Violence in Islam According to Muslim Tradition
by Gordon Nickel –
During the past nine years, it has become increasingly difficult for non-Muslim scholars of Islam to say publicly what they know about this powerful religion. Already in 2002, one scholar at an American university told the New York Times, “Between fear and political correctness, it’s not possible to say anything other than sugary nonsense about Islam.”1
This particular scholar asked not to be named, citing worries about threatened violence as well as the widespread reluctance on United States college campuses to say things which could be interpreted as criticizing other cultures. The need for accurate information about Islam has grown since 9/11. However, because of fear for life and career, many qualified scholars have drawn back from serving this need.
Nowhere has the need for answers been greater than to the question of the relationship between Islam and violence. Yet this is arguably still the area of greatest confusion. Daniel Pipes wrote in November 2002 that media statements from American professors of Islam almost uniformly portrayed the Islamic concept of “jihad” as peaceful inner struggle.2 Fortunately the scholarly literature is more helpful, as this article will demonstrate. However, Pipes’ claim is representative enough of the most visible scholars of Islam to raise the question of why non-Muslim scholars have not been more forthcoming.
Scholars who have the opportunity to study the religions deeply have a responsibility to tell what they learn. All scholars should treat the object of their study honestly and portray religions accurately. Christian scholars have the additional encouragement from their faith to tell the truth.
Study of religions inevitably leads Christian scholars into meaningful reflection on the particulars of other faith traditions in the light of the person of Jesus and the mission of the Church. For a number of Christian scholars, the study of interfaith encounter through the discipline of Religious Studies has been prompted by a desire to better understand the rejection of the gospel and to learn ways of communicating the gospel in appropriate terms. Wherever the gospel is under attack from religious polemic, Christian communication must also include intelligent apologetic based on a thorough knowledge of the religions. This desire to communicate clearly poses a constant challenge to understand the religions and portray them correctly.
Islamic violence is a matter of global concern, and those who have the opportunity to research its background can provide timely help for public discourse. Christian scholars of Islam are interested in both the implications of that background for peaceful human coexistence and the theological concepts with which it is intertwined. Comparison of the Islamic approach to violence with the teachings and example of Jesus is an important area in which the beauty of the gospel is revealed.
Who Was Muhammad?
The prophet Muhammad and his life and works are so central to the Islamic religion that they are second in importance only to the belief in Allah. Born around 570 A.D., Muhammad grew up in the city of Mecca. It was a religious hub at the time, with many people and tribes holding to many different belief systems. Muhammad began to develop the monotheistic religion of Islam at age 40 (610 A.D.), when he claimed to have received his first “vision” on Mt. Hera.
According to Islamic belief, the prophet was visited by the angel Gabriel who began to reveal to him the “word of god” which later became the Qur’an. He began to spread the message around the city of Mecca, with few followers at first. However, the religion began to take root and experienced some growth after a short time. The people of Mecca began to feel threatened by the rise of this new religion and expelled Muhammad and his followers from the city in 622. This becomes “year one” on the Islamic calendar, and is the year in which Muhammad fled to Medina. His message began to spread through Medina, a city which lacked any clear central government and readily clung to the leadership of Muhammad. The prophet then began to initiate several raids upon Meccan caravans, and eventually established enough military strength to allow him to march into Mecca in 629 and take the city with little resistance. He died there a few years later in 632. While most Muslims do not believe that Muhammad led an entirely perfect life, they believe that his example is so pleasing to Allah that his life should be imitated in every detail. This is perhaps one of the greatest dangers of the Islamic faith, since their religion centers around the imitation of a flawed (and often violent) man.
Violence in Muslim Tradition
In western countries in recent years, public discussion of Islamic violence has become deeply political. Certainly there are many well-argued approaches which differ from the approach presented here. An important variable is the diversity among Muslims with regard to their own tradition. Modernist Muslims seek to articulate their faith in terms of—and in response to—western priorities. Revivalists and Islamists call for a return to Muhammad’s seventh-century Medina. The majority of the world’s Muslims are Traditionalists who basically accept the faith as it has come to them. In western discourse, however, we usually hear only the minority Modernist voice.
