THE MILITARY DIMENSION OF THE PROPHETHOOD OF MUHAMMAD

Jihad in Islam

What does Islam mean?

Implications of the principle of Tawhid

Peace and justice instead of disorder and wrongdoing

Stages of Jihad and Its Main Principles

The first command: Read!

What does ‘reading’ mean?

Retaliation is not essential

Calling with wisdom and fair exhortation

In which cases can force be used?

Some Rules in Performing Jihad

What should be done when fighting is inevitable and unavoidable?

Obedience to those in power and command

Jihad in Islam

Islam is the religion appointed by God for the welfare of mankind, individually and collectively, in both worlds. It is based on belief in and worship of God, without associating with Him any partners whatever.

Belief in and worship of God requires on the part of a believer deep concern with creatures, animate or inanimate. The deeper one’s belief in and submission to God is, the deeper one’s concern for all creatures. Belief in the Unity of God allows no one on the earth to enjoy and exercise absolute freedom in dealing with creatures.

What does Islam mean?

Islam, being a word derived from the root SLM, meaning salvation and peace as well as submission, is the expression of God’s grace flowing in the arteries of the universe. Islam being the Divine system to which all creatures except man have willingly submitted themselves, there is no disorder observed throughout the universe. That is why Islam is, first of all, the religion of the universe. Everything in the universe is ‘Muslim’ for it obeys God by submission to His laws. Even a man who refuses to believe in God, or offers his worship to someone or something other than God, has perforce to be a Muslim as far as his bodily existence is concerned. For his entire life, from the embryonic stage to the body’s dissolution into dust after death, and every tissue of his muscles and every limb of his body follow the course prescribed for each by God’s law.

Implications of the principle of Tawhid

The principle of Tawhid in Islam implies the necessity of man’s being in harmony with the world around him. The vast realm of the universe, which is in submission to One God only, displays a coherence and harmony of which the human world is also a part. Although the human world is subject, in addition to the general laws of nature, to a particular set of laws special to itself, yet it is also in harmony with other laws governing the rest of the phenomena beyond it. Man, unlike his fellow creatures who tread ‘the path of nature’, is endowed with the power of free will. He carries the gift of freedom together with the obligation to harmonize his life with the rest of nature – a harmony which is also the path of his exaltation and progress. This is the path upon which God has originated the nature of mankind:

In order to be able to harmonize his life with the rest of nature, man should, first of all, realize his own personal integrity. This requires his application of his free will to his energies to keep them within the correct limits established by God. If he does not recognize any limits to his desire, he may, for example, usurp the property of others, seek illicit sexual relations, and so on. If, again, he does not recognize any limits to the use of his intellect, he may exploit it to deceive others. That is why man’s powers must be held in check: his intellect must be exercised with ‘wisdom’, and his desire and anger restrained by lawfulness and moderation. We should remember too that man is a social being; if he does not restrain himself as demanded by God, certainly wrongdoing, injustice, exploitation, disorder and revolutions will occur in society.

Peace and justice instead of disorder and wrongdoing

God does not approve wrongdoing and disorder. He wills that human beings should live in peace and, accordingly, that justice should prevail amongst them. It is, therefore, incumbent upon those who believe in One God and worship Him faithfully to secure justice in the world. Islam calls this responsibility jihad.

Jihad denotes, literally, doing one’s utmost to achieve something. It is not the equivalent of war, for which the Arabic word is qital. Jihad has a wider connotation and embraces every kind of striving in God’s cause. A mujahid is a person who is sincerely devoted to his cause, who uses all his physical, intellectual and spiritual capacity to serve it and employs all the force he commands in confronting any power which might stand in its way, and, whenever necessary, does not shirk risking his very life for it. All this is jihad. Jihad in the way of God is that striving in which man engages exclusively to win God’s good pleasure, to establish the supremacy of His religion and to make His Word prevail.

Besides jihad, the principle of amr bi’l-ma’ruf wa nahy an al-munkar (enjoining the good and forbidding the evil) seeks to convey the message of Islam to all human beings in the world and to establish a model Islamic community on a world-wide basis. The Islamic community is introduced by the Qur’an as a model community, one that is required to make every effort in either communicating to mankind what the Prophet communicated to them, or in exemplifying in their own lives what the Prophet, by his own conduct, translated into actual practice: Thus, We have made you a community justly balanced, that you might be witnesses for all mankind, and the Messenger may be a witness for you (al-Baqara, 2.143).

