Author: Paul Anderson
Publication: BBC News
Date: February 14, 2003
URL: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/2761531.stm
The Islamic notion of war is closely
linked to a declaration of jihad or holy war.
The concept is burned into the consciousness
of most non-Muslims as the holy war against the infidel, blessed by God,
offering either victory or a path to eternal paradise.
But for Muslims that tells only
half the story.
For them, jihad is as much about
personal challenges as it is about struggle on the battlefield.
Interpretation
Retired Pakistani general Masud
Barqi says jihad is a fight against injustice.
"The very meaning 'jihad' is to
try hard for something. Jihad can be against illiteracy, against poverty,"
he says.
Jihad is enshrined in the Koran,
General Barqi says, as an act of self-defence, which is just in the face
of aggression and oppression
"Islam never allows you to go and
fight just to impose your religion. This has been a totally wrong interpretation
and most of the people in the West have been led to believe this."
One of the calls to jihad in the
Koran, al-Bakra chapter, verse 244 says:
"... and slay them wherever ye catch
them and turn them out wherever you have been turned out. Fight them...
such is the reward for those who reject faith."
In Islam, such exhortations to battle
are open to interpretation because the faith has no centralised system
of governance.
Tyrants
Syed Munawwar Hasan, secretary-general
of the radical religious party Jamaat-e-Islami, says jihad is a fight against
tyranny and for the establishment of peace and justice in society.
"I talk on this subject to so many
people, dozens of people everyday, and I try to impress upon them that
they should come out and speak out and struggle against all this tyranny,"
he says.
Mr Hasan has a clear list of tyrants.
"Americans are supporting the state
terrorism of Israel in Palestine, Indian terrorism, the state terrorism
of India against Kashmiris and they're supporting and patronising the Russian
state terrorism against Chechnya.
"Whenever and wherever in the world,
if Muslims are being killed, Americans are always supporting the tyrants."
The view of just cause, with its
roots in Koranic notions of jihad, is shared by many in the Muslim world,
including its liberals.
Professor Pervez Hoodbhoy from Quaid-e-Azam
University in Islamabad is one.
He is sickened by fundamentalism,
but even more sickened by the American assumption of a just cause in its
campaign against Iraq.
"Obviously, the cause of the United
States is unjust. It is manifestly unjust because they're bombing a country
which has no means to defend itself," Professor Hoodbhoy says.
On the other hand, the world is
watching and seeing that the United States has absolutely no objection
to Israeli bulldozers levelling entire communities, and so this breeds
a sense of hatred..."
Zeal and rage
In the city of Rawalpindi, near
Islamabad, it becomes evident just how pliable the idea of a just war really
is, how it can be moulded to fit the circumstances of the moment.
Fourteen years after the Soviet
withdrawal from Afghanistan, you can still buy books exhorting young mujahideen
fighters to acts of violence.
They are published not by the many
religious schools that pepper the border areas between Afghanistan and
Pakistan, but by the University of Nebraska in the United States.
The idea of the Americans was to
fill the hearts of the young mujahideen fighters with zeal and rage.
So, the argument goes, the Americans
are not only fighting an unjust campaign, they brought the whole thing
on themselves.