topics: |  history | philosophy | islam | religion

Much of the book focuses on a battle at Balakot in which
	Sayyid Ahmad of Rai Bareilly (1786–1831) and Shah Ismail (1779–1831),
	quintessential Islamic warriors in South Asian Muslim consciousness,
	were killed in a battle against the Sikhs on 6 May 1831.  [This is] 
	considered the only "real jihad" ever fought in the subcontinent.

	With the cry “Allahu Akbar” (“God is Great”) on his lips, Sayyid
	Ahmad had charged out of the mosque where he had said his final
	prayers, and then bravely faced death on the battlefield.

Jihad in the Quran: A milder connotation

The original meaning of jihad in the Quran is related to the struggle to be
human:
	Alas, not all things in life are easy;
	Even man struggles to be human. [ghalib]

The word jihad is derived etymologically from the Arabic root meaning to
strive against an undesirable opponent — an external enemy, Satan, or the
base inner self.  Pre-Islamic Arab society interpreted it as any endeavor in
the service of a worthy cause; other words were more commonly used for
warfare (qital or harb).  The opening sentence of the Prophet’s agreement
with the different tribes and religious communities of Medina after the
migration (hijrat) from Mecca mentions jahada as striving for the
collective well-being of the whole community consisting of believers and
nonbelievers.  Semantically, jahada cannot be interpreted as armed
struggle, much less holy war, without twisting its Quranic meaning.

The only form of jahada mentioned in the Quran as legitimate armed struggle
is jihad fi sabil allah— that is, jihad in the way of God. But even verses
employing that term are typically followed by exhortations to patience in
adversity and leniency in strength, the essence of being of gentle
disposition.

If the Quran does not lend itself well to the notion of jihad as
holy war, and far less to the idea of continuous warfare against infidels,
how did the discrepancy between the text and the later, legally
based interpretations of the concept arise?

In the first century of Islam, the extremist Kharajite sect defined jihad as
legitimate violence against the enemies of Islam, both internal and external,
and declared it a pillar of the faith. In the Kharajite view, Muslims
deviating from the Quran and practice as prescribed by the Prophet could not
remain part of the community. A jihad had to be waged against nonbelievers
and those associating other beings with God. Such a radical solution to the
problem of true faith met with stiff resistance from those who later assumed
the mantle of Sunni orthodoxy.  The Kharajites were roundly rejected and none
of the early Muslim legal schools endorsed their position. 7-8

What had given Islamic law its distinctive character and dynamism during the
lifetimes of the Prophet and the first four caliphs was precisely the
incorporation of ethical motivations into legal norms based on
interpretations of the revelation.

The need for an ideology to legitimate the wars of conquest fought by the
Umayyad (661–750) and Abbasid (750–1258) dynasties induced Muslim legists to
define jihad as armed struggle and to divorce law from ethics. Classical
juridical texts skirted around the moral and spiritual meanings of jihad to
concentrate on the material facets of warfare—the division of spoils, the
treatment of non-Muslims, and the rules of conduct for the Muslim army. Such
stipulations were matched by the invention of traditions (hadith) extolling
jihad as armed struggle. 9

Jihad Law in South Asia

A spate of conquests by Muslim warlords from the beginning of the second
millennium on is often described as the “coming of Islam to India.”
... Islam in South Asia, far from being a signed and sealed product exported
from West Asia, was fashioned by the Indian environment.  Muslim rulers’
recourse to an ideology of jihad for purposes of legitimacy was
counterbalanced by the practical need to govern non-Muslim subjects. Despite
the demographics, India under Muslim rule was considered a Dar-ul-Islam (an
abode of peace). According to the jurists, jihad could only be waged against
a Dar-ul-Harb (an abode of war). 21

The commentary of two Hanafi scholars—Abu Yusuf and Muhammad ash- Shaybani—on
the twelfth-century Central Asian jurist Ali ibn Abi Bakr Marginani’s
Al-Hedaya provided the blueprint for Islamic jurisprudence in the
subcontinent.  Islamic legal theory does not recognize custom as an
independent source of law. In the absence of textual sources, Al-Hedaya
accorded customary practices a role in legal theory, thereby facilitating the
adaptation of Islamic principles to preexisting social customs in newly
conquered territories.

Hanafi law marks the triumph of the material over the spiritual in Islamic
law. Ownership of property was the defining feature of the legal personality,
or zimma, defined as an individual who can claim rights and incur
obligations. From zamm, “to blame,” zimma means the capacity to incur
contractual obligation and resembles aman, in that it guarantees the security
of life and property. The Islamic concept of zimmi, a non-Muslim granted
peace by a Muslim authority, was a substantial improvement over slavery.
Zimmis were given equal legal status if they were owners of property.  As a
human being, a slave is a legal person.  But as the property of other people,
a slave cannot own property and is therefore not a full legal person.
Without erasing all differences between Muslims and non-Muslims,
discrimination in matters to do with religion did not extend to the secular
sphere of socioeconomic interactions.