Stages of Jihad and Its Main Principles

The first command: Read!

The first revelation which came to God’s Messenger was the command read!. This command, coming as it did at a time when there was nothing yet to read, meant that a believer should exercise all his faculties, intellectual and spiritual, in discerning God’s acts in the universe and His laws in the creation and operation of the universe. Through this discernment, he is to purify himself, his mind, of all the superstitions coming from ignorance and, through observation and contemplation, equip himself with true knowledge.

What does ‘reading’ mean?

Man is not a being composed of only the mind; God has endowed him with many faculties each of which needs satisfaction. So, while feeding his mind, on the one hand, with Divine ‘signs’ manifested in the universe, he will cleanse his ‘heart’, on the other, of all his sins. He will live a balanced life in awareness of being supervised by God and continuously ask for His forgiveness. He will break, through seeking God’s forgiveness, the desires of his carnal self for forbidden things, and, through prayer, he will ask God to enable him to always do good deeds.

The command read!, thus signifies an action. For God’s Messenger, upon him be peace and blessings, it meant that, since God’s Messenger was absolutely pure in spirit and had no superstitions at all, he would have to start his mission as a Messenger of God. He was to recite to people the revelations of God, and instruct them in His signs in the universe, and by doing that, he would purify their minds of all the superstitions of the Age of Ignorance and their hearts of all their sins. He would enlighten them, intellectually and spiritually, by instructing them in both the ‘Revealed Book of God’, the Qur’an, and His ‘Created Book’, that is, the universe:

After he received the first revelation, the command read!, God’s Messenger returned home in excitement. He was sleeping wrapped in a cloak, ‘enwrapped’ by the suffering of people and the heaviness of his responsibility, when God commanded him:

The short period between the first revelation and the beginning of the communication of the Message to the others, the period marked by verses such as those above was of a preliminary kind for God’s Messenger. He had to prepare himself to perform the duty of conveying God’s Word of Weight, the Qur’an. He was to keep vigil the night long and recite the Qur’an in measure, because the vigil of the night is a time when impression is more keen and recitation more penetrating.

Jihad entails, besides conveying the Message to others, a believer’s struggle with his carnal self to build his genuine, spiritual character, overflowing with belief and inflamed with love. Jihad, with these two dimensions of it, continues, in the individual sphere, until the believer’s death, and up to the Last Day in the collective sphere. So, a short while after God’s Messenger received the order to keep vigil the night long, the following revelation came to him:

By these revelations, the Prophet, upon him be peace and blessings, was ordered to begin the preaching of Islam. He started from his relatives of the nearest kin and, after the command, Warn your tribe of nearest kindred (al-Shu‘ara’, 26.214), his call encompassed his tribe. This was followed by public preaching and, predictably, by reactions such as derisions, threats, tortures, offers of the most alluring kind and boycotting.

Retaliation is not essential

In Makka, God’s Messenger, upon him be peace and blessings, never resorted to, nor allowed, retaliation. For Islam came not to make mischief nor to cause dissentions among people. It came, in the words of Amir ibn Rabi’, the Muslim envoy to the Persian commander in the war of Qadisiyya during the caliphate of ‘Umar, to bring people out of the darkness of unbelief into the light of belief, to free them from ‘servanthood’ to servants to make them the servants of One God, and to elevate them from the pit of ‘earth’ to the height of ‘heaven’. Also, as stated earlier, Islam, literally meaning peace, salvation and submission, came to establish peace, first, in the inner worlds of human beings themselves, making them at peace with God, nature and themselves, and, then, in the entire world and universe. For this reason, peace and order are fundamental in Islam. It always seeks to spread in a peaceful atmosphere and refrains from resorting to force as much as possible. Islam never approves injustice in whatever form it is, and severely forbids bloodshed. According to the Qur’an:

Calling with wisdom and fair exhortation

Coming to eradicate injustice and corruption on the earth, and to ‘unite’ the earth with the heavens in peace and harmony, Islam seeks to call people with wisdom and fair exhortation, and does not resort to force until those who desire to maintain the corrupted order they built on injustice, oppression, self-interest and exploitation of others and usurpation of their rights, resist it to prevent its preaching. Thus, Islam allows the use of force in the following cases:

In which cases can force be used?