Since the origins of Islam in the seventh century, violence has been a major Islamic theme. Because of the controversy surrounding this violence, however, it is essential that anyone who wants to analyse its implications becomes thoroughly familiar with the relevant material in the sourcebooks of Islam and with the best scholarly studies on this material. Fortunately, the scholarly material is expanding, and the Muslim sources are increasingly accessible.
When Muslim historians of the eight through tenth centuries described the beginnings of their faith, they included a great number of stories of raids, battles, assassinations and massacres.3 In presenting these accounts, Muslim historians were not trying to say anything negative about either their own religion or the personalities involved in the reports. Rather, they saw everything in a positive light. For them, this history was directed and approved by Allah.
Muslim scripture came together in the midst of this story. The Qur’an contains 12 direct commands to fight, and five commands to kill, all using the unambiguous Arabic verb qatala. The Qur’an also contains many apparent descriptions of battle situations in which Allah exhorts the believers to get behind the war effort. In the history of Qur’anic commentary and development of law by Muslims, these scriptural commands were never seen as something negative.
Muslim scholars gave each of the 114 suras of the Qur’an a definite place in the chronology of the story about Muhammad which they told, from first recitation until his death. For them, the recitations spoken closer to the end of Muhammad’s life took precedence over others. Two commands which have exerted great influence in Islamic Law are Q9.5 (“the sword verse”) and Q9.29 (“the verse of tribute”): “Then, when the sacred months are drawn away, slay the idolaters wherever you find them…”; “Fight those who believe not in Allah and the Last Day…being of those who have been given the Book—until they pay the tribute out of hand and have been humbled.”5 The tendency in classical Qur’an exegesis and Islamic Law was to see the unconditional command to fight the unbelievers as having abrogated the gentler, more tolerant verses in the Qur’an.6
The earliest biography of the prophet of Islam is the Sīrat Rāsul Allāh by Ibn Ishāq (d. 767).7 7According to theˉ Sīra, the first Muslimˉ use of violence was an attack on merchant caravans which passed close to Medina on their way to Mecca from Syria.8 There was some question about the legitimacy of this attack, but in Muslim tradition God not only gave permission to fight, but prescribed fighting, by revealing Q22.40-42.9 Many other raids are reported in the Sīra. Some early Muslim histories of Islam go by the name of maghāzī, meaning “raids.”10
Traditional Muslim sources also recount that a series of battles occurred during the lifetime of the prophet of Islam. The Sīra reports the battles of Badr, Uhud, and “the Ditch,”11 and the attacks on the Jewish settlement at Khaybar and on the town of Tabūk,12 as some of the major armed encounters. Muslim exegetes matched various parts of the Qur’an with particular battle situations.13 Scholars described these famous battle scenes as the “occasions of revelation” of many of the scriptural commands to fight and kill.
The dealings of the first Muslims with the large Jewish clans of Medina is an important theme in the Muslim accounts.14 Two major Jewish clans were banished from Medina. The third clan, the Banū Qurayza, met with a harsher fate: the men of the tribe, numbering in Muslim reports between 400 and 900, were beheaded in the marketplace of Medina; the women and children were taken as slaves; and all Jewish land and possessions were appropriated by the Muslims.15
The reason why the details of these Muslim biographies are so important is that early on in its history, the Muslim community decided to centre Islamic authority in the behaviour or sunna of the prophet of Islam. Muslims believe that the words and behaviour of Muhammad are preserved in collections of traditions or hadīth.16 The hadīth, in turn, formed the basis for the formulation of Islamic Law. Muhammad came to be seen by Muslims as the perfect human, to be emulated in all aspects of life.
