Jehad

 

 

7.  JEHAD; FIGHTING IN THE WAY OF ALLAH


One of the most misrepresented and abused of all Islamic concepts has been jehad- struggling in the Way of Allah. Non-Muslims have been in the habit of caricaturising it as ‘holy war’ which name is more appropriate for the crusades the Christians fought only until yesterday and even today are not entirely out of it.  By ‘caricaturising’ I mean distorting by an exaggeration of some aspects or instances while playing down or ignoring entirely some others. For example those unsympathetic to Islam see jehad as a war of sheer military aggression against non-muslims on the part of Muslims. Yes, it is true that some Muslim rulers conducted jehad like that: so long they felt strong enough to attack a non-Muslim power they did attack, their conduct in war as well as after the defeat of the ‘enemy’ was deplorable and their intention was transparently predatory and plunder motivated. That was not how the Prophet and his best successors saw it though. Yes, the Prophet, early in his  career as the ruler and military commander of his Muslims often conducted aggressive campaigns against some strategically located tribes with a view to spreading a healthy fear of the nascent Muslim power based at Medina but in all these, bloodshed was either nil or negligible. Like all wise leaders and commanders he was aware of the critical worth of pre-emptive action as an instrument of reducing future dangers to his community on the one hand and imposing his ideological (in his case spiritual) and political influence on his non-Muslim neighbours most of whom did not conceal their hostility to him and to Islam in any case. As a result of his pre-emptive campaigns the overall military cost of his conquest of Arabia for Islam has been the cheapest in history.


Over the eleven years he campaigned on and off- often in defence like at Badr, Uhud and  Handaq (the Trench) the total cost in human life on all parties involved did not reach six hundred. At Badr it was about 80, at Uhud about 130 etc. Real slaughter took place elsewhere, especially in the wars between the Roman and the Persian empires in which the casualties ran into hundreds of thousands. Even worse were the casualties in the crusades conducted by popes in association with the Christian kings of Europe: Initially based in Rome as a small bishopric the papacy attained such spiritual, political and financial power that by the 5th Christian century its armies were campaigning all over Europe and North Africa massacring both pagan and deviant Christian communities with such unremitting savagery that had to be seen to be believed. Once Islam replaced Christianity in the Middle East and North Africa the popes redirected their conquering instincts to Muslim lands and for at least two centuries were on the attack and mostly the winners. Islam had to await the likes of sultan Salahuddin (Saladin in European parlance) to turn the tide back and reverse the Christian gains. But the Crusades (i.e, the Christian ‘jehad’ or holy war) did not stop its operations after its defeat in the hands of the Muslims. It redirected its aggressive appetite to new lands, all the way to and into the Americas, the black Africa and the vast lands in south Asia like the Indian subcontinent and beyond, these especially after the Muslim power there began to deteriorate and decline. By the nineteenth century only what remained from Persian and the Ottoman Empires were free from Christian rule and at that were struggling to remain so. The Cross and the sword (and increasingly the gun and the cannon) went before the Christian armies and for a time left no option for the vanquished to either embrace the Cross or be put to death. As a result, the Americas were totally Christianised and increasingly Europeanised.
With such an appalling record, the Christian phobia of Islam followed the path of all phobias: accusing ‘the other’ of the same crime, in this case the jehad record of Muslims.
However, as already and upfrontly admitted further above Muslims have not always been innocent either. To begin with, many local rebel movements raised their heads as ‘promoters of true Islam’ as they saw it and fought against both the Muslim public around them and the Muslim rulers over them. When the notorious militant Khariji sect was campaigning against our master and rightful caliph Ali b. Abi Talib the Prophet of Allah was less than twenty five years dead! Since then false and deluded jehadists never left Muslims to have peace but kept proliferating and attacking them. Today it is the same: all over Islamdom self-styled mujahids are conducting jehad against fellow Muslims and their rulers with such indiscriminate savagery that one wonders what their Islam is all about. It seems that just to bring down a government they hate they are prepared to slaughter, mostly by mass-bombings, any number of civilians as many times as they can find. The idea, just like that of the anarchists of Marxism and Nihilism of the late 19th to late in the 20th century has been to make the country they lived in ungovernable and seize the reins of power once the inevitable breakdown of law and order ensued and rulers fled. Such godless tactics have nothing to do with Islam and it’s jehad but everything to do with terrible power hunger whose only possible way of satisfaction seems to its promoter to be through a determined exploitation of Islam.


