Eloquent Incoherence

An interesting debate is currently taking place between Ali Eteraz, creator of online Islamic discussion forum Eteraz.org, and Robert Spencer, director of anti-Islam blog JihadWatch. Spencer is a dedicated Islamophobe whose writings are focused on attempting to prove that jihadist violence and rhetoric represent mainstream Islam, not just the views of fringe extremists. To this end, Spencer wrote an op-ed piece in the Emory University student newspaper The Emory Wheel arguing that “jihad as warfare against non-believers in order to institute Sharia worldwide” is a “constant element of mainstream Islamic theology… affirmed by all four principal schools of Sunni Muslim jurisprudence.” For a bigot, Spencer is a pretty smart guy. Unlike many Islamophobes, Spencer is reasonably well-versed in the intellectual history of Islam. Rather than citing directly to Quran and ahadith, which are always subject to interpretation, he quotes the writings of well-respected mainstream scholars such as ibn Taymiyya, ibn Khaldun, al-Qayrawani, and al-Mawardi on offensive jihad and warfare. Superficially, he seems to have made a convincing case that Muslim terrorism is but a manifestation of mainstream Islamic political theory.

In a post on his website responding to the op-ed, Eteraz correctly identifies the fatal flaw in Spencer’s arguments. He points out Spencer’s failure to distinguish between theology and jurisprudence and notes that none of the scholars Spencer quotes lived past 1406. These are more than just inconsequential oversights; unlike philosophers and theologians, jurists are bound by the context in which they live. While the former are concerned with philosophical matters relating to the attributes of God and the nature of human existence, the latter deal with actual legal and political problems. Opinions of jurists, even when framed in the most general of terms, are always informed by the factual realities of the problems they address.

In the case of jihad and warfare, the opinions of the eminent scholars Spencer quotes are limited by the manner in which they conceptualized war and international relations. Prior to the modern era of nation-states, the world was divided into empires that were in a perpetual state of war with each other. Emperors staked the legitimacy of their empires on religion and justified their invasions and conquests by appealing to God (some would argue that very little has changed). Critically, Islam didn’t create this model; it was born into it. Immediately upon its inception, the nascent Muslim state had to contend with the Christian Byzantine Empire and the Zoroastrian Persian Empire, who were themselves locked in a bitter, religiously-charged conflict. The rise and fall of Muslim empires generally followed the path of their non-Muslim counterparts. For every ibn Taymiyya that called for jihad against kafirs, there was an Urban II that called for a crusade against infidels. For every Haroon al-Rashid that sent Muslim armies to subdue a Christian nation, there was a Charlemagne that sought to conquer “pagans” so that they may be “saved”. In short, nothing that the scholars Spencer quotes or their emperor patrons did violated the established order of international relations. And in an era where the world’s population was a fraction of what it is now, bombs and missiles were nonexistent, and most battles occurred in sparsely-populated countrysides, perpetual war between nations was not nearly as bloody or destructive as it would be today.

Admittedly, what Eteraz describes is a recurring problem in both the writings of bigots such as Spencer and the radical Islamists who give him ammunition. Indeed, Spencer’s op-ed might as well have been authored by Ayman al-Zawahiri. And the problem is not confined to jihadi extremists; as Eteraz notes, today’s Islamic jurists have often exhibited a troubling over-reliance on opinions of the distant past in areas such as women’s rights, minority rights, and the issue of apostasy, among others. But the fact that no modern Muslim nation has sought to wage offensive jihad as a means of spreading Islam is an indication that the overwhelming majoriy of Muslims do not view the writings of past scholars on jihad as wholly applicable today. Muslim hostility toward the West usually stems from American and European policies Muslims perceive to be unjust, not the religion Westerners practice. Even jihadi extremists such as Bin Laden and Zawahiri couch much of their rhetoric in defensive terms. But something tells me Spencer is not interested in these realities. Rather, Spencer’s writings coupled with his support for destructive American and Israeli policies leads one to wonder whether he is on a jihad of his own.