Following the death of Muhammad, the first rulers of Islam, called caliphs, conquered the Middle East, North Africa and all the way to Spain in the west, and Central Asia all the way to the Indus River in the east. Historically, the empires which the Arabs attacked were the Byzantines to the northwest of the Arabian Peninsula, and the Sasanians to the northeast. The Sasanians were soon wiped out, and the Byzantines were pushed back to Asia Minor. Muslims have seen this astonishing conquest as a sign of Allah’s favour on the people and religion of Islam. In reality, it was a military conquest like any other. The Arab armies seized land and wealth from those who possessed them, killed those who resisted, and enslaved many who surrendered. The Arab Conquest is a matter of historical record, and is in fact the earliest sequence of events we know for certain about Islam. Reports of the Conquest are available to us not only from non-Muslim contemporary sources, 17 but also from the accounts of some of the most respected historians of Islam, such as Ibn A‘tham al-Kūfī (9th C.), al-Balādhūrī (9th C.) and al-Tabaī (d. 923).18
After conquering such vast expanses of territory, the Arabs had to decide what to do with the conquered peoples. Not all Muslim rulers followed the same pattern, but eventually an understanding of Christians and Jews developed which saw them circumscribed as “Dhimmi” communities which were permitted to practice their religion amongst themselves. Muslim treatment of non-Muslim communities could range from fierce suppression to relatively benign tolerance of their existence. But the basic concept was that non-Muslims earned their “preservation” by reduction to a humiliating status in society as second-class citizens and by paying the “jizya” poll tax.19 Caliphs frequently imposed discriminatory dress, housing, riding and other restrictions on Christians.20
Conquest and domination by force of arms seems to be reflected in the development of Islamic Law as well. Islamic jurists divided the world up into two spheres, the Dār al-Harb (“Abode of War”) and the Dār al-Islām (“Abode of Islam”). “Peace” can only exist where Islam has political domination, and all remaining territories are objects of military conquest.21 “This notion stems,” writes E. Tyan, “from the fundamental principle of the universality of Islam: This religion, along with the temporal power which it implies, ought to embrace the whole universe, if necessary by force.”22
This violence is “Islamic,” rather than merely “Islamist,” because it belongs to the orthodox tradition of Islam. Violence is a part of the sourcebooks and the early history of the religion itself. This is also the message of the scholarly studies cited here and many others.23 Violence is not imputed to Islam by outsiders who wish it ill, but rather is part of the self-definition of Islam.
To report violence in the sourcebooks is not to accuse our Muslim neighbors and friends of being violent. As already indicated, Muslims have a number of ways of dealing with their tradition. Some Modernist Muslims deny the importance of the hadīth and/or question the historicity of the Sīra, choosing to strip away Muslim tradition and to offer their own version of Muhammad and the Qur’an. Revivalists and Traditionalists, however, generally accept the authority of all three Muslim sources.
Authentic Approaches
An authentic approach toward the study of the sourcebooks of Islam would combine telling what one discovers in the study of the religion with a principled personal response to its important themes and practices. It would offer helpful characterizations of the sourcebooks along with accurate information about their historical development. It would provide relevant details from the Muslim tradition as well as a helpful perspective on the whole.
Scholars of Islamic Studies are in a position to provide help on questions which non-specialists may find impossible to resolve. For example, since the Arabic term “jihad” has come into popular English usage, many have been at a loss to know what it means. Islamicists have access to the Qur’an, the Sīra, the Hadīth, the early Muslim histories, and works of Islamic jurisprudence in the original Arabic. They can report about the use of the term jihād, and its corresponding verb jāhada, in each of these works. The public can definitely benefit from solid scholarship in this area.
In public discourse, however, one of the most common arguments is that jihad means peaceful inner struggle,24 and that the prophet of Islam himself highlighted this meaning as the “greater jihad.” Scholars have meanwhile pointed out that these words attributed to Muhammad cannot in fact be found in any of the hadīth collections to which Muslims grant authority.25 A reading of the contexts of the jihad verses in the Qur’an will show that many of the occurrences of jāhada must take the meaning of warfare.26 The earliest commentaries on the Qur’an understand the verb to mean something like “attack.”27 Interestingly, the great classical exegete al-Tabarī insisted that the meaning of jihad was participation in warfare even in cases where the scriptural context would not seem to warrant this.28
Scholars of Islamic studies can also provide expert guidance on whether verses cited from the Qur’an are taken out of context or whether they represent significant themes in scripture. Reuven Firestone has provided a careful study of the commands to fight and kill in the Qur’an and the ways in which Muslims have traditionally understood these verses.29 Instead of this kind of careful presentation, however, public discourse on Islamic violence is usually limited to quotation of a few texts which are said to summarize the whole teaching of the Qur’an.