Such jihadists either naively postulate or fraudulently argue that the Muslim public in their country are mostly very good muslims while their rulers are unbelievers and hypocrites and they the jihadists have to rescue the innocent pious ‘lambs’ from the wolves ruling over them.  Nothing can be farther from the truth- as all perceptive ulama and mashayikh (Sufi adepts) observed that throughout the ages the majority of the populace have always been far below in moral and spiritual development as a result of which good pious rulers could not be successful in governing them but Allah had to install on them iron-fisted and unscrupulous rulers to keep things in check. In this respect it should be enough to observe how soon after the Prophet, Muslims became unworthy of just and pious rulers like our master Ali and had to be disciplined in the hands of increasingly less and less spiritual, less pious men until by the time of Ali’s younger son our master Hussein, Yazid ruled the whole Umma from Damascus and his vile governor Ziyad ruled the province of Iraq where he could easily arrest our master Hussein and massacre him and his whole entourage without a single Muslim daring to come to their rescue! If that was the condition of Muslims at a time when many sahaba were alive, preaching and leading what could it be like afterwards? If the Kharijis were right in their rebellions against both Muawiya and Ali (Ali whom they succeeded in assassinating) so are todays self-styled jehadists.


The truth is that “Innallaha la yughayyiru ma bi qawmin hatta yughayyiru ma fee anfusihim” (13: 11), i.e. “Allah will never change the condition a community is in until and unless they change what is in their hearts”. Such a salutary change comes about by pious preaching and example setting by the brighter, more gifted souls among the community concerned and to the extent that these souls win over the populace to their pious view of life Allah grants them better rulers. That was exactly why Sufis flourished among us as from the second Islamic century and even they had to contend with the problem of false Sufis before they could help the general populace. In other words the Satan’s vendetta and plots against the sons of Adam did not and will never die down but will plague and persecute this umma of ours till the end of time. The Satan is our real and ultimate enemy and the Satan can only be defeated by making Muslims better and better Muslims through better and better education in the hands of better and better teachers and exemplars. Fighting established governments irrespective of Allah’s Law that each and every community gets the government they deserve is ignorance and ignorance is a darkness where only Satan is able and competent to operate and succeed. Read if you wish:


Allah is the Guardian of those who believe- He takes them out of darkness into light. As for those who deny, their guardian is the Taghut (Devil)- he takes them out of light into darkness. They are the inmates of the Fire and they remain therein” 2: 257).


Can there be any doubt that a community ends up being ruled by satanical rulers simply because they have not enough light of faith in them but more darkness which darkness provides an excellent habitat for the Satan to invade and dominate them like harmful fungi covering dark and wet places and causing their walls, floors and ceilings to rot and crumble? Let ulama and mashayikh direct Allah’s light torches into such spaces and the fungi will have to recede and die out and fresh and healthy greens reclaim their place.


