Who&What are Jihadists and Jihad ?- a tentative start on an answer
I am still waiting for my copy Journey of the Jihadist of to arrive.
While I wait, I will try a tentative response to some of the early responders to Fawaz' initial posts who ask him to clarify just who&what Jihadists&Jihadism are.
Fawaz has been writing about this for a long time and is far more deeply steeped in the fine distinctions than I am, but I will start a discussion upon which Fawaz will no doubt expand. In so doing I will draw in part from the large corpus of his earlier writings on the subject.
Fawaz Gerges has underscored that in the early days of Islam Jihad was seen as fard kifaya, or a collective duty, the agenda of which can only be determined by the whole community.
An Islamic jurist has written that "A Fard Kifaya is a command directed towards everyone seeking only a response from some". - The definition agreed upon by many scholars, including Ibn Hajib, al Amdi and Ibn Abdu Shakur, is that Fard Kifaya is obligatory upon everyone, but the obligation is absolved for the rest of us upon the performance on the part of some.
Modern Jihadis, in Fawaz’ writings, tend to focus on a second view of Jihad as fard ‘ayn, or a permanent and personal obligation.
As such, many modern jihadis believe that they are justified in taking up arms and carrying out terrorist attacks on their own authority. The difference between fard ‘ayn and fard kifaya is closely linked to the difference between defensive Jihad (the responsibility of all) and offensive Jihad, (a responsibility assumed by some individuals, but not all).
In many conventional readings of Islamic jurisprudence an attack on Muslim lands makes defensive jihad obligatory on every Muslim who is able to fight (fard ayn). Offensive jihad, on the other hand, may also obligatory on the Muslim commuinity as a whole (fard kifaya).
There is however a critical difference between a fard kifaya obligation and one that is fard ayn.
That critical difference is that one is released from a fard kifaya obligation if someone else is taking it up: so offensive jihad is not commanded for everyone, as long as some Muslims are performing it, while defensive jihad is mandatory for all.
I anticipate that Fawaz will both amplify and no doubt correct some of what I have said. He is a Greek Orthodox Lebanese- from the region where modern Jihadism was born. I am merely an Arabist married to an Egyptian - which is a start on the path to enlightened understanding, but not quite the same thing!
Professor John Stuart Blackton
How are Muslim lands defined, since that is a starting point for jihad, as I understand you?
From while back I read of the conflict within Islam about jihad as an outward action (against others) vs. jihad as an inner journey, inner conflict to be resolved. Can you help?
May 9, 2006 12:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
J. McCutchen "JmacSF"
San Francisco. CA
And so when the US invaded and occupied Iraq, that meant no flowers, no candy?
How in God's name could anyone have supported such recklessness?
May 9, 2006 5:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Since immoral, crusading Westerners are attempting to corrupt and defeat the umma and to deny the community its natural rights and rightful aspirations, all jihad directed against the "West" is, necessarily and properly, defensive. No one is, therefore, excused from the duty to wage jihad at all times until the threat ends.
But inasmuch as the "West" is an abstraction (reification?), the question is what people and properties are agents of the enemy and thus, appropriate objects of jihad.
May 9, 2006 6:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Three guesses - and the first two don't count.
We also need to keep separate the issues of "who" and "how". We might make a distinction between attacking "America" and "attacking civilians" - but I'd like to know if they do, officially in Islamic jurisprudence.
As a wannabe terrorist myself, my concept was limited to attacking "agents of the state" - as the original definition of terrorism was codified by the Russian revolutionary organization Narodnaya Volya. However, such "agents" may be defined broadly to include corporation executives (the corporation is a creation of and dependent on the state - and frequently acts in concert or as proxy for the state), and virtually anyone working for the state in any capacity down to city dog-catcher. The issue is the relative significance of a given target.
Attacking "civilians" becomes an issue only when the civilians are identified as supporters and enablers of the actual state enemy. In other words, if you vote for the state, you ARE the state, in some sense.
It may be that Islamic militants view the people in the World Trade Center as just that.
However, this is defective and incorrect thinking - as you cannot enumerate every one in those buildings as supporters of the state. Some of them may be non-voters, some may be critical of the state, some of them may be anarchists - or even Muslims. If your principle is to fight the enemy because the enemy is in some philosophical - if not moral - sense "wrong" or "incorrect", then one cannot logically adopt the same methodologies.
The only other case for attacking "civilians" is when you judge the entire society - or even humans per se - as being at fault in the issues one opposes.
And it can even be that by attacking civilians as a whole, the goal could be to effect behavioral changes viewed as beneficial to the society as a whole or even to each and every individual (at least by the terrorist).
Finally, we have to consider that some terrorists would be terrorists regardless of the cause or the targets. Some people simply want to be terrorists for philosophical amd/or psychological reasons. Such people will always exist and should not be conflated with genuine terrorist "movements" or "organizations" even if they belong to such groups. The former are "criminals", the latter are political units - even if their behavior seems identical, the reaction to that behavior must be different.
May 10, 2006 12:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
You raise a critical point that is missed so often. By failing to separate out the criminals:
we inflate the number and impact of terrorism
we don't target an approach that addresses the actual cause
The analogous problems are also evident in reading Cobra II about Iraq. Failures to differentiate insurgency from sectarian conflict contribute to our ineffectivness.
May 10, 2006 9:17 AM | Reply | Permalink