One of the more frequently-cited expressions from the Qur’an is the verse “…whoso slays a soul not to retaliate for a soul slain, nor for corruption done in the land, shall be as if he had slain mankind altogether….” (Q5.32). A simple check of context will show that this verse appears after the presentation of the Qur’anic version of the Cain and Abel story, and that the words quoted are actually a prescription for the Children of Israel. Immediately after the quoted words—often cited to argue that there is no violence in Islam—comes the verse, “This is the recompense of those who fight against Allah and His Messenger…: they shall be slaughtered, or crucified, or their hands and feet shall alternately be struck off, or they shall be banished from the land….” (Q5.33).
Another popular citation is, “There is no compulsion in religion….” Michael Cook explains that though this phrase from Q2.256 has become a “godsend” to modernist Muslims (especially those living in the West), this verse has in fact given a great deal of trouble to Muslim scholars throughout Islam’s history, including to some contemporary revivalist exegetes.30 If classical Muslim commentators did not declare Q2.256 to be abrogated by the “verse of tribute” (Q9.29) or the “sword verse” (Q9.5), they often applied it to a restricted context or audience.31
Scholars who spend a good deal of time with such materials from Muslim tradition may quite naturally respond with comparisons or contrasts. Michael Cook wrote in his Muhammad, after describing Muslim political thought:
These ideas are not notably eirenic, and to anyone brought up on the New Testament they will seem very alien. In the face of persecution, Jesus neither resisted nor emigrated. He created no new polity, at least not in this world, he waged no holy wars, and he gave a most evasive answer when after his resurrection his followers suggested that the time might have come to ‘restore again the kingdom to Israel’ (Acts 1:6). If Christians want to be political activists, they cannot in good faith take their values from the life of their founder.32
One major Islamicist who offered a personal response in the midst of scholarly description was Marshall Hodgson.33 After a careful recounting of the story of Muhammad from the Muslim sources, Hodgson wrote, “It is not just a Christian squeamishness, I think, that points to Muhammad’s military measures as a central problem in his prophethood.”34
Readers who objected to this remark attempted to disqualify Hodgson on the grounds that he was a Quaker and a pacifist. Richard C. Martin was moved to take up Hodgson’s defence. Martin first rightly challenged critics to “direct their refutations toward his argument and not his religious background.” Then Martin made a rare academic tribute to scholarly evaluation: “The difference between Hodgson and many of his Western Islamicist critics,” wrote Martin, “is that Hodgson dared to believe that moral issues do not disappear when a scholar takes up the study of a civilization other than his or her own.”37
Timeline of Islamic Conquests and Violence
622
Muhammad and his followers initiate militant raids on Meccan caravans
624
Battle of Badr, Muhammad’s warriors defeat a large Meccan caravan
627
500 Jews are massacred
630
Occupation of Mecca
634
Campaign against Byzantines; Damascus and Jerusalem are conquered
650’s
Internal wars between Sunni and Shiite Muslims
661-750
Military campaigns in North Africa
674-79
Siege of Constantinople (unsuccessful)
711
Military campaign in Spain
711-13
Conquest of regions of Sind and Transoxiana
717
2nd Siege of Constantinople (unsuccessful)
732
Muslim armies defeated by French in Battle of Tours
846
Muslims sack Rome and the Vatican
1154
Recapture of Damascus
1187
Jerusalem retaken
1453
Muslims capture Constantinople, rename it Istanbul
1517
Ottoman Empire begins
Discerning the Way of God
Christian scholars of Islam who interact deeply with the Muslim tradition are led into a series of rich and creative reflections which encompass foundational narratives, the nature of God, and the mission of the Church in the world. David Shenk and Kenneth Cragg are two scholars who highlight Islamic violence in a sensitive and peaceable way. These authors demonstrate that it is quite possible—and arguably a requirement of discipleship—to combine truth telling about religions with respect toward their adherents.37
David Shenk finds that it is precisely in the matter of violence that the Gospel and Islam show themselves to be “two journeys that go in opposite directions.”38 He locates the point of divergence at a crossroads where Jesus sets his face to go to Jerusalem, and where Muhammad is invited to rule in Medina. Responding to the traditional Muslim narrative, Shenk understands the hijrah to be a movement from suffering and largely unfruitful preaching in Mecca to success and political power in Medina. He contrasts this sharply with the decision which Jesus made to refuse the invitation to become a king in Galilee and instead to move resolutely toward suffering and death in Jerusalem. In Medina, writes Shenk, Muhammad became a statesman and military general. With the instruments of political power, he and his followers established the Muslim ummah. This story has had a large influence on the Muslim understanding of ethics. When necessary, violence against the enemy is commanded by both God and his messenger. Shenk contrasts this with Christian ethics, which he characterizes as the way of the cross.39
Beliefs about the nature of God are integral to these two journeys in opposite directions, Shenk continues. When the Messiah chose the path of vulnerable suffering, he showed humanity what God is like. In the Muslim tradition, vulnerability is not seen as an appropriate quality in either God or humans. Rather, “political and coercive power are required in order for God’s will to triumph.”40 For the Church, by contrast, the call of God is to walk in the way of the Messiah in his crucifixion.
