Islam and Violence Revisited

Abstract

Islam and Violence Revisited A. Rashied Omar (bio) terrorist violence, Kairos Document, Muhammad, reconciliation, the Qur’an on violence, jihad, jizyah, peaceful coexistence The dramatic turn of world events at the dawn of the twenty-first century, including the collapse of the Oslo Peace process in September, 2000, in the face of a renewed and ongoing cycle of violence in the Middle East; the terrorist attacks on the United States of America a year later on September 11, 2001; the Bush administration’s subsequent “enduring” war on terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq—have all served to reinforce the widespread perception that Islam is in some special way linked to terrorist violence. Even conventional academic perspectives regard Islam as having a predilection for violence. According to this view, Islam is defined as inherently violent and one of the primary sources of contemporary violence in the world. 1 In direct opposition to this perspective, Muslims often categorically deny that Islam has anything to do with terrorist violence. In their view, all violence in which individuals or groups who claim an Islamic affiliation are [End Page 67] implicated is a debasement and vile distortion of the noble and peaceful teachings of Islam. 2 As with all received understandings, there are elements of truth in both formulations. The first one largely understates the contemporary sociopolitical and economic conditions under which Islam is implicated in violence, and the second ignores the fact that virtually all Muslims accept that Islam is not a pacifist tradition and allows for and legitimates the use of violence under certain conditions, the definitions of which may differ from one Muslim scholar to the other. It is here that a large measure of the problem lies. Under what conditions does Islam condone the use of violence? This critical dilemma is not unique to Islam. All religious traditions agonize about the question of what might constitute a “just war,” and it becomes particularly acute in situations of deadly conflict. Two central points emerge from this that we need to bear in mind in order correctly to appreciate the relationship between Islam and violence. First, it is important for all of us to acknowledge that most, if not all, of our sacred texts provide opportunities for justifying violence; thus, religion contains the seeds for violence. A pertinent example of this was the vociferous theological debate in South Africa concerning the biblical perspective on apartheid. The white supremacist policy of apartheid was formulated in the name of Christianity. Many of the key leaders of the oppressive apartheid regime were also devout adherents of the Dutch Reformed Church. The discriminatory apartheid education policy was justified with reference to certain highly controversial interpretations of the Bible and was labeled “Christian National Education.” This led to an important theological document, the Kairos Document (1985), produced by black South African Christians to lament this by posing a challenging question: “Can the Bible be used for any purpose at all?” 3 The answer, of course, is yes. However, this is not unique to the Bible, as all sacred religious texts display the same “ambivalence.” Arguing within the context of the Muslim sacred scripture, the Qur’an, the California-based [End Page 68] Professor of Islamic Law, Khalid Abou El Fadl, has provided a cogent response to this question. “[T]he meaning of the text,” he contends, “is often only as moral as its reader. If the reader is intolerant, hateful, or oppressive, so will be the interpretation of the text.” 4 The point is that all sacred texts provide possibilities of intolerant as well as tolerant interpretations. The challenge is for us first to acknowledge this, no matter how distressing it may be, and, second, to find authentic ways of dealing constructively with these texts, symbols, and rituals that legitimate and sacralize violence. The second critical point to bear in mind if we are to appreciate correctly the relationship between Islam and violence is that the religious legitimization of violence does not occur in a sociohistorical vacuum. The University of Chicago-based historian of religion, Bruce Lincoln, has provided cogent support for such a view by contending that most of the post-cold war conflicts in which religious issues...