Islamic Fundamentalism and the Doctrine of Jihad

Abstract

A. J. Abraham, a professor at CUNY and the New York Institute of Technology,as well as a scholar of Near and Middle Eastern History, accuratelystates that the “Islamic Tendency” has been a significant phenomenonin contemporary times and has “attracted a great deal of negative attention”(p. 2). This compendium packages two prior works: The Warriors of God:Jihad (Holy War) and the Fundamentalists of Islam and a monograph entitledKhoumani and Islamic Fundamentalism: Contributions of IslamicSciences to Modern Civilization. The former is based largely on thesismaterial coauthored with George I. Haddad at Princeton; the latter is amonograph presented during the 1979 hostage crisis in Iran. The intent ofbringing these two works together is ambitious: to foster a “sympathetic”but objective lay understanding of jihad (p. 2) that excludes the sensationalistviews exploited by all factions for political aspirations. The author’spremise, as noted in the preface, is the need for “balanced yet opposingpoints of view” (p. 3).The first work provides a background and insight on jihad that delvesbeyond the “holy war versus internal struggle” discussion. A methodologicalbreakdown of jihad into seven chapter topics, starting with thehermeneutical “Doctrine of Jihad” and ending with the legalistic “Status ofNon-Moslems,” follows a logical pedagogy in the conventional understandingof jihad from an ideological framework to an actual interpretedlaw. Abraham also acknowledges factors leading to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism(p. 12), and thereby provides a succinct framework for furtherdiscussion. Inasmuch as these factors could have been more seamlessly tiedto current developments across the Middle East, Abraham treats the defunctclash between the Islamic world and the Soviet empire as more a symptomof “resisting secularism” than of addressing the actual appeal of Islamicfundamentalism itself to individuals and the collective Muslim psyche ...