The deepest exploration of Islamic violence from a Christian perspective is that of Kenneth Cragg. No Christian scholar has made a greater effort to understand Islam from within and to nurture the conversation between committed Muslims and Christians. Cragg similarly locates the crux of difference between Islam and the Gospel at Muhammad’s decision—according to Muslim sources—to combine faith with physical force.41 Cragg calls this the “power dimension”42 and identifies it as the source of the Muslim confidence that human military action can bring in “the way of Allah.” In the Gospel, Cragg notes, Jesus shows “the way of God” to be suffering love and sacrifice. The goal which both ways claim is the sovereignty of God and the obedience of humans. Cragg asks: What is the truly divine way to achieve that goal?
Cragg agrees that combating human evil with physical force may stop it temporarily, may “safeguard and defend effectively.”43 But he argues that force is powerless to positively redeem either the evil or the evil-doer. Also, because it is violence, and because it is humans who are using it, it may end up complicating or even justifying the initial evil it aims to restrain. Fighting immediately brings a reciprocal desire for retaliation, the cycle of violence continues, and the evil is perpetuated if not increased. Part of the problem, Cragg suggests, is a failure to take human evil in its true measure. On the one hand, when humans use violence while claiming to be serving God, they open themselves to many temptations which bring out the worst in human nature. On the other hand, use of force in matters of faith breeds hypocrisy in those who are forced. People will profess faith out of fear, while in their hearts they will keep their own commitments. Force is simply powerless to achieve the goal of true obedience.
Only suffering love can create a situation in which people are free to respond to God in love and obedience, writes Cragg. The love of God, demonstrated in the life and death of Jesus, is a love which forgives those who do it ill and thereby absorbs the evil and takes it into oneself.
Only ‘taking’ wrong forgivingly, takes it away. The wrong-doer has then no cause to perpetuate his enmity, no reason to despair of himself and no occasion to entrench himself in evil. On the contrary, there is in his neighbor’s ‘peace’ that which closes the account, frees the spirit from enmity and hate, restores the broken community between the persons, and truly ‘overcomes evil with good.’ We cannot have it so, however, without knowing that a cost is borne, is readily and sacrificially paid, by the soul that wills forgiveness, whose ‘peace’ is active, compassionate and ready.44
Cragg applies this Christological insight both to the sovereignty of God and to the behavior of humans who are zealous to bring in God’s way. God’s way is not the Muslim “power equation,” he concludes, but rather the way of the cross.45 The scholarly studies of Shenk and Cragg add an extra dimension to truth telling: the disciple’s faithfulness to the person of Jesus.
Biblical and Christian Violence
Scholars who venture into the contrast between Jesus and Muhammad in the area of violence are often challenged to account for Old Testament violence, as well as for all violence committed by Christians during the past two millennia. Christian scholars of Islam will likely look for help to their colleagues in biblical studies, theology and church history. However, such challenges—though difficult to meet fully—provide further opportunities for creative reflection.