1. If unbelievers or polytheists or those who make mischief and corruption on the earth resist the preaching of Islam and try to block its way of conquering the minds and hearts of people. Being a God-revealed religion of truth, Islam aims to secure the well-being and happiness of mankind in both worlds and therefore has the right to enjoy the freedom of presenting itself to people. In case it is resisted or prevented, it offers its enemies three alternatives: either they will accept Islam, or allow its preaching or admit its rule. If they reject all three alternatives, Islam allows the use of force.

2. God permitted His Messenger to resort to the ‘sword’ only after he emigrated to Madina and established an independent state there. This permission was given because the Muslims were wronged (al-Hajj, 22.39). The verses revealed to express this permission are worth mentioning in order to understand the true nature of war in Islam and for what purposes it was made lawful:

(Fighting is) permitted to those who are fought against, because they have been wronged; and surely God is able to give them victory. Those who have been driven from their homes unjustly only because they said: ‘Our Lord is God’. For had it not been for God’s repelling some men by means of others, cloisters and churches and synagogues and mosques, wherein the Name of God is much mentioned, would assuredly have been pulled down. Assuredly God helps one who helps Him [His religion]. Surely God is All-Strong, All-Mighty. Those who, if We give them power in the land, establish worship and pay the poor-due and enjoin the good and forbid the evil. And God’s is the sequel of events. (al-Hajj, 22. 39-41)

It is clear from the verses above, and has been witnessed by history, that Islam resorts to force in order to defend itself and establish the freedom of belief. So, under the rule of Islam, the followers of other religions – Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus, etc. – are free to practice their religion. It is a historical fact which has been acknowledged even by many Western writers, that Christians and Jews have lived the most prosperous and happiest period of their history under the rule of Islam.

3. Islam, being the true religion revealed by God, the Lord of the Worlds, the All-Just and All-Compassionate, never approves any injustice in any part of the world. Besides, as declared in the verse, Surely We have written (decreed) in the Psalms after the Torah (and remind once more in the Qur’an) that My righteous servants will inherit the earth. (Al-Anbiya’, 21.105), the righteous servants of God are charged with the duty of submitting the earth to God’s rule, which depends on absolute justice and worship of only One God. They are also obliged to strive until persecution and the worship and obedience of false deities and unjust tyrants come to an end. For this reason, Islam orders its followers to fight for the cause of the feeble and oppressed among world people:

Some Rules in Performing Jihad

A believer cannot transgress the limits established by God. Therefore, he must observe the rules prescribed by God for fighting. Some of these rules which we have deduced from the Qur’an and the practice of the Prophet Muhammad, upon him be peace and blessings, are as follows:

1. A believer is one from whom God has bought his life and wealth in exchange for Paradise (al-Tawba, 9.111). He has dedicated himself to the cause of God and intends only to gain His good pleasure. So, whoever fights for other causes such as fame or material gain, or for racial or other ideological considerations of similar nature, he will not be regarded as a fighter with whom God is pleased.

2. God decrees in the Qur’an:

The believers are told that they should not take up arms against those who are not in opposition to the true faith, and that they should not resort to unscrupulous methods or to the indiscriminate killing and pillage which have characterized the wars of every era of ignorance, whether in the past or at present. The excesses alluded to in the verse above are acts such as taking up arms against women and children, the old and the injured, mutilation of the dead bodies of the enemy, devastation through the destruction of fields and livestock, and other similar acts of injustice and brutality. The verse stresses that force should be used only when its use is unavoidable, and only to the extent that is absolutely necessary.

What should be done when fighting is inevitable and unavoidable?

3. Where fighting is absolutely necessary and inevitable, the holy Qur’an exhorts believers not to avoid fighting. To this end:

a. They must not show any neglect in making the necessary preparations and taking the required precautions. They must prepare themselves morally and attain the spiritual state that twenty of them can overcome two hundred of the enemy:

In order to attain such a rank, the belief and trust of a Muslim in God should be very strong, and he should do his utmost to refrain from sins. Belief and God-fearing are two unbreakable ‘weapons’ of a Muslim, his two sources of inexhaustible power :

b. Besides the moral strength coming from sound belief and God-fearing, believers should also equip themselves with the most sophisticated weaponry. Force has an important place in obtaining the desired result, so believers cannot be indifferent to it. Rather, they must be much more advanced in science and technology than unbelievers so that they should not allow unbelievers to use ‘force’ for their selfish benefit. According to Islam, ‘right is might’; so, in order to prevent might from being right in the hands of unbelievers and oppressors, believers must be mightier than others. This is explicit in the Qur’an:

