Sacred Violence ... Part 6

“Sacred Violence - in Christianity and Islam,” - by Tony Harwood-Jones

SEGMENT #6

8. Sacred Violence in Islam

As we move, now, to examine Sacred Violence in Islam, we have to make several major mental shifts. Unfortunately, because of language, one of these is nearly impossible to make. English evolved among a people who thought primarily in Christian terms. The word forms for God are the word forms for a Christian God, anthropomorphic and personal. When these word forms are superimposed upon Islamic theology, they change it, ever so slightly, into something less awesome and majestic, less unified and holistic, and far more personal than it really is. Allah is not a person. Allah has intelligence and will and compassion and ninety-six other attributes, many of which may be found in a human, but Allah is not even remotely like a human. Therefore, even though we may talk about Allah using the personal English words, we must be continually aware of this difference, and adjust for it.

Again, in a North American environment, the New Testament words of Jesus carry an aura of authority even for those who effectively no longer believe. Our second mental shift is to allow that authority to diminish, transferring its impact and weight to the Qu’ran. This is difficult to do, for most of us have not grown up with the words of the Qu’ran ringing in our ears. In order to facilitate the shift, therefore, and to give the Qu’ran its proper authority, this section of the essay will quote it just as a faithful English-speaking Muslim would: instead of saying “As the Qu’ran says...” we will simply say, “God says....”

A third mental shift is to think less developmentally. Christianity has a built-in developmental factor: Christ promised the Holy Spirit to his followers, to guide them, to lead them into truth.⁵⁹ Christians have therefore been able to add, and to subtract, doctrinal emphases over the centuries. Not so Islam. The Revelation at Mecca and Medina was, in many ways, final. Although Islam did develop since that time, it has striven to interpret its development as a faithful and unchanging clarification of the original burst of light. God spoke clearly through Muhammad (and may Peace be upon him)! Where a topic was not discussed by the Qu’ran itself, tradition about the practice of the Prophet was thought sufficient to disclose God’s will on any matter. No new Revelation is necessary, no development other than a continual intense effort at clarifying what the Revelation means. For this portion of our essay, therefore, we too must focus primarily on the Revelation, and only incidentally on the sweep of Muslim history since the brief electric decades when it was given.

Our final mental shift is to eliminate, as much as possible, the deeply ingrained Western duality, between body and soul, public and private, church and state. Again, because of language, this is very hard to do, but it is essential. Islam is the religion of Oneness, Unity, or Tawhid in Arabic. God is one. His message is one. Our lives, therefore, cannot be divided into compartments, into sacred and secular. Nothing we do is exempt from the authority of the One God.

This holistic approach applies particularly to our subject of Sacred Violence. Christianity, at its inception, did not deal with problems of national policy. For more than three hundred years, no Christian was a head of State. As a result, the division between religion and politics became deeply ingrained. Not so with Islam. The very person who brought God’s final Revelation was himself a head of state. Issues of public policy were God’s issues, to exactly the same degree as were personal moral issues, or financial issues, or even issues of table manners! Is there fear of an invasion? The response must be under God and obedient to God. Has your neighbour wronged you? The response must be under God and obedient to God. It was all one. No division. Unity.

So what about violence? Does God ever guide us to do violence in his name? Sometimes, but it is subject to very specific control. First of all, killing is forbidden. God says,

Do not take any human being’s life -- [the life] which God has declared to be sacred....⁶⁰

In order to make the prohibition of killing stand out as boldly as possible, we have not given this verse in its entirety. It is not a blanket prohibition; there is an exception. Here is the complete verse:

Do not take any human being’s life -- [the life] which God has declared to be sacred -- otherwise than in the pursuit of justice. ⁶¹

Evidently, although human life is sacred, justice is also sacred, and if someone must be killed to bring about justice, so be it.

Is this exception to be taken as guidance for a public official? Is it guidance for courts and for capital punishment? Or are individuals also entitled to take the law into their own hands and deal out justice with death? The verse simply does not acknowledge the distinction. In all of life, believers are to understand that killing is forbidden, except in the pursuit of justice.

It should be said, however, that individual initiative is an unresolved problem in Islam. Precisely because the Revelation does not make a distinction between private and public, Muslims have debated the proper place of the individual throughout their history. Ijtihad, for example, a form of individual and creative interpretation of the Revelation, did occur in Islam for the first two or three centuries, but eventually it was discouraged, forbidden entirely in Sunni Islam,⁶² and strictly controlled among the Shi’ites.⁶³ Throughout Islam today, although an individual is understood to have freedom of choice, their choice is to submit, or not to submit, to the Revelation and the law which it provides. Officially, no individual may decide for themselves that a given passage of the Qu’ran applies at this moment: they must seek an existing interpretation, and follow it. But widely variant applications of the Revelation do exist, causing continual distress within the world of Islam.

The problem of individual interpretation, however, although extremely important, is not the subject of this essay, but it does have a bearing on it, as we shall shortly see. For the moment, all we can say is that the Qu’ran ignores the distinction between personal ethics and public policy, and, with respect to killing, God forbids it, except in the cause of Justice.

The concept of Justice is almost as central to Islam as is the concept of Tawhid, or Oneness, with which we have just been dealing. Justice is an attribute of God, and has many layers of meaning: to say that God is “Just,” is to affirm that God distributes his blessings fairly, that God rewards goodness and punishes wickedness, that God is Truth itself, and that God defends and protects the innocent.