One potential area of fruitful scholarship is the direction of teaching on violence in the scriptures of the respective faiths. The teaching and life example of Jesus offer a comment on how Old Testament violence is to be understood. Jesus said that he came not to abrogate the Torah and Prophets, but to fulfill them (Matthew 5:17). He then gave a number of commands which set aside earlier understandings—three of which concerned violence (Matt. 5:21-26, 38-42, 43-48). The New Testament witness to Jesus’ life and teachings suggests that the direction of Jesus’ “fulfillment” of the Torah was toward peacemaking, non-resistance, and suffering love. Significantly, when the New Testament explicitly commands imitation of the sunna of Jesus, it is in relation to suffering patiently for doing good (1 Peter 2:20-23). The contrast with the traditional Islamic concept of abrogation could hardly be more striking. The traditional Islamic view was that the more violent materials in the Qur’an superseded the peaceful recitations of Muhammad’s early career. Though this comparison does not negate the violence of the Old Testament, it does provide a helpful perspective for Christians.
Similarly, it will not answer all questions to say that for three centuries the followers of Jesus rejected violence, but it is certainly relevant to the discussion. True, many Christians since Constantine have acted violently, a fact best illustrated in many minds by the Crusades. However, many Christians around the world would agree with Yale historian Lamin Sanneh when he writes:
The Crusades, late in time, were something of a coup d’état against the teachings of Jesus…. With the church’s backing, European kingdoms looked upon Jerusalem as “Crown redeemer” territory. Religion became jurisdiction or rulership, and the exhortation to fight the good fight of faith (I Tim. 6:12; 2 Tim. 4:7) in the spirit of the Suffering Servant and to contend against the principalities and powers (Eph. 6:12; Col. 2:15) was superseded by royal prerogative…. The fact that Western Christians continue to harbour fresh remorse for the Crusades a thousand years after the events shows the Crusades to be a continuing embarrassment and a standing reproach to the church.46
Sanneh goes on to argue that there is no corresponding sense of remorse among Muslims about the Arab Muslim Conquests of the 7th and 8th centuries, or the Ottoman Muslim Conquests of the 15th through 17th centuries. Sanneh notes that what he calls “the jihad tradition in Islam” is no aberration of that faith, but rather is prescribed in the Qur’an and in the conduct of Muhammad. He claims that the Christendom concept of “holy war” was actually conceived in response to the Muslim doctrine of jihad in the 11th century.47
Encouraging Public Discourse
In the West today, people are asking many questions about Islam, particularly about its relation to violence. Those who have the opportunity to study Islam deeply bear a responsibility to provide helpful information where it is needed. Such reporting is not merely to satisfy intellectual curiosity. Rather, relevant information can help open up public discourse where there is freedom in society to discuss matters of concern. If the violence in the sourcebooks of Islam has the potential to influence the behavior of Muslims today, it becomes the concern of non-Muslims as well. Scholarly input into this discourse thus becomes a public service and a potential contribution toward peaceful coexistence.
But beyond this, Christian scholars of Islam have the privilege of entering the large creative space stretching out before them. Study of the Muslim tradition in light of the gospel provides room to probe important questions about who God is, what God’s way is, and how God brings in that way. It gives scholars a chance to articulate the source of ultimate authority and the true model for human behavior. It challenges them to tell the truth as scholars and to respond authentically from conscience and conviction.
In the light of the teachings and example of Jesus, the Islamic approach to violence is weighed in the balance and found wanting. This crucial contrast needs to be included at the centre of any intelligent Christian apologetic. It is an important area in which both the beauty of the gospel and its benefits for humanity are clearly revealed.
Gordon Nickel has a PhD in the earliest Muslim commentaries on the Qur’an and is a sessional instructor at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.
Notes
1 Alexander Stille, “Radical New Views of Islam and the Origins of the Koran,” New York Times, March 2, 2002. Accessible online at www.rim.org/muslim/ qurancrit.htm.
2Daniel Pipes, “Jihad and the Professors,” Commentary 114/4 (November 2002), 17- 18. Accessible online at www.danielpipes.org/ article/498.
3Martin Hinds, “al-Maghāzī,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, C.E. Bosworth et al, eds. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1986), Vol. 5, 1161. On one famous Muslim story of assassination, see Uri Rubin, “The Assassination of Ka‘b ibn al-Ashraf,” Oriens 32 (1990), 65-71.
