Dangerous Religious Ideas: The Deep Roots of Self-Critical Faith in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam by Rachel S. Mikva

Author:Rachel S. Mikva [Mikva, Rachel S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780807051870
Amazon: 0807014761
Barnesnoble: 0807014761
Goodreads: 51457969
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 2020-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

THE SHAPING OF EMPIRE AND OTHERNESS

It is not clear to what extent religion was the driving force of Islam’s imperial ambitions. Various records suggest the conquerors were Arabs more than Muslims. According to Jonathan Berkey, “Umar seems to have regarded himself, first and foremost, as the leader of the Arabs, and their monotheistic creed as the religious component of their new political identity.” One telling example is that he did not require Christian Arabs to pay the jizya, the head-tax theoretically imposed on all non-Muslims in the new empire.18 Yet it is worth calling to mind Walter Wink’s comment: “The gods are not a fictive masking of the power of the human state; they are its actual spirituality.”19 Islam forged a theology that justified conquest and shaped the emerging culture at the same time that the rapid growth of empire influenced the faith’s early development. There are numerous religious themes that relate to conquest, including greater and lesser jihad, ethics of military engagement, the conceptual division of dar el Islam and dar el harb (abode of Islam and abode of war), and dhimmi status for People of the Book.20

Of these, dhimmitude seems to be most substantially linked to ideas of chosenness in Islam, but the others require at least brief attention, particularly in the current political climate that overemphasizes militant expressions of Islam. Jihad means struggle, not holy war; it designates striving to follow in the way of Allah. Islamic tradition recognizes many different kinds of jihad; while it includes military struggle, it can also connote struggle against persecution, against materialism, or for deeper commitment to God’s will. A well-known hadith reports that Muhammad charged a group coming home from battle, “You have returned from the lesser struggle to the greater struggle,” which is understood to mean that spiritual striving is more challenging or more religiously significant than conquest.21 Although the chain of transmission is contested, the teaching still shapes the way most Muslims think about jihad; the distinction it makes actually facilitates self-critical faith. Some argue that jihad is by definition nonviolent. Nadia Yassine (b. 1958), a spokeswoman for a prominent Islamist movement in Morocco, maintained that the sin of istikbar (arrogance) is the driving force of Islamist violence. Muslims are required to struggle against this lust for power: “A true mujahid will never deploy violent instruments or engage in practices that themselves express the urge to dominate others.”22 Education, protest, and peaceful political activism are their tools for societal transformation.

Islam’s instructions for the conduct of war require a capacity of self-restraint. Qur’an 2:190 authorizes the community to fight against those who fight against them, but without transgressing limits. Although contemporary extremists lead many people to presume otherwise, Islamic law forbids harm of noncombatants, mutilation, and other excesses of battle.23 Today’s Islamophobia industry contributes to the erroneous assumption that Muslims divide the world into the abode of Islam and the abode of war, a binary perspective that conjures images of global conquest. The medieval terminology merely sought to establish

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