Of course we are aware that most jihadists cannot afford to listen to such advice: they are too possessed by political gubernatorial ambitions for which pious claims provide a convenient virtual justification in the eyes of the less knowledgeable and less perceptive. After all, it was with such simplistic justifications that the Kharijites could accuse and fight that infinitely more worthy Muslim namely our master Ali and eventually assassinate him. For his part our master Ali gave a lot of respect for his rival and nemesis Muawiya remarking that given the ummats declining spiritual lights perhaps Muawiya was the man they deserved more. Ali’s son and caliphal successor Hasan saw this reality even more readily and abandoned to Muawiya all claims of caliphate without firing a shot. Such are true saints, true arifs of Allah.
So what is real jehad, real fighting in the way of Allah. To recognise this we must refer to the famous hadith of the Prophet who, after a military engagement, said to his companions “We are now returning to the greater jehad from this lesser jehad” meaning that the greater jehad was fighting our egos. Don’t you see how great generals who defeat great enemies are defeated by their egos and commit many sins? Don’t you see how many great ulama show people how to fight their egos and avoid sins while they themselves fall into sin? Lastly what is more natural than both the ulama and the populace failing in their greater jehad against their egos and Allah as a result putting them under the rule of even more egoistic souls?
The last word on the matter of jehad should then be to begin charity at home, fight our own egos and rest assured that whatever others do or don’t do will not harm us but Allah will see to it that we have pleasant, successful, paradise-like lives. Read if you wish:
“Those who struggle (do jehad against the ego) to win our pleasure We will certainly guide them to our paths” (29: 69). Here ‘Jahadu feena’ means striving to win Allah’s love and because this is so, Allah promises to guide them not to one but to many paths of spiritual human perfection like more pity, more love, more generosity, more justice etc. For those who have the spiritual genius these are the very best and top gifts which leads one to Allah’s highest gardens prepared for His elites! Allahu Akbar!


“O ye who believe, your responsibility is yourselves- if you keep to the right path those who go astray cannot harm you” (5: 105)
“Whoever, male or female, does good works and is a believer We will certainly make him live a good life and We will reward all such in terms of the very best they used to practice” (16: 97).
I dare anyone to challenge Allah Who speaks so clearly and explicitly.
In conclusion, a Sufi is the first person to volunteer for jehad if that is properly and legitimately called for by a well-established Muslim government recognised as such by all and will fight most heroically. That was the case especially under the illustrious Ottoman rule: Ottoman armies had legions of dervish troops under their sheikhs fighting in the Way of Allah and falling as martyrs with joy. Otherwise a Sufi cannot be the tool of each and every claimant to legitimacy and piety who rise against the established government of his country as if that government was not the government the people deserved. It is not through armed rebellion but patient and wise education that a people may gradually be made to deserve a better government. We have in our history the mainly oppressive and unscrupulous rule of the Umayyads which were eventually bloodily replaced by the Abbasids but in the end almost nothing changed. The very hero behind the Abbasid takeover, namely Abu Muslim was treacherously liquidated by the very first Abbasid caliph whom Abu Muslim had helped to attain the throne and despite the protestations of the Abbasids that they would champion the rights of the Ahl al Bait they soon turned out to be almost as bad as the Umayyads against the Prophet’s grandsons. All in all the Abbasid conspiracy and eventual rebellion to topple the Umayyads proved a largely illusory salvation; human nature being what it is, when not reformed by profound and rightly-guided faith, re-asserted itself. Within a century the Abbasid power passed into Turkish hands as the new soldiers and power-brokers of Islam and increasingly the caliphs became their puppets. Abuses, cruelties, infighting... continued all verifying the Divine edict that “Allah will not change the condition of a people until and unless they change what is in their hearts”.  However, apart from many inevitable rough and tumble, the Turks contributed to the scandals of Muslims (as Arabs had done for their part) they also brought in great glories of both spirit, conquest and government carrying the flag of Islam into the heart of Europe and keeping it there for centuries. May Allah reward all Muslims who contributed to Allah’s Cause and pardon those who erred and messed things up. May He All-Gracious help us to improve our insides so as to deserve better government and may that government last. Amen.

 

 

8.  THE SOURCE OF ALL GOOD AND ALL EVIL

 

Says the All-Knowing, All-Wise: “Whatever good touches thee is from Allah and whatever evil touches thee is from thyself. We have sent you as a messenger to people. Allah is enough as a witness” (4: 79).  There is another verse about good and evil which reads: “We test you with each other- will you bear it (the test)” (25: 20).