A succession of Muslim writers
commenting on Mahmud of Ghazni’s raids into India between 997 and 1030
defined it as a jihad against kafirs. A kafir is one who denies the
truth of the one and only God. Its transference to entire groups of people,
by blurring the distinction between the temporal and the sacred, fuels the
belief that Muslims are enjoined by their religion to subjugate, convert, or,
failing that, kill infidels. Like all half-truths, this charge has resonated
in inverse proportion to its historical credibility. Muslim warlords no doubt
had a sense of their religious identity and sought legitimacy in Islamic law
whenever it suited their purpose. But when temporal necessity proved
incompatible with sacred law, Muslim warlords and dynasts had no qualms about
skirting around the injunctions of the sharia. Throughout the long period of
Muslim rule in the subcontinent, the sharia remained subordinate to the laws
decreed by temporal rulers, displaying varying degrees of faith and piety.

A closer analysis of the historical evolution of the sharia in South Asia,
however, militates against a clear-cut separation of the religious and the
secular. With the dissociation of ethics from law after the third century of
Islam, the content of the sharia, if not its form, was subject to
secularization through constant interpretation and change. Hanafi fiqh
became the dominant school of jurisprudence in the subcontinent as early as
the reign of Qutb-ud-din Aibek. All manner of court cases were decided by
judges (qazis), however, using the principle of equity (itisihan) to
privilege customary laws (urf) over the sharia.  Known as qanun-i-shahi
or zawabit, these contained both religious and secular elements and applied
to both Muslims and non-Muslims in varying measure.

A preoccupation with external conformity to Islam, understandable in a
context where many of the faithful were new converts, is borne out by legal
rulings on waging jihad and the extension of peace (aman). Since jihad can be
waged only against a non-Muslim who refuses to accept Islam or pay the jizya,
the jurists spilled considerable ink arguing over when an infidel’s
conversion was legitimate. Their rulings betray a concern with drawing
community boundaries.

There is a striking lack of concern with the soundness of faith (iman) or
the performance of virtuous actions (ihsan) on the part of the new
adherents. A non-Muslim who declares himself a Muslim is not considered one
unless he publicly renounces his earlier faith. If he changes his mind, he
will be killed, even if he recites the first part of the Islamic creed:
“There is no God but God.” In the event that the new convert does not recant
publicly but says his prayers with the Muslim congregation, he will be
considered a Muslim. The jurists disagreed whether a new convert who says his
prayers in private can be deemed a Muslim. Abu Hanifa thought that private
prayers were insufficient to bring the new convert into the Muslim fold...

Under the norms of Muslim rule, absolute sovereignty was vested in Allah. As
his vice-regent — or the “shadow of God on earth” — the ruler had ultimate
responsibility to Allah, which served as a check on the ruler’s secular role
as lord and master of his subjects. The administration of law and order,
intrinsic to legitimacy, was vital to fulfilling that responsibility, given
the Quranic emphasis on justice and equity, or adl. 26

long before Akbar’s religious policy of peace for all and his great grandson
Dara Shikoh’s exertions to assimilate Sufism and Hindu mysticism, Sufis
studying the Advaita Vedanta found it entirely compatible with Islam.[51] p.40

50. Rizvi, Muslim Revivalist Movements, p. 255.
51. Ibid., pp. 59–60. Also see Rizvi, A History of Sufism in India, 2:413–424.

Shah Waliullah (1703–1762), credited with explicating the most systematic
theory of jihad in South Asia...

Aurangzeb’s imposition of Hanafi law made a mockery of the administration of
justice. Zealous attempts by the department of accountability (ihtisab) to
act as a moral police encroached on similar duties previously assigned to
Muslim law officers. The accountability department’s agenda for establishing
Islamic morality was the prohibition of consumption of wine and cannabis
(bhang), destruction of temples, and supervision of weights and measures in
the market. It failed to eradicate the smoking of cannabis—even the muezzins
of Delhi mosques allegedly smoked it. The department tried compensating by
enforcing prescribed lengths for trousers and beards, making a laughing stock
of its officials and further undermining its own credibility. Instead of
spreading morality, the promotion of sharia laws allowed criminals and
corrupt revenue officials to expiate their crimes by embracing
Islam. Unscrupulous debtors sought refuge in Islam to evade creditors, by
accusing them of reviling the Prophet. The result was complete degeneracy
and, worse still, utter disarray and confusion in the administration of
justice.

