Jihad is Not Perpetual Warfare

This article is reprinted here from my book Scattered Pictures: Reflections of an American Muslim. It is hoped that it will add a new dimension to the evolving debate concerning the idea that the only strategic option available for Muslims, regardless of their strategic strength or weakness, or their status as a majority or minority population, is armed struggle.

Jihad is Not Perpetual Warfare

One of the fundamental ideas underlying the argument of those who advocate a clash of civilizations between Islam and the West [1] is the thesis that Islam is a religion that advocates perpetual warfare. This warfare, in their formulation, is what Muslims know as Jihad. In his provocative book, Islam Unveiled, Robert Spencer unequivocally states:

The Jihad that aims to increase the size of the Dar al-Islam at the expense of the Dar al-Harb is not a conventional war that begins at a certain point and ends at another. Jihad is a “permanent war” that excludes the idea of peace but authorizes temporary truces related to the political situation [mudahanah]. [2]

Other Western writers and ideologues go further by linking the idea of Jihad to an effort by Muslims to obtain global domination. For example, Daniel Pipes, writing in the November 2002 edition of Commentary, states,

In pre-modern times, jihad meant mainly one thing among Sunni Muslims, then as now the Islamic majority. It meant the legal, compulsory, communal effort to expand the territories ruled by Muslims (known in Arabic as Dar al-Islam at the expense of territories ruled by non-Muslims Dar al-Harb. In this prevailing conception, the purpose of Jihad is political, not religious. It aims not so much to spread the Islamic faith as to extend sovereign Muslim power (though the former has often followed the latter). The goal is boldly offensive, and its ultimate intent is nothing less than Muslim domination over the entire world. [3]

As the pre-modern world never came totally under the sway of Islam, Jihad, in the formulation described by Pipes, meant permanent war. Pipes doesn’t see modernity mitigating this pre-modern tendency in Jihad, for he goes on to say,

In brief, jihad in the raw remains a powerful force in the Muslim world, and this goes far to explain the immense appeal of a figure like Osama bin Laden in the immediate aftermath of September 11, 2001. [4]

It is interesting that Spencer, Pipes, and others, buttress their arguments with formulations and concepts associated with classical Islamic political theory. However, their understanding presupposes a single, narrow reading of the Islamic tradition, based on certain ideologically determined parameters, which limit their ability to accommodate an alternative reading. For example, the often-cited division of the world into Dar al-Harb and Dar al-Islam fits well with attempts to explain the inevitability of a clash between Islam and the West. However, it does not really give us an idea of the nuances and complexities of those terms, nor the diverse ways in which Muslim thinkers, over an extended period of time, defined and actually applied them.

For example, both Abu Yusuf and Muhammad b. [5] al-Hasan ash-Shaybani, the two companions of Imam Abu Hanifah, viewed a land governed by the laws of the nonbelievers as constituting a land of disbelief, even if populated by Muslims. [6] Imam ash-Shafi’i viewed a land populated by nonbelievers who are not at war with the Muslims as not constituting Dar al-Harb. [7] Therefore, according to these definitions, most of today’s Muslim countries, which are governed by secular law codes, are not Dar al-Islam.

Conversely, most of the non-Muslim nations, which are at peace with the Muslim world, are not Dar al-Harb. To reinforce this point, let us ask, “Would Tunisia a Muslim country which prohibits Hijab and beards be considered Dar al-Islam?” Similarly, “Would Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, two conservative nations that waged war against the Muslim nation of Iraq be considered Dar al-Islam or Dar al-Harb?” Such such questions reveal nuances that clearly weigh against the simplistic arguments being advanced by a growing wave of anti-Islamic polemicists and pundits and their Muslim ideological equivalents.

The purpose of this article is to show that while Jihad, in one of its classical formulations, could be interpreted as supporting perpetual warfare; there is another reading that argues against that interpretation. In discussing the textual basis of that alternative reading, I will focus on Qur’an 9:5 [8] because of its centrality in the arguments of those endorsing the perpetual war thesis, both Muslim and non-Muslim, and Qur’an 9:29 [9] because of its implications for Muslim-Christian relations. I will also argue that with the notable exception of the Umayyad “Jihad State,” the latter reading has been more instrumental in shaping the foreign policy of Muslim polities, especially in the modern era. In making this point, I will briefly look at the “Jihad State” and present a thesis that explains its inevitable collapse.

A failure on the part of Western ideologues and policymakers to admit the primacy of this “anti-perpetual war reading” of Jihad will lead to tragic misunderstandings. These misunderstandings will only serve to deepen the growing resentment and distrust developing between America and the Muslim world and create a political climate conducive to catastrophic wars that could render the Islamic heartland an uninhabitable waste and greatly increase the likelihood of attacks against the United States as well as her interests abroad.

The “Jihad State” and its Collapse

In his masterful book, The End of the Jihad State [10], Dr. Khalid Blankinship argues that the only polity in the history of Islam to base its foreign policy on unmitigated warfare against the non-believers was the Umayyad dynasty, founded by Mu’awiyyah b. Abu Sufyan. However, this perpetual warfare policy was unsustainable and eventually led to the collapse of the Umayyad state during the reign of Hisham b. ‘Abd al-Malik. The reasons for that collapse can be summarized as follows:

1.