{"id":7099,"date":"2014-03-06T10:57:21","date_gmt":"2014-03-06T18:57:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=7099"},"modified":"2014-03-06T10:57:21","modified_gmt":"2014-03-06T18:57:21","slug":"islamic-jihad-and-the-doctrine-of-abrogation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/islamic-jihad-and-the-doctrine-of-abrogation\/","title":{"rendered":"Islamic Jihad and the Doctrine of Abrogation"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Raymond Ibrahim \/\/\u00a0RaymondIbrahim.com<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Opened_Qur'an\"
el7bara via Flickr<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While other scriptures contain contradictions, the Koran is the only holy book whose commentators have evolved a doctrine to account for the very visible shifts which occur from one injunction to another. No careful reader will remain unaware of the many contradictory verses in the Koran, most specifically the way in which peaceful and tolerant verses lie almost side by side with violent and intolerant ones. The ulema were initially baffled as to which verses to codify into the Shari\u2019a worldview\u2014the one that states there is no coercion in religion (2:256), or the ones that command believers to fight all non-Muslims till they either convert, or at least submit, to Islam (8:39, 9:5, 9:29). To get out of this quandary, the commentators developed the doctrine of abrogation, which essentially maintains that verses revealed later in Muhammad\u2019s career take precedence over earlier ones whenever there is a discrepancy. In order to document which verses abrogated which, a religious science devoted to the chronology of the Koran\u2019s\u00a0verses evolved (known as\u00a0an-Nasikh wa\u2019l Mansukh<\/em>, the abrogater and the abrogated).<\/p>\n

But why the contradiction in the first place? The standard view is that in the early years of Islam, since Muhammad and his community were far outnumbered by their infidel competitors while living next to them in Mecca, a message of peace and coexistence was in order. However, after the Muslims migrated to Medina in 622 and grew in military strength, verses inciting them to go on the offensive were slowly \u201crevealed\u201d\u2014in principle, sent down from Allah\u2014always commensurate with Islam\u2019s growing capabilities. In juridical texts, these are categorized in stages: passivity vis-\u00e1-vis aggression; permission to fight back against aggressors; commands to fight aggressors; commands to fight all non-Muslims, whether the latter begin aggressions or not.<\/a>[1]\u00a0Growing Muslim might is the only variable that explains this progressive change in policy.<\/p>\n

Other scholars put a gloss on this by arguing that over a twenty-two year period, the Koran\u00a0was revealed piecemeal, from passive and spiritual verses to legal prescriptions and injunctions to spread the faith through jihad and conquest, simply to acclimate early Muslim converts to the duties of Islam, lest they be discouraged at the outset by the dramatic obligations that would appear in later verses.<\/a>[2]\u00a0Verses revealed towards the end of Muhammad\u2019s career\u2014such as, \u201cWarfare is prescribed for you though you hate it\u201d<\/a>[3]\u2014would have been out of place when warfare was actually out of the question.<\/p>\n

However interpreted, the standard view on Koranic abrogation concerning war and peace verses is that when Muslims are weak and in a minority position, they should preach and behave according to the ethos of the Meccan verses (peace and tolerance); when strong, however, they should go on the offensive on the basis of what is commanded in the Medinan verses (war and conquest). The vicissitudes of Islamic history are a testimony to this dichotomy, best captured by the popular Muslim notion, based on a\u00a0hadith<\/em>, that, if possible, jihad should be performed by the hand (force), if not, then by the tongue (through preaching); and, if that is not possible, then with the heart or one\u2019s intentions.<\/a>[4]<\/p>\n

That Islam legitimizes deceit during war is, of course, not all that astonishing; after all, as the Elizabethan writer John Lyly put it, \u201cAll\u2019s fair in love and war.\u201d<\/a>[5]\u00a0Other non-Muslim philosophers and strategists\u2014such as Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, and Thomas Hobbes\u2014justified deceit in warfare. Deception of the enemy during war is only common sense. The crucial difference in Islam, however, is that war against the infidel is a perpetual affair\u2014until, in the words of the Koran, \u201call chaos ceases, and all religion belongs to Allah.\u201d<\/a>[6]\u00a0In his entry on jihad from the\u00a0Encyclopaedia of Islam<\/em>, Emile Tyan states: \u201cThe duty of the jihad exists as long as the universal domination of Islam has not been attained. Peace with non-Muslim nations is, therefore, a provisional state of affairs only; the chance of circumstances alone can justify it temporarily.\u201d<\/a>[7]<\/p>\n

