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Kreeft, “Ecumenical Jihad”

This January, St. Augustine’s Press will release “Ecumenical Jihad: Ecumenism and the Culture War” by Peter Kreeft (Boston College).  The publisher’s description follows:

Ecumenism and JihadJuxtaposing “ecumenism” and “jihad,” two words that many would consider strange and at odds with one another, Peter Kreeft argues that we need to change our current categories and alignments. We need to realize that we are at war and that the sides have changed radically. Documenting the spiritual and moral decay that has taken hold of modern society, Kreeft issues a wake-up call to all God-fearing Christians, Jews, and Muslims to unite together in a “religious war” against the common enemy of godless secular humanism, materialism, and immorality.

Aware of the deep theological differences of these monotheistic faiths, Kreeft calls for a moratorium on our polemics against one another so that we can form an alliance to fight together to save Western civilization.

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Afsaruddin, Striving in the Path of God

JihadThis May, Oxford University Press will publish Striving in the Path of God by Asma Afsaruddin (Indiana University). The publisher’s description follows.

 In popular and academic literature, jihad is predominantly assumed to refer exclusively to armed combat, and martyrdom in the Islamic context is understood to be invariably of the military kind. This perspective, derived mainly from legal texts, has led to discussions of jihad and martyrdom as concepts with fixed, universal meanings divorced from the socio-political circumstances in which they have been deployed through the centuries. Asma Afsaruddin studies in a more holistic manner the range of significations that can be ascribed to the term jihad from the earliest period to the present and historically contextualizes the competing discourses that developed over time. Many assumptions about the military jihad and martyrdom in Islam are thereby challenged and deconstructed. A comprehensive interrogation of varied sources reveals early and multiple competing definitions of a word that in combination with the phrase fi sabil Allah translates literally to “striving in the path of God.”

Contemporary radical Islamists have appropriated this language to exhort their cadres to armed political opposition, which they legitimize under the rubric of jihad. Afsaruddin shows that the multivalent connotations of jihad and shahid recovered from the formative period lead us to question the assertions of those who maintain that belligerent and militant interpretations preserve the earliest and only authentic understanding of these two key terms. Retrieval of these multiple perspectives has important implications for our world today in which the concepts of jihad and martyrdom are still being fiercely debated.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Munir on Jihad

Muhammad Munir (International Islamic University Islamabad) has posted a new article, Who Can Declare Jihad: The Head of a Muslim State or a Jihadi Group or Groups Within a Muslim State?, on SSRN. The abstract follows.

Non-state Islamic actors are engaged in their war against the West, Muslim states, and in some cases against their own states. Among the propaganda campaign raised by these Jihadis for winning support of fellow Muslims is that jihad can be declared by any jihadi group within a Muslim state and there is no need for the head of such a Muslim state for such a declaration. How does Islamic law look at the complex relations between jihadis operating from within a Muslim state and whether the state might be blamed for their attacks and other activities outside such a state? This paper explains relationship between jihadi groups inside a Muslim state which has necessary military and political authority but which has not given any explicit permission to such groups to operate. It is concluded that classical Islamic law does not authorize the operations of jihadi groups without the permission of the Imam. In addition, under Islamic law such a state is responsible for the acts of jihadi groups operating from its territory.

 

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Deol & Kazmi, “Contextualising Jihadi Thought”

Columbia University Press has released a new collection of essays on jihadist thought, including jihadist political programs, Contextualising Jihadi Thought (2012). The editors are Jeevan Deol (Cambridge) and Zaheer Kazmi (Oxford). The publisher’s description follows.

In recent decades, transnational jihadi entities such as Al-Qaeda as well as national and regional militant groups have attracted a great deal of media and scholarly attention. Policy agendas worldwide are now intensely focused on countering militant jihadist thought. Yet few studies fully comprehend the contours of this phenomenon and its rich social and intellectual making.

Departing from the traditional security studies approaches that have characterized so much research in this area, Contextualising Jihadi Thought bridges existing disciplines and fields of study to create a framework for understanding jihadi movements, ideologies, intellectual Read more

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Hashmi (ed.), “Just Wars, Holy Wars, & Jihads”

Here is a very interesting collection of essays on religious perspectives on military engagements of various kinds: Just Wars, Holy Wars, & Jihads: Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Encounters and Exchanges (OUP 2012), edited by Sohail H. Hashmi (Mount Holyoke).  The publisher’s description follows.

Just Wars, Holy Wars, and Jihads explores the development of ideas of morally justified or legitimate war in Western and Islamic civilizations. Historically, these ideas have been grouped under three labels: just war, holy war, and jihad. A large body of literature exists exploring the development of just war and holy war concepts in the West and of jihad in Islam. Yet, to date, no book has investigated in depth the historical interaction between Western notions of just or holy war and Muslim definitions of jihad. This book is a major contribution to the comparative study of the ethics of war and peace in the West and Islam. Its twenty chapters explore two broad questions:

1. What historical evidence exists that Christian and Jewish writers on just war and holy war and Muslim writers on jihad knew of the other tradition?

2. What is the evidence in treatises, chronicles, speeches, ballads, and other historical records, or in practice, that either tradition influenced the other?

The book surveys the period from the rise of Islam in the early seventh century to the present day. Part One surveys the impact of the early Islamic conquests upon Byzantine, Syriac, and Muslim thinking on justified war. Part Two probes developments during the Crusades. Part Three focuses on the early modern period in Europe and the Ottoman Empire, followed by analysis of the era of European imperialism in Part Four. Part Five brings the discussion into the present period, with chapters analyzing the impact of international law and terrorism on conceptions of just war and jihad.