The Colonel’s Jihad

Sometimes you read and not much seems to happen in your brain. You seem to just passively interpret and, with a bit of luck, store the information. In my case an example of that would be Colonel Gaddafi’s Jihad against Switzerland.

Thanks to much negative publicity most people are familiar with the term ‘Jihad’. Acquaintance, not knowledge, is a characteristic of this type of familiarity, as the most likely translation you will have encountered is ‘holy war’. Not that it is outright wrong to call Jihad a holy war, it just isn’t enough. Jihad is much more than just warfare against unbelievers (or kaafir, non-Muslims), it is ‘an effort’, generally aimed at ‘God’s cause’.

This made me think about what Libya’s Colonel did.  His words about Switzerland certainly carried a rather offensive tone, and they came from the mouth of someone not quite suited to call for Jihad anyway. I even wonder to what extent the whole concept can still be used, as it carries an intimate relation to ‘them’ and ‘us’, as expressed by the terms ‘daar al-harb’ and ‘daar al-islam’ respectively.

I am not about to lecture any one of you in Islam, thanks to both a lack of time and knowledge. Besides, there are many books available already. Even someone like me, however, is able to spot a difficulty. Whenever Jihad was called for in the past, it happened via religious authorities, i.e. Islamic scholars. Members of these high-ranks achieved their status via a long route of education. The Colonel does not, to my awareness, hold any such position. This is a trend that has become more prominent in the past decades: Rather than relying on old traditions and the presumably knowledgeable scholars these produced, more radicalized organizations and/or persons started to take matters into their own hands.

The question is not, in this case, whether or not this accords with Islamic ways. Very few people care about the Colonel’s message anyway, as most of it is aimed at bolstering his own image (from what I’m able to tell, the only reason he has for spreading the Jihad message is that it’ll picture him as one of the very few that is able to stand up against the Swiss’ minaret ban). The question is whether any ‘holy war’ to any other country is even remotely Islamic.

Being an atheist, I have no reason or driving force that makes me want to defend Islam at all, but we should get the facts as clear as we can. And Jihad is something in need of further filling in: It aims at making an effort’ that supports or is in accordance with ‘God’s case’. What, however, is that? I’d say first and foremost being a good Muslim. This is something much more personal and much more acceptable too, as it can be achieved by striving for justice, responsibility and other values much more common and explicit in Western traditions. There is also another sense to ‘Jihad’, one which is encountered in the old law-traditions of Islam. By being tied to expansion and defense of territories, easily explained by accumulation of land in the early years of Islam, it is much more hooked-up with violence and warfare.

The expansive drifts of nations or churches in the ‘Dark Ages’ are not new to anyone; defensive tendencies might be. Arab countries which were Muslim states could negotiate a peace treaty with non-Muslim states, for whatever reasons, for a ten year time-span (after which re-negotiations were prescribed). These were based on the difference I mentioned earlier on: ‘daar al-harb’ and ‘daar al-islam’, meaning places that weren’t yet Islamic (‘houses of war’) and places where Islam already prevailed (‘house of Islam’). Muslims define themselves by an ‘us’ that is not tied to any geographical location, ethnicity or race, however.

Their religion (made up by the Quran, Hadieth, Sharia etc) is what binds them, so this means that any Jihad against any other country will necessarily involve other Muslims too, as they are spread throughout the world. Why rally if living the life of a Muslim is possible in Switzerland, not despite but because of such a wide rule of law? It is ironic therefore that minarets became banned as a result of their image that spoke of a violent ideology and an irrational, intolerant religion, and that the only reaction the Colonel could come up with was exactly that.

For an ideology to work the means are exclusion, the end is war. For a Muslim the end is to serve God, the means are to live well. Most of our values are not that different, even if our norms are. There’s a whole lot of distance to be covered before democracy and Islam go hand in hand, despite many examples that it is certainly possible, but we should not paint the picture solely in black.