 

We must begin with reminding ourselves that good and evil are not two items which can exist as such. They are only our subjective evaluations of the events happening to us or to others we either love or just sympathise with as fellow creatures. So, a giant nebula a million times the size of the earth can explode out in the space and on learning it we may just shrug but if a mosquito bites us we don’t like it and call it bad which means evil. So what Allah is saying boils down to this: When Allah treats us to something real good, that is to say at least its long term effects on us will be good, this good is from Allah either as an upfront gift to put some love of Himself into us or as a reward for some good we did in good faith. But when something which harms us on contact or in the long term, it is the fruit of our own hands’ work or at least of the bad thoughts and intentions we nurture.

 

What about the innocents you may ask, like a young child hit by a painful condition? What crime could he possibly commit? To begin with the punishment is more for the child’s parent(s) who, like all mortals being fallible must have committed some wrongs whose most effective and cleansing punishment was judged by the Creator to be a suffering for its parent(s). Before protesting we must understand that there has never been a single adult in the world, even when a true prophet of Allah, who did not commit any wrong. What is more, a given wrong act equally committed by two separate people may carry quite different penalties. For example, Jonah (Yunus) the messenger of Allah to Nineveh was punished by being swallowed up by a whale for abandoning his mission too soon. But will a far smaller man who abandoned his quite responsible job in a company without notice or explanation be swallowed up by a whale or trampled by a bull? Even courts do not punish two men the same way and in the same amount for an identical crime. The two accuseds’ ages, backgrounds, the context and circumstances of the crimes and any mitigating or aggravating factors are all taken into account and while one of them may be given a significant prison term the other may be discharged with only a rebuke. Which explains why Allah’s higher servants from prophets down are more severely punished for their lapses than lesser souls for theirs.

 

Now there is a theory that prophets never commit wrongs and even a more audacious claim among some Sufis that their greats never commit any wrongs. That is flatly denied by both the Qur’an and the Hadith. The reason is two-fold.  Firstly, one who never commits a wrong can not know what it feels like being a sinner and therefore cannot guide a sinner to repentance and self-improvement. The only difference between a true prophet and a non-prophet is that the former is created so pure that he can rarely forget Allah and dare to offend Allah’s Law and even when he offends he still is full of faith in and love for Allah. His fault lies in a misjudgement he made in the heat of a moment, like Moses knocking down an innocent Egyptian who was assaulted by a Jew and was fighting back. Allah called this a sin, Moses apologised (repented profusely) and had to suffer a long separation from his family, community and his privileged life in the palace of the king, his adoptive father. He suffered a lot both before and after receiving his commission as a prophet and most of his suffering was in the hands of his fickle and often rebellious followers. So suffered our master Ali, and so did even our own Prophet. “No prophet has suffered in the hands of people as much as me” he is reported to have said. First he had the ridicule, hostility and eventual mortal persecution of his own tribe and once in Medina he constantly suffered in the hands of both his sometimes bickering companions and more in the hands of the hypocrites among them and even more from the Jews around the town and as far away as Khaybar. That must have prompted him to utter the above hadith.

 

One of the more interesting examples of his sufferings was the temporary resentment and some taunts to him on the part of his companions at Hudaibia. At one point they refused to obey his orders that despite failing to reach the Holy Mosque and do Umra they should still slaughter their sacrificial camels. The Prophet suddenly felt deserted and resorting to the motherly presence of his wise wife Umm Salama asked for her advice. She advised him to slaughter his own offerings and assured him that his companions would follow suit. And to his great relief that was what happened. Here must be a good example that prophet or not we are all limited and fallible human beings, that we need each other only too badly and that women are neither evil nor  stupid but the two sexes are complementary and indispensable to each other. Even Abu Bakr (R) could not help him in this dilemma and he had to resort to our mother Umm Salama.

 

On the way back to Medina Allah sent down the Surat al Fath in which He the Truth explains that his sufferings were leading to forgiveness and a near conquest for him. Read if you wish:

“We have opened for you an explicit opening (meaning a soon following rapid series of brilliant conquests) in order that (through those labours in achieving them) Allah forgives your past and future sins and completes His blessings to you and guides you on to a Straight Path and helps you to a great victory” (48: 2- 3).

