Are Muslims Obligated to Engage in Holy War?

Abstract

In the early twenty-first century, some — Muslims and non-Muslims alike — believe that Islam requires Muslims to engage in holy war or Jihad.This article concludes that this early twenty-first century notion that Muslims are obligated to wage holy war is based on a failure to appreciate that Jihad was never a universally agreed upon concept in Islam nor was there ever a universal obligation to participate in Jihad. In order to support the assertion that Muslims are not obligated to engage in holy war, this article looks to canonical texts from the Hanafi School of Islamic Law from the ninth through the fourteenth century CE. These texts are called Fatwa collections because they compile legal opinions on a wide variety of matters. The first observation that the article presents is that some of these canonical Fatwa collections do not even address the question of Jihad while other Fatwa collections treat Jihad in at least three different ways. Thus the article demonstrates that the earliest Muslim legal scholars of the Hanafi School did not share a uniform understanding of what constitutes holy war nor did they agree on who is obligated to become a holy warrior. Indeed, the article concludes that early legal scholars especially disagreed on the obligation to engage in Jihad and on who qualifies to call for Jihad. Hence it is false to claim that Muslims are obligated now (or have ever been obligated) to engage in Jihad.