An Islamic state should be so powerful as to discourage the party of unbelief and oppression from attempting to attack it, nor should they be able to contemplate subjugating weak states of the world. It should be able to secure peace and justice in the world and no power should have the courage to make corruption in any part of the earth. This will be possible when Muslims equip themselves with a strong belief and righteousness in all their affairs, and also with scientific knowledge and the most sophisticated technology. They must combine science and technology with faith and good morals and use them in the service of humankind. For, as stated at the beginning of the chapter, belief in God calls for serving people and the deeper one is in belief in God, the deeper one’s concern for the created. When Muslims attain to this rank, God will never give unbelievers any way (of success) against the believers (al-Nisa’, 4.141). Otherwise, what the Prophet predicted will happen. (The forces of unbelief) will be united to make a concerted attack upon you. They will snatch the morsel out of your mouths and pillage your table.

c. When fighting is unavoidable, Muslims must not hesitate to take up arms and hasten to the front. The Qur’an exhorts Muslims to fight when necessary and severely reprimands those who show reluctance in mobilizing in the way of God:

Obedience to those in power and command

d. A community is like a ‘body’ in structure and functioning; like a body, it demands a ‘head’ having intellect. Therefore, obedience to the ‘head’ is of great significance for the prosperity of the community.

When God’s Messenger, upon him be peace and blessings, was raised in the desert of Arabia, the people resembled the scattered beads of a rosary. They were unaware of the importance of obedience and the benefits of collective life. God’s Messenger, upon him be peace and blessings, inculcated in them the feeling of obedience – obedience to God, His Messenger and to their superiors – and used Islam as an unbreakable rope to unite them:

It was because of the consciousness of obedience which God’s Messenger developed in his Companions that when he appointed a young man of eighteen, the son of his emancipated slave, as a commander over an army in which many elders like Abu Bakr, ‘Umar and ‘Uthman were present, none of the Companions thought of objecting to him. Likewise, in a military expedition, the commander ordered his soldiers to throw themselves into the fire they lighted. This was not an Islamic order, but some attempted to obey it. However, the others prevented them from committing a suicide and persuaded them to refer the matter to God’s Messenger and ask him whether they had to obey even the un-Islamic orders of the authority. Although it is unlawful to obey sinful orders, obedience is of vital importance in the collective life of a community, particularly to become victorious in a war.

e. One of the important points to be mentioned concerning jihad is that a believer cannot flee the battlefield. He must be steadfast in fighting and must not turn his back on the enemy in battle. Concerning this, the Qur’an decrees:

Fleeing on the battlefield is one of the seven major, perilous sins. For the one who commits this grave sin causes disorder in the Muslim ranks and demoralizes the others. He cannot be regarded as having firm belief in God and the Hereafter and his action means that he prefers the world over afterlife. A believer may leave the battlefield only to maneuver in battle or as a tactic or to join another company to fight in more appropriate conditions.

In the Battle of Yarmuk during the caliphate of Abu Bakr, may God be pleased with him, 20 thousand valiant men fought against 200 thousand Byzantines, and won the victory. Qabbas ibn Ashyam was one of the heroes of this battle. He lost one of his legs around noon, but he became aware of it only hours later when he dismounted from his horse. Years later, his grandson introduced himself to the Caliph ‘Umar ibn ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, saying: ‘O Caliph! I am the grandson of the one who lost his leg at noon but became aware of it towards evening.’

The Muslim army was made up of three thousand valiants in the battle of Muta which they fought against the Byzantine army of about 100 thousand men. They fought heroically, and both of the armies retreated at the same time. Despite this, the Muslim soldiers regarded themselves as having fled the battlefield and were ashamed to go in the presence of God’s Messenger, upon him be peace and blessings. However, the Prophet welcomed them and consoled them, saying: You did not flee. You retreated to join me. You will collect strength and go to fight with them again. It happened just as God’s Messenger foretold when the Muslim army formed by himself just before his death raided the southern part of Syria and two years later the Muslims dealt the Byzantines a deadly blow in the Battle of Yarmuk.