4The Encyclopaedia of the Qur’ān (Jane Dammen McAuliffe, gen. ed., Leiden: Brill) provides a number of focused scholarly studies on the vocabulary of violence in the Qur’an: Chase F. Robinson, “Conquest,” Vol. 1 (2001), 397-401; Rizwi Faizer, “Conquest,” Vol. 1 (2001), 397-401; Rizwi Faizer, 153; Reuven Firestone, “Fighting,” Vol. 2 (2002), 208-210; Ella Landau-Tasseron, “Jihād,” Vol. 3 (2003), 35-43; Dimitry V. Frolov, “Path or Way,” Vol. 4 (2004), 28-31; Patricia Crone, “War,” Vol. 5 (2006), 455-459.
5Many scholars familiar with the original Arabic prefer the Qur’an translation of Arthur Arberry, The Koran Interpreted (Oxford University Press, 1964).
6E. Tyan, “Djihād,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, B. Lewis et al, eds. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1965), Vol. 2, 538. Cf. Rudolph Peters, “Jihād,” The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), Vol. 2, 370.
7Available in the English translation of A. Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1967).
8Guillaume, Life of Muhammad, 287.
9Guillaume, Life of Muhammad, 212-213.
10The best known of which is the Kitāb al-Maghāzī of al-Wāqidī (d. 822) (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyah, 2004), 2 volumes. The first English translation of this important early Muslim biography of Muhammad is scheduled to be published in Fall 2010 as The Life of Muhammad: Al-Waqidi’s Kitab al-Maghazi, Rizwi Faizer, ed. (London: Routledge, 2010).
11Guillaume, Life of Muhammad Life of Muhammad 426, 450-460, respectively.
12Guillaume, Life of Muhammad Life of Muhammad 614. Robinson, “Conquest,” 398.
13For example sūras 8, 9 and 33, and Q3.117-169. Cf. Guillaume, Life of Muhammad, 288.
14Guillaume, Life of Muhammad, 363f., 437-482.
15Guillaume, Life of Muhammad, 461-482. Ibn Ishāq wrote on the number of Jewish men beheaded: “There were 600 or 700 in all, though some put the number as high as 800 or 900.” Guillaume, Life of Muhammad, 464. See also M.J. Kister, “The massacre of the Banū Qurayza: a re-examination of a tradition,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 8 (1986), 61-96.
16The best known of six hadīth collections accepted by Sunni Muslims is the Sahīh of al-Bukhārī (d. 870). English translations of some of these collections are available in university libraries, or have been posted to the Internet. For example, Bukhārī’s “Book of Jihad” is accessible online at http://www.usc.edu/dept/ MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/bukhari/052. sbt.html. But other relevant sections in this hadīth collection include “One fifth of booty to the cause of Allah,” “Military expeditions led by the prophet,” and “Punishment of disbelievers at war with Allah and his messenger.”
17A good collection of these sources is Robert Hoyland, ed. Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A survey and evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian writings on early Islam (Princeton, NJ: Darwin, 1997).
18Al-Tabarī’s Tarīkh al-rusul wa al-mulūk, the single most important source for the early conquests, is available in English translation as The History of al-Tabari (Albany, NY: SUNY Press). Volumes 11-14 cover the conquest (1989-1994). al-Kūfī’s Kitāb al-futūh and alBalādhurī’s Futūh al-buldān are until now only available in Arabic, but see the description of Muslim writing on the conquests by Lawrence Conrad, “Futūh,” Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, Julia Scott Meisami and Paul Starkey, eds. (London: Routledge, 1998), Vol. I, cols. 237b-240b. Michael Bonner provides a handy summary of the Muslim conquests in Jihad in Islamic History: Doctrines and Practice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 56-71. A detailed scholarly description of the Muslim conquests of Syria and Iraq is given by Fred Donner in The Early Islamic Conquests (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 91-220. Some of the best scholarly articles on the Muslim conquests are collected in The Expansion of the Early Islamic State, Fred Donner, ed. (Aldershot, GB: Ashgate Variorum, 2008).
