ISLAM THE BASICS

JIHAD, MARTYRDOM, WAR
 
------------------------------------------------------------------
Prophet Muhammad
 
  The most excellent Jihad is that for the conquest of self.
 
  The ink of the scholar is more holy than the blood of the martyr.
 
Karen Armstrong, Muhammad - A Biography Of The Prophet
 
  . . . there are also Christians there who feel it their duty to
  live alongside the oppressed and the destitute and engage in a
  dedicated struggle for a just and decent society. It is in this
  light that we should consider the Islamic jihad, which Westerners
  usually translate as 'holy war.' p. -- 165
 
Huston Smith, The Illustrated World's Religions
 
  Muslims report that the most inflexible image of Islam that they
  encounter in the West is that of a militant religion that has
  spread primarily by the sword. They see this as a prejudice, born
  of the thirteen hundred years in which Islam and Europe have
  shared common borders and much of the time fought over them. It is
  a stereotype forged by people who have seen Islam as their enemy.
 
  Grant, Muslims say, that the Koran does not counsel turning the
  other cheek, or pacifism. It teaches forgiveness and the return of
  good for evil when circumstances warrant, but these do not add up
  to not resisting evil. The Quran allows punishment of wanton
  wrongdoers to the full extent of the injury done. Extend this
  principle to collective life and you have the principle of a just
  or holy war, which the Koran also endorses. But these do not
  warrant the charge of militancy.
 
  As an outstanding general, Muhammad left many traditions regarding
  the decent conduct of war. Agreements are to be honored and
  treachery avoided; the wounded are not to be mutilated, nor the
  dead disfigured. Women, children, and the old are to be spared, as
  are orchards, crops, and scared objects. The towering question,
  though, is when war is justified. The Koran's definition of a Holy
  War is virtually identical with that of a Just War in the Canon
  Law of Catholicism. It must either be defensive or to right an
  horrendous wrong.
 
  Moving from theory to practice, Muslims claim that in one instance
  the two coincided. Muhammad adhered meticulously to the charter he
  forged for Medina, which -- grounded as it was in the Koranic
  injunction, "Let there be no compulsion in religion (2:257) -- is
  arguably the first mandate for religious tolerance in human
  history. Muslims admit that this exemplary beginning was not
  sustained, but as no histories are exemplary, the question reduces
  to whether Islam's has been more militant than that of other
  religions. As the charge that it has been has come primarily form
  Christianity, its history will serve here as the point of
  reference.
 
  In favor of Islam are the long centuries during which in India,
  Spain, and the Near East, Christians, Jews, and Hindus lived
  quietly and in freedom under Muslim rule. Even under the worst
  rulers, Christians and Jews held positions of influence and in
  general retained their religious freedom. It was Christians, not
  Muslims (we are reminded) who in the fifteenth century expelled
  the Jews from Spain where under Islamic rule they had enjoyed one
  of their golden ages. To press this example: Spain and Anatolia
  changed hands at about the same time -- Christians expelled the
  Moors from Spain while Muslims conquered what is now Turkey. Every
  Muslim was driven from Spain, or put to the sword, or forced to
  convert, whereas the seat of the Eastern Orthodox Church remains
  in Istanbul to this day. Indeed, if comparisons are the issue,
  Muslims consider Christianity's record to be the darker of the
  two. Who was it, they ask, who preached the Crusades in the name
  of the Prince of Peace? Who instituted the inquisition, invented
  the rack and the stake as instruments of religion, and plunged
  Europe into its devastating wars of religion?
 
  The safest generalization on which this discussion can end comes
  from the historians. Islam's record on the use of force is no
  darker than that of Christianity. -- p. 168-169
 
Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India
 
  . . . North Africa was torn with internecine conflicts between
  rival Christian factions, leading often to bloody struggles for
  mastery. The Christianity that was practised there at the time was
  narrow and intolerant and the contrast between this and the
  general toleration of the Moslem Arabs, with their message of
  human brotherhood, was marked. It was this that brought whole
  peoples, weary of Christian stirfe, to their side. . .
 
  This frequent intercourse [trade and cultural relations] led to
  Indians getting to know the religion, Islam. Missionaries also
  came to spread the new faith and they were welcomed. Mosques were
  built. There was no objection raised either by the state or the
  people, nor were there any religious conflicts. . .
 
  . . . The old Alexandrian schools had been closed by Christian
  bishops and their scholars had been driven out. Many of these
  exiles had drifted to Persia and elsewhere. They now found a
  welcome and a safe haven in Baghdad and they brought Greek
  philosophy and science and mathematics with them -- Plato and
  Aristotle, Ptolemy and Euclid. There were Nestorian and Jewish
  scholars and Indian physicians; philosophers and mathematicians. .
  .
 