A firm believer in the Islamic principles of justice (adl) and
balance (tawazun), Waliullah tried revitalizing Sunni orthodoxy
with a frontal attack on the spread of polytheistic and heretic
practices among Indian Muslims.

Valuing action above intellectual insight, he stressed the external over the
internal dimensions of Muslim identity and called for renewed interest in
jihad as armed struggle.

Contents

  List of Maps ix
  Preface xi
1 Jihad as Ethics, Jihad as War 1
2 Jihad in Precolonial South Asia 20
3 The Martyrs of Balakot 58
4 Jihad in Colonial India 114
5 Jihad as Anticolonial Nationalism 176
6 Islam Subverted? Jihad as Terrorism 239
  Conclusion 302
  Glossary 317
  Notes 321
  Index 357

Glossary

   Lashkar-i-Tayyiba   Army of the Righteous

                adab   culture; correct social behavior
                 adl   justice
              akhlaq   ethics
                alim   religious scholar
        amal-i-salah   correct deeds
                aman   peace; protection
    amir-ul-momineen   leader of the faithful
               aqida   religious belief
                 aql   reason
                baqa   salvation
               bidat   innovation
         Dar-ul-Aman   abode of peace
         Dar-ul-Harb   abode of war
        Dar-ul-Islam   abode of peace
               dawah   propagation of faith
               dawla   government
                 din   Islamic notion of religion as an all-encompassing
                         	way of life
              duniya   world
                fana   annihilation
                farz   duty
                fiqh   Islamic jurisprudence
               fitna   social discord; sedition
              fitrat   original nature
              fuqaha   legists
              futawa   chivalry
      ghair muqallid   one who does not adhere to any school of jurisprudence
               ghazi   warrior of the faith
              hadith   tradition
   haq (pl. haqiqah)   truth
                harb   warfare
              hijrat   migration
               hijri   Islamic calendar dating from the migration of the
                          community to Medina
    hud (pl. hudood)   limits
       huquq al-abad   private rights of individuals
      huquq al-allah   rights of God
              ibadat   worship
               ihsan   virtuous action
             ihtisab   accountability
                ijma   consensus of the community
             ijtihad   independent reasoning
                 ilm   knowledge
                iman   faith
           insaniyat   humanity
           irtifaqat   different stages of civilization
           irtiqadat   religious consciousness
                ishq   love; intuition
               islam   peace; submission
            itisihan   equity
            jahaliya   [literally] ignorance; term used for pre-Islamic Arabia
               jihad   struggle
      jihad al-akbar   the greater jihad
     jihad al-asghar   the lesser jihad
jihad fi sabil allah   jihad in the way of Allah
        jihd-o-jihad   exertion in a positive endeavor
               jizya   poll tax
               kafir   infidel
              kalima   Muslim confessional
             khairaj   tax on newly converted Muslims
             khalifa   temporal and spiritual leader of Muslims, caliph
              khanqa   Sufi shrine
            khilafat   institutionalized spiritual and temporal authority
                over   the Muslim community; caliphate
               khudi   self
                kufr   infidelity
              khutba   religious sermon
              maktab   religious school
             maulana   learned man
              maulvi   title given to Muslim religious preacher
              mazhab   religion
              millat   religious community
               miraj   Prophet Muhammad’s ascension to the heavens
               momin   a true believer
            muamalat   social relations
            muharram   Shia festival of mourning to commemorate the
                         	martyrdom of Husain at Karbala
            mujaddid   renewer of the faith
            mujtahid   one who has legal training to exercise independent
                         	reasoning
            mustamin   non-Muslims protected under Muslim rule
             nechari   naturalist; one who reduces religion to worldly matters
                 pir   spiritual guide
       qanun-i-shahi   secular law
             qawwali   a genre of Sufi devotional music
                qazi   judge
               qisas   just retaliation
               qital   fighting
                qutb   pole, axis; spiritual medium through whom God
                          and the Prophet Muhammad communicate
             shaheed   martyr
               shirk   polytheism
             shuhudi   adherent of the principle of wahdut al-shuhud
              tanzih   God’s transcendence
              taqlid   blind imitation
             tariqah   correct path
             tashbih   God’s likeness in created beings
             tawazun   balance
               tawba   repentance
              tawhid   Islamic principle of the unity of creation
               tazir   civil punishment(s) not specified in the Quran
              taziya   consolation; Shia passion play(s) during muharram
              tehzib   culture
         ummah/ummat   worldwide community of Muslims
                 urf   customary law
                ushr   tithe, tax on one-tenth of the proceeds from the land
    wahdut al-shuhud   unity of appearances
     wahdut al-wujud   unity of creation
             wujudis   adherents of the principle of wahdut al-wujud
               zakat   Muslim alms tax
             zawabit   secular law
               zimmi   protected non-Muslims living under Muslim rule
                zina   adultery