19Among the helpful scholarly literature on the conquered peoples is C.E. Bosworth, “The Concept of Dhimma in early Islam” in Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The functioning of a Plural Society B. Braude and B. Lewis, eds. (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1982), 37-51; and A.S. Tritton, The Caliphs and Their Non-Muslim Subjects: A critical study of the Covenant of ‘Umar (London: F. Cass, 1970).
20I.M. Lapidus, “The Conversion of Egypt to Islam,” Israel Oriental Studies 2 (1972), 253.
21The best scholarly study of violence in Islamic Law is Majid Khadduri, War and Peace in the Law of Islam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1955). Khadduri has also provided English translations of the writing of classical Muslim jurists on violence in The Islamic Law of Nations: Shaybānī’s Siyar (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1966), pp. 75-194; and al-Shāfi‘i’s al-Risāla fī usūl al-fiqh: Treatise on the foundations of Islamic jurisprudence, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: The Islamic Texts Society, 1987), pp. 82-7.
22Tyan, “Djihād,” 538.
23The scholarly literature on violence in Islam, as well as English translations of relevant materials from early Muslim authors, appears to be increasing. Andrew Bostom recently gathered a remarkable variety of both scholarly writing and translated Muslim and non-Muslim sources in The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic holy war and the fate of non-Muslims (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2005).
24A striking example in the wake of 9/11 was the statement by Rudgers scholar James Turner Johnson that in the Qur’an “…the term jihad is used to refer to the believer’s inner struggle for righteousness.” “Jihad and Just War,” First Things no. 124 (June July 2002), 12.
25Reuven Firestone, Jihād: The Origin of Holy War in Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 17, 140-141, n. 19. David Cook, Understanding Jihad (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 35-39. Douglas E. Streusand, “What Does Jihad Mean?” Middle East Quarterly (September 1997), accessible online at http://www.meforum. org/article/357
26Landau-Tasseron, “Jihād,” 36. Cf. Fred M. Donner, “The Sources of Islamic Conceptions of War,” in Just War and Jihad: Historical and theoretical perspectives on war and peace in Western and Islamic traditions, John Kelsay and James Turner Johnson, eds. (NY: Greenwood Press, 1991), 46.
27Preliminary results of a concurrent investigation into “Jihād in Qur’anic Context and Commentary.” Cf. Cook, Understanding Jihad, 35: “combat.”
28Landau-Tasseron, “Jihād,” 38.
29Firestone, Jihād, 47-65.
30Michael Cook, The Koran: A very short
introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 35-36, 100-103.
31Cook, The Koran, p. 101-103. Mahmoud Ayoub provides English translations of a range of classical Muslim interpretations of Q2.256 in The Qur’an and its Interpreters (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984), Vol. 1, 252-255.
32Michael Cook, Muhammad (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 57-58.
33Marshall G.S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and history in a world civilization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), three volumes.
34The Venture of Islam, Vol. I, 186.
35Richard C. Martin, “The Religious Foundations of War, Peace and Statecraft in Islam,” in Just War and Jihad, John Kelsay and James Turner Johnson, eds. (New York: Greenwood Press, 1991), 108.
36Martin, “The Religious Foundations of War,” 108.
37Unfortunately, some of the most popular treatments of violence in Islam by western Christians are books which lack Christ-like attitudes toward Muslims!
38David W. Shenk, Journeys of the Muslim Nation and the Christian Church; Exploring the mission of two communities (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 2003), 130.
39Shenk, Journeys, 134.
40Shenk, Journeys, 135.
401Kenneth Cragg, Muhammad & the Christian: A question of response (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1984), chapters 3, 8 and 9. idem., Jesus and the Muslim: An exploration (London: George Allen & Unwin,
1985), chapters 6 and 11.
42Cragg, Muhammad, 31 and passim.
43Cragg, Jesus, 179.
44Cragg, Jesus, 182.
45Cragg, Jesus, 297-9.
46Lamin Sanneh, Whose Religion is Christianity? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 120-122.
47Sanneh, Whose Religion is Christianity? Whose Religion is Christianity?
122. Jacques Ellul makes a compelling argument for the influence of Islam on Christian thinking about war in The Subversion of Christianity, trans. Geoffrey Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1986), 95-112.
(First published in Areopagus Journal Vol. 10 No. 1 – Is Islam A Religion of Peace?)