שוב הם יורים. למה, בעצם? תשובה פשוטה: הם לא יכולים להפסיק. למה? תשובה קצת מורכבת. היום נתחיל בקורס למה הם יורים? המורים, כפי שתראו, אינם, חלילה, עיתונאים או מזרחנים מטעם השלטון. ובכן, שיעור ראשון: מהו גיהאד? חשוב להדגיש: כל ההדגשות - שלי Encyclopedia of Islam & the Muslim World Richard C. Martin, Said Amir Arjomand, Marcia Hermansen, Abdulkader Tayob, Rochelle Davis, John Obert Voll. 1, USA 2004, pp. 377 - 379 JIHAD The word jihad is derived from the Arabic root jahada, meaning “to strive” or “to exert oneself” toward some goal. In this general sense, jihad could mean striving to achieve something with no particular moral value, or even a negative value. The Quran itself twice uses the verb when describing the efforts of pagan parents to induce their Muslim-convert children to return to polytheism (29:8, 31:15). Other occurrences of this verbal form and its derivatives, however, are limited to the struggle of the Muslims to attain and maintain their faith. Thus, jihad has come to mean in the Islamic context only a virtuous struggle, toward some praiseworthy end, as defined by religion. It is therefore often linked with the phrase fi sabil Allah,meaning “struggle in the path of God.” The Classical Theory Following the Prophet’s death, Muslim scholars produced a large body of literature analyzing Quranic terms and collecting traditions of the Prophet as part of their effort to codify divine law (sharia). Defining and understanding jihad, a concept with complex religious and moral significance, naturally occupied a great deal of their attention. The scholars outlined a number of different types of jihad, all of which may be grouped into two basic categories, the spiritual jihad and the physical jihad. The objects of the first type included one’s own soul (nafs), whose evil inclinations had to be overcome, or Satan (Shaitan), whose attempts to sow doubt and confusion and to lead the believer astray had to be perpetually fought. The physical jihad was aimed at unbelievers outside the Muslim community, as well as hypocrites and troublemakers within the Muslim ranks. Its goal was to establish the supremacy of divine law and thereby to promote justice and social welfare according to Islamic values. In this sense, jihad was closely related to the Qur’anic injunction that Muslims “command the right and forbid the wrong” (amr bi’l l-ma’ruf wa nahy an al-munkar). . . . But the most widespread use of the term jihad in classical Islamic thought was in the sense of a divinely sanctioned struggle, through war if necessary, to establish Islamic sovereignty and thereby to propagate the Islamic faith to unbelievers. In classical jurisprudence (fiqh), the dominant strand of intellectual activity in these early centuries, the chapters on jihad in legal treatises contained rules for the declaration, conduct, and conclusion of such religiopolitical wars. The jurists’ attention was focused on what may be called the expansionist jihad. The imam was obliged to undertake a jihad whenever the conditions of the Islamic state permitted him to reduce dar al-harb and bring its lands and peoples into dar al-islam.This was a collective duty of the Muslim community (fard kifaya), one that required participation only from those financially and physically capable of undertaking it. One school of Sunni jurisprudence, the Shafi’i, interposed a third category between the other two, dar al-sulh(land of truce), comprising peoples with which the Muslims had a treaty of truce, which suspended, but did not end, the jihad obligation. The maximum duration of such a truce, according to most scholars, was ten years, although nothing prevented the imam from renewing the truce if he deemed it in the Muslims’ interest. Modern Interpretations The Christian missionary activity that accompanied British rule in India led some Indian Muslims to undertake major revisions of classical notions of jihad. The literature produced by these writers is unmistakably apologetic in tone, straining to answer the charge of Christian writers that Islam was spread by the sword. According to the apologists, the wars of early Islam were purely defensive in nature, and jihad in modern times should be largely divested of its military connotations and reduced mainly to its spiritual aspects. Such writings inevitably created a backlash among other Muslim interpreters. Two broad reactions may be identified, the modernist and the fundamentalist. The modernists’ goal is not so much to respond to criticisms of early Islamic history and dogma, but to reinterpret jihad in ways that make it compatible with the principles of modern international law. Thus, they challenge the classical theory’s conception of a dar al-islamin opposition to a dar al-harb, pointing out that such categories are nowhere to be found in the Qur’an or hadith. If these two basic sources for Islamic law and ethics are properly analyzed, they claim, jihad cannot be properly understood as a war to spread Islam or subjugate unbelievers. It is waged only in self-defense, in conformity with international law, when the lives, property, and honor of Muslims are at stake. The fundamentalists also appeal to the Qur’an and hadith to challenge what they consider various false understandings of jihad. First, they refute the mystical strand of thought that emphasizes the superiority of the inner, spiritual jihad over the outer, physical jihad. By the end of the Qur’anic revelation, according to them, jihad meant a struggle, through fighting if necessary, to establish the Islamic order over all unbelievers. The more tolerant and pacific texts relating to unbelievers were abrogated by the later, more belligerent verses. But the category of unbelievers in fundamentalist writings includes nominal Muslims as well as non-Muslims. The transformation of hypocritical Muslim societies into true Islamic communities, led by true muslim leaders, is the immediate goal of most fundamentalist ideologies. Although some writers continue to speak of dar al-Islamand dar al-harb, the jihad to spread Islam beyond its current borders seems for most fundamentalists to be a secondary concern. As for the proper conduct of war today, the vast majority of Muslim scholars agree that principles of international humanitarian law are compatible with Islamic teachings. These include the notion of noncombatant immunity and the prohibition against inhumane forms of killing. Muslim terrorist groups have, however, sought to justify the killing of civilians on Islamic grounds, but their arguments and tactics have been condemned by mainstream scholars. Finally, many Muslims today are trying to reclaim the broad meaning of jihad as “effort” or “struggle” apart from war. Increasingly, we find references to such struggles as the “jihad for literacy” or the “jihad for economic development.”
Posted on: Fri, 08 Aug 2014 06:44:53 +0000
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