Moreover, going back to the doctrine of abrogation, Muslim scholars such as Ibn Salama (d. 1020) agree that Koran 9:5, known as\u00a0ayat as-sayf<\/em>\u00a0or the sword verse,\u00a0has abrogated<\/a>\u00a0some 124 of the more peaceful Meccan verses, including \u201cevery other verse in the Koran, which commands or implies anything less than a total offensive against the nonbelievers.\u201d<\/a>[8]\u00a0In fact, all four schools of Sunni jurisprudence agree that \u201cjihad is when Muslims wage war on infidels, after having called on them to embrace Islam or at least pay tribute [jizya<\/em>] and live in submission, and the infidels refuse.\u201d<\/a>[9]<\/p>\n

Obligatory jihad is best expressed by Islam\u2019s dichotomized worldview that pits the realm of Islam against the realm of war. The first,\u00a0dar al-Islam<\/em>, is the \u201crealm of submission,\u201d the world where Shari\u2019a governs; the second,\u00a0dar al-Harb<\/em>\u00a0(the realm of war), is the non-Islamic world. A struggle continues until the realm of Islam subsumes the non-Islamic world\u2014a perpetual affair that continues to the present day. The renowned Muslim historian and philosopher Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406) clearly articulates this division:<\/p>\n

In the Muslim community, jihad is a religious duty because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and the obligation to convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force. The other religious groups did not have a universal mission, and the jihad was not a religious duty for them, save only for purposes of defense. But Islam is under obligation to gain power over other nations.[10]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2014\u2014-<\/p>\n

<\/a>[1]\u00a0Ibn Qayyim,\u00a0Tafsir<\/em>, in Abd al-\u2019Aziz bin Nasir al-Jalil,\u00a0At-Tarbiya al-Jihadiya fi Daw\u2019 al-Kitab wa \u2018s-Sunna<\/em>\u00a0(Riyahd: n.p., 2003), pp. 36-43.
\n<\/a>[2]\u00a0Mukaram,\u00a0At-Taqiyya fi<\/em>\u00a0\u2019l-Islam<\/em>, p. 20.
\n<\/a>[3]\u00a0Koran 2: 216.
\n<\/a>[4]\u00a0Yahya bin Sharaf ad-Din an-Nawawi,\u00a0An-Nawawi\u2019s Forty Hadiths<\/em><\/a>, p. 16, accessed Aug. 1, 2009.
\n<\/a>[5]\u00a0John Lyly,\u00a0Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit<\/em>\u00a0(London, 1578), p. 236.
\n<\/a>[6]\u00a0Koran 8:39.
\n<\/a>[7]\u00a0Emile Tyan,\u00a0The Encyclopedia of Islam<\/em>\u00a0(Leiden: Brill, 1960), vol. 2, s.v. \u201cDjihad,\u201d pp. 538-40.
\n<\/a>[8]\u00a0David Bukay, \u201cPeace or Jihad? Abrogation in Islam<\/a>,\u201d\u00a0Middle East Quarterly<\/em>, Fall 2007, pp. 3-11, f.n. 58; David S. Powers, \u201cThe Exegetical Genre\u00a0nasikh al-Qur\u2019an wa-mansukhuhu<\/em>,\u201d in\u00a0Approaches to the History of the Interpretation of the Qur\u2019an<\/em>, Andrew Rippin, ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), pp. 130-1.
\n<\/a>[9]\u00a0Jalil,\u00a0At-Tarbiya al-Jihadiya fi Daw\u2019 al-Kitab wa \u2018 s-Sunna<\/em>, p. 7.
\n<\/a>[10]\u00a0Ibn Khaldun,\u00a0The Muqadimmah. An Introduction to History<\/em>, Franz Rosenthal, trans. (New York: Pantheon, 1958), vol. 1, p. 473.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Raymond Ibrahim \/\/\u00a0RaymondIbrahim.com\u00a0 While other scriptures contain contradictions, the Koran is the only holy book whose commentators have evolved a doctrine to account for the very visible shifts which occur from one injunction to another. No careful reader will remain unaware of the many contradictory verses in the Koran, most specifically the way in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[29,227,230],"tags":[1017,431,30,1060,1030],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1Qv","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7153,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/why-moderate-islam-is-an-oxymoron\/","url_meta":{"origin":7099,"position":0},"title":"Why ‘Moderate Islam’ is an Oxymoron","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 26, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim \/\/\u00a0CBN News\u00a0 At a time when terrorism committed in the name of Islam is rampant, we are continuously being assured\u2014especially by three major institutions that play a dominant role in forming the Western mindset, namely, mainstream media, academia, and government\u2014that the sort of Islam embraced by \u201cradicals,\u201d\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Islam"","block_context":{"text":"Islam","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/islam\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2421,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/muslim-disloyalty-to-americans-the-case-of-pfc-naser-jason-abdo\/","url_meta":{"origin":7099,"position":1},"title":"Muslim Disloyalty to Americans: The Case of Pfc. 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