It is in the promotion of Justice, at all these levels of meaning, that Islam usually permits violence. For instance, in what is sometimes called “the first verse of fighting,”⁶⁴ God says,

Permission to take up arms is hereby given to those who are attacked, because they have been wronged. ⁶⁵

This verse quite clearly links the taking up of arms to a Justice issue. The same Revelation goes on to say,

Had Allah not defended some men by the might of others, the monasteries and churches, the synagogues and mosques in which his praise is daily celebrated, would have been utterly destroyed. ⁶⁶

We note, in passing, that God declares it good that Christian and Jewish worship has been preserved. But the significance of this passage for our present discussion is its claim that the preservation of godly worship is the direct result of divinely inspired protective violence. Here we have an explicit working through of a question which Christians have raised, but never fully answered.

Both Christians and Muslims believe that God intervenes in behalf of the poor and the dispossessed. But the New Testament never says by what means God accomplishes this. The Ancient Jews knew the answer, and Islam knows it too, but Christians dance around the subject, trying to avoid saying that God sometimes rescues the poor by guiding certain humans to do violence in their cause. Muslims say it clearly. They have God’s own word about it:

Had Allah not defeated some by the might of others, the earth would have been utterly corrupted. But Allah is bountiful to his creatures. ⁶⁷

The bounty of God is specifically found in his raising up of mighty warriors, who will bring about Justice in the earth.

In Islam, therefore, God gives permission for violence. There are, in fact, three types of situation where violence is permitted, all of them aspects of Islamic Justice:
Violence is permitted
      -- as a response to aggression,
      -- as a punishment for wrongdoers, and
      -- as the correct treatment of pagans.
We must look, very briefly, at all three.

Violence as a response to aggression:
God says,

Fight for the sake of Allah those that fight against you, but do not attack them first. Allah does not love the aggressors.⁶⁸

Two things are at play here. First, an act of aggression in itself violates the Justice of God, God does not “love” it. If the believer, then, attacks the enemy first, it is the believer who violates God’s Justice. But, aggression, being unjust in its own right, does require a violent response, and the return blow is specifically an act of Justice.

In general, Islamic violence is always defensive. The “aggression” which triggers it, however, need not be violent, or involve weapons. That “aggression” may, in fact, be any violation of God’s Justice, even a broken promise, or a political plot.⁶⁹ In this regard, Islam takes the position that, even when no blood is shed, such things as racism, economic oppression, or colonialism, may be considered “aggression” in their own right, and sufficient justification of an armed response. This rationale fuels the current Islamic rejection of Western economic dominance in the Middle East. But it is also identical to the position of the African National Congress and of some Christian Liberation theologians.

Violence as punishment for criminals:
God’s great Revelation to the Prophet came in more than six thousand ayas, or verses. Most of them have a strong legislative flavour, but, in fact, only about eighty actually deal with what we would understand as legal topics. And in those eighty, the bulk of the attention is on marriage and on the laws of inheritance.⁷⁰ Criminal law, the way the West understands it, is negligible. The single verse on stealing, therefore, really stands out:

As for the man or woman who is guilty of theft, cut off their hands to punish them for their crimes. That is the punishment enjoined by Allah.⁷¹

Ordinarily it is totally unfair to Islam to focus on this text. It is, after all, only one six thousandth of the Qu’ran, and, when taken out of context it gives no clue to the overall majesty and beauty of the Revelation. But our purpose is to discern, in Islam, whether or not God commands humans to do violence, and this aya certainly indicates that God does. We should note, however, that this penalty, and a handful of others like it, is not always exacted in Islam today, even in countries which are careful to practice the full Shari’a law. They do not deny that God gave this law, but they feel that it is intended to be applied only in a society where complete Islamic Justice has already come into existence. In such a society there would be no poverty, no one would go without the basic necessities of life. Then, if someone should steal, there would be no excuse, and they should lose their hand.⁷²

In the Qu’ran, the list of conventional crimes and punishments is short, as we have said, but the whole Revelation is certainly very legislative in tone. The religion that has resulted is extremely legalistic, though the actual details of the law had to be worked out in the early years of the community. Known as the Shari’a, the finished system comprises legislation for the conduct of every aspect of life. It is detailed and it is specific; but it is by no means as violent as the amputation penalty might lead one to expect. What it maintains, both from the Qu’ran and from the example of the Prophet, is a stern attitude toward crime. In fact, the Shari’a approaches crime in a way that many Canadians, particularly those who think that stiffer penalties deter criminals, would applaud. For it is not the Muslim alone who thinks that some form of controlled violence is an appropriate response to crime.

Violence as the correct treatment of pagans:
This is probably the aspect of the Qu’ran which gives the non-Muslim the most problem. In it, God says,

Make war on [unbelievers] until idolatry is no more and Allah’s religion reigns supreme.⁷³

And, a little later on,

When the sacred months are over slay the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them. If they repent and take to prayer and pay the alms-tax, let them go their way. Allah is forgiving and merciful.⁷⁴

These verses have been intensely scrutinized by Muslim commentators from the very beginning. Quickly it was discerned that the unbelievers in question could not be the Christians or the Jews, for other verses specified dialogue with those religions. Also, because of the commandment not to attack anyone first, these injunctions were interpreted to apply only after war was declared. Yet another verse in the Qu’ran shows that, despite the phrase “until Allah’s religion reigns supreme,” God does not intend that Islam should be propagated at the point of a sword:

Had your Lord pleased [God says], all the people of the earth would have believed in Him. Would you then force faith upon men?⁷⁵

If the Muslim is forbidden to force faith upon people, then the interpretation of the injunction to ambush and kill unbelievers must be very narrow indeed! In fact, by the tenth century C.E., it was applied only to combatants in declared wars. Torture was forbidden, the killing of the old, of women, or of children was strictly curtailed, and safe-conduct by aman could be granted in peacetime to any unbeliever, by any Muslim.

And so we come to the word Jihad. It is one of the few Islamic words known to

Continued...