  Mahmud's raids are a big event in Indian history, . . . Above all
  they brought Islam, for the first time, to the accompaniment of
  ruthless military conquest. So far, for over 300 years, Islam had
  come peacefully as a religion and taken its place among the many
  religions of India without trouble or conflict. . . Yet when he
  [Mahmud] had established himself as a ruler . . . Hindus were
  appointed to high office in the army and the administration.
 
  It is thus wrong and misleading to think of a Moslem invasion of
  India or of the Moslem period in India, just as it would be wrong
  to refer to the coming of the British to India as a Christian
  invasion, or to call the British period in India a Christian
  period. Islam did not invade India; it had come to India some
  centuries earlier. . .
 
  As a warrior he [Akbar] conquered large parts of India, but his
  eyes were set on another and more enduring conquest, the conquest
  of the minds and hearts of the people. . . throughout his long
  reign of nearly fifty years from 1556 onwards he laboured to that
  end. -- p. 227 - 259
 
Indan Ambassador M. N. Masud, Understanding Islam
 
  Why did they [the people of the largest Muslim country, Indonesia,
  an archipelago of some 3000 islands] embrace Islam? It could not
  have been force or the threat of it because, as far as I knew, not
  one Muslim soldier from abroad ever landed with a sword in his
  hand to conquer the heathen land. -- p. 2
 
Akbar S. Ahmed, Living Islam
 
  Foreigners who are aggressive, ignorant, barbaric and unwelcome.
  Foreigners who are forever advocating their way of life and
  prepared to advocate it by brawling and fighting; foreigners with
  embarrassing and uncouth manners. Are we talking of Muslim
  immigrants as seen by Europeans in the late twentieth century? No.
  These are Europeans almost a thousand years ago in the Muslim
  lands of the Middle East. They came as individuals and as armies
  and as soldiers of fortune.
 
  Muslims were not their only target; local Christians and Jews were
  also among their victims. In one instance their behaviour plumbed
  new depths. It was in the St Sophia church in Istanbul. They
  violated women, drank, and stripped the church bare. An eyewitness
  of the fourth Crusade was horrified: 'I Geoffrey de Ville
  Hardouin, Martial of the court of Champagne, am sure that since
  the creation of the universe, a plundering worse than this has not
  been witnessed' (Efe 1987: 18). Compare this to Mehmet the
  conqueror's entry when, with humility and awe, he fell to his
  knees, taking the dust from the floor and wiping it on his turban
  as an act of devotion (Efe 1987). Christians here have a saying:
  'Better the turban of a Turk than the tiara of the Pope.'
 
  As for the unfortunate Jews, they would be massacred by the
  Christians on their way to the Crusades and massacred by them on
  their way back from the Crusades. Not surprisingly Muslims thought
  that here was a civilization doomed to barbarism and backwardness
  for ever. -- p. 64
 
Washington W. Irving, Tales Of The Alhambra
 
  As conquerors [Muslims], their heroism was equaled only by their
  moderation, and in both, for a time, they excelled the nations
  with whom they contended. Severed from their native homes, they
  loved the land given them as they supposed by Allah and strove to
  embellish it with everything that could administer to the
  happiness of man. Laying the foundations of their power in a
  system of wise and equitable laws, diligently cultivating the arts
  and sciences, and promoting agriculture, manufactures and
  commerce, they gradually formed an empire unrivaled for its
  prosperity by any of the empires of Christendom . . .
 
  The cities of Arabian Spain became the resort of Christian
  artisans, to instruct themselves in the useful art. The
  Universities of Toledo, Cordova, Seville, Granada, were sought by
  the pale student from lands to acquaint himself with the sciences
  of the Arabs and the treasure lore of antiquity. -- p. 52
 
HRH, The Prince of Wales, Islam And The West
 
  . . . we have underestimated the importance of 800 years of
  Islamic society and culture in Spain between the 8th and 15th
  centuries.
 
  Many of the traits on which Europe prides itself came to it from
  Muslim Spain. Diplomacy, free trade, open borders, the techniques
  of academic research, of anthropology, etiquette, fashion,
  alternative medicine, hospitals, all came from this great city of
  cities. Mediaeval Islam was a religion of remarkable tolerance for
  its time, allowing Jews and Christians to practice their inherited
  beliefs, and setting an example which was not, unfortunately,
  copied for many centuries in the West.
 
John Edwards, History Today
 
  On the second day of January [1492] I saw Your Highnesses' royal
  banners placed by force of arms on the towers of the Alhambra . .
  . and in the same month . . . Your Highness, as Catholic
  Christians and princes devoted to the holy Christian faith and the
  furtherance of its cause, and enemies of the sect of Mohammed and
  of all idolatry and heresy, resolved to send me, Christopher
  Columbus, to the . . . regions of India. -- vol. 42