask whether the Islamic conception of jihad is really as warlike as that of the terrorists. Furthermore, some followers of Islam are claiming to disagree with that conception of jihad.

What is the prevailing conception of jihad? This is a valid and important question. It is also a question that Americans, being a nation at war, must approach with open eyes. We cannot afford to allow the hope for peace, or an overly benevolent projection of our own values onto Moslems as a whole blind us to historical fact. Judging by Pipe's review, we regard jihad as anything less than warfare at our own peril.

Cook dismisses as "bathetic and laughable" John Esposito's contention that jihad refers to "the effort to lead a good life." Throughout history and at present, Cook definitively establishes, the term primarily means "warfare with spiritual significance."

His achievement lies in tracing the evolution of jihad from Muhammad to Osama, following how the concept has changed through fourteen centuries.

The bulk of the review summarizes the historical evolution of the concept of jihad and then ends on this note.

Cook's erudite and timely study has many implications, including these:

* The current understanding of jihad is more extreme than at any prior time in Islamic history.

* This extremism suggests that the Muslim world is going through a phase, one that must be endured and overcome, comparable to analogously horrid periods in Germany, Russia, and China.

* Jihad having evolved steadily until now, doubtless will continue to do so in the future.

* The excessive form of jihad currently practiced by Al-Qaeda and others could, Cook semi-predicts, lead to its "decisive rejection" by a majority of Muslims [emphasis mine]. Jihad then could turn into a non-violent concept.

The great challenge for moderate Muslims (and their non-Muslim allies) is to make that rejection come about, and with due haste.

In short, we are, in fact, confronted with a world religion whose adherents in the main regard offensive religious warfare as an important part of their religion. While the appearance (HT: TIA Daily) of a Moslem "Martin Luther" would be welcome, we must necessarily view even such self-proclaimed reformers with a high degree of suspicion given the historical context of jihad.

But historical fact is not the only reason that professed Moslem moderates and reformers have to be viewed with suspicion by Westerners. Aside from the historical context of Moslem interpretations of their religion, another context is also important. For example, the views of one moderate, on the subject of whether the Koran commands the murder of nonbelievers, for example, are summarized thus:

The submission in Islam means placing much in Allah’s hands and letting Allah decide the fate of non-believers. Allah is all-powerful and all-knowing; Allah will handle it.

I am not a Muslim, but I’ve read the Qur’an, and even I can see that context is important, just as it is for the Bible’s Old Testament, when it comes to the subjects of waging war and dealing with unbelievers.

I fully agree. Context is important. Whatever the Koran says about slaying nonbelievers, it is couched in the context of centuries of religious law (some based on what Mohammed supposedly said and did) and various pronouncements by Moslem clerics. And even more important, the whole lot exists within a broader epistemological context: faith.

To accept something as knowledge on faith is to attempt to pretend that sensory data and reason are not necessary at some point. The question quickly becomes, "At what point?" as Sam Harris once pointed out with regard to fundamentalism:

[W]e must decide what it means to be a religious "moderate" in the twenty-first century. Moderates in every faith are obliged to loosely interpret (or simply ignore) much of their canons in the interests of living in the modern world. ... [T]he moderate's retreat from scriptural literalism ... draws its inspiration not from scripture but from cultural developments that have rendered many of God's utterances difficult to accept as written. In America, religious moderation is further enforced by the fact that most Christians and Jews do not read the Bible in its entirety and consequently have no idea just how vigorously ... God ... wants heresy expunged. (pp. 17-18)

One might protest that in supplying this quote, I miss the point of the previous quote. But do I? If one accepts everything a book says as literally true, on what basis does one do so? (And if not, see above.) That God spoke through its author(s)? Then why can God not speak through someone else later on? And if the Koran, an inanimate object, can be inerrantly true, might some others (like that Imam over there who wants you to blow yourself up) be better at interpreting it than you are? How do you know? And how do you know that your holy book is the inspired word of God in the first place?

I will not address the issue of the epistemological validity of faith here, except to say that I agree with Ayn Rand's position that it is not a means of acquiring knowledge. What I am pointing out here is this: The fact that someone bases his belief system ultimately on faith turns the process of predicting his future actions into guesswork to a greater or lesser extent. There is no telling what arbitary moral dictum such a person will believe and act upon. In particular, it makes it basically impossible in today's context, for a non-Moslem to give the benefit of the doubt to a Moslem.

Having once been Christian myself, living in a culture strongly influenced by Christianity, and being fairly conversant with it, I know that Christians overwhelmingly reject the idea of killing nonbelievers. I also realize that most Christians do not hold their faith in an the all-encompassing way that many or even most Moslems do. They compartmentalize, accepting certain things on faith and reasoning about others. I usually have a fair idea about which areas are which. Thus on the basis of long experience, I feel comfortable around the vast majority of Christians.

But even though I know perfectly well that there are some Moslem moderates who condemn terrorism, I am also aware that overall, that there is anything but a consensus that I, as a nonbeliever shouldn't be made to submit to other Moslems or be put to death. The Moslem concepts of jihad and taqiyya (lying in self-defense, whatever self-defense might mean) futher complicate matters, given how they have been famously and repeatedly construed by some very, shall we say, active practicioners of Islam.

This is a serious problem not just for me and any other non-Moslem reading this, but for moderate and reformist Moslems. It is, however, an understandable problem. It is also a problem that will go away only with genuine reform of Islam (i.e., practically every Moslem agrees that killing a nonbeliever is wrong) and a long track record of Moslems not killing unbelievers. For this reason, it is in the self-interest of such Moslems to do whatever they can to put an end to terrorism.

Until the vast majority of Moslems themselves actively oppose terrorism, neither I nor the rest of the world has a solid basis for trusting them not to kill us. There is, on our part, no viable choice but to take the fight against terrorism into our own hands and insist on nothing short of radical reform in the Islamic world (not that these are actually happening).

-- CAV

PS: This post touches on many issues pertinent to fighting Islamofascism and the interests of Moslems and the Western world in reforming Islam. I've focused here on how the martial interpretation of jihad necessarily makes non-Moslems suspicious of Moslems. In discussing this, I concentrated on why I, personally, do not fear violence from Christians despite the basis of their belief system on faith.

My views, however, are atypical in regarding faith as a dangerous basis for morality yet most other Westerners share my suspicions of Islam. Why? Their shared apprehension would come from a mainly inductive evaluation of the behavior of Moslems when compared with that of adherents to other faiths, as discussed in this article. In short, "Yes, Islam is disrespected. That will only change when throngs of passionate Muslims show up for rallies against terrorism, and when rabble-rousers trying to gin up a riot over a defiled Koran can't get the time of day."

Updates

6-1-05: Corrected typos and added a PS.