 

Sure enough the Divine Promise was delivered in a greater size than all expectations: within two years of it Khaybar, Mecca and most of the rest of the Arab towns and tribes were conquered and made heroic Muslims ready to conquer the rest of the world around. With such services to Allah what sin could stick to Allah’s messenger on top of the fact that prophets never mean evil but only make mistakes out of being humans and no gods. The classical scholarly teaching that prophets are innocent (ma’sum) is completely true as far as their performance of their prophetic duties is concerned and also in the matter of their goodwill in everything they do. In other words they never suffer from things like greed, jealousy, pride, miserliness, ruthlessness etc. but are always informed and motivated by noblest feelings at the top of which universal rahmat or loving mercy towards all at the bottom. Even unbelievers and rebels can be sure of a prophet’s rahmat-based view of them: the prophet would very much like the unbeliever or rebel to repent and improve and not to persist in error and be punished. After all their entire mission is to teach people about Allah from the Divine Revelation given them and guide people to repentance and repair. Otherwise, as human beings they have to be fallible, they always honourably and humbly admitted it and Allah for His part declared it to be the case and pardoned them. All the same, they are so pure and of such aspiration that had we committed their ‘sins’ they would count merits for us! For that reason ulama used the term ‘zalla’ or ‘slip’ to name any actions the prophets regretted doing and that is very good manners. We only wanted to draw the attention of our readers to Allah’s Own term in referrring to prophets’ occasional lapses because this gives us hope that we the real sinners may hope prophets’ intercession as fellow fallible human beings who are still so dear to Allah and very fit to understand our plight, fearing Allah far more than we do.

 

So please do not misunderstand. After all the most delightful act committed by a servant for Allah is not a servant’s infallible obedience which is impossible for anybody and only possible for angels; the most delightful act of man in the sight of Allah is man’s repentance and for repentance a possibility of making errors (i.e. fallibility) is to be there. Don’t you see how babies must fall and bruise many times before they can hone their balancing and walking abilities? Don’t you see how love between a man and woman grows after each resentment when the party in the wrong offers a sincere, tearful apology? Will not the apologised party feel above clouds and now grant even more love? Each repentance to Allah does not only blot out the sin but heaps on the servant rewards and promotions he could not earn without inadvertently sinning. For a believer’s sin committed despite his best intentions to the contrary is the greatest teacher provided it was not committed too deliberately and persistently while knowing better: in that case sin may corrode his faith so much that nothing to remedy and rescue remains and repentance becomes the most distasteful option to the too corrupted sinner. As the English phrase says, he may already have become rotten to the core!  A minimum core of decency must survive the profane life or the sinner may die an unbeliever, i.e. believing only when he meets the angel of death, which is too late a belief. We take refuge in Allah from such an end.

 

From all above we see that the Very Best and Noblest in man is Allah in the psychological sense as distinct from Allah in the ontological sense (which is unknowable if spiritually appreciable) while the very worst in man is the Ego which is the psychological equivalent of the ontological Satan. All good flows and returns to Allah as an infinitely usurious investment for the lucky man while all evil flows from the Satan through its agent the untamed human ego and is equally shared by the man and the Satan who then land in Hell chained together to burn eternally together. Now some self-defined cute fellows may say “Aha! See how cruel Allah, if true, can be! That is why I hate religion”. That is not so darling. All descriptions of the Hereafter are extremely moral educational metaphors. The metaphor of the ego-serving man and the Satan being chained and roasted together for eternity means, human-psychologically speaking, how disgusting and hateful it is  to be rudely selfish and ruthlessly oppressive for a man while the same man, if he so chose, could be the most loving, kindest and socially most graceful man. The cosmic-size shame of opting for the demonstration of the very worst and vilest in you instead of opting for the very best and noblest can only be sized as cosmic in scale and eternal in duration. If you are real man you will understand this, if not do what you want. After all the Messenger of Allah already formulated this standard when he said “If you have no shame do what you want”. May Allah always make us do what He wants, that is to say, may He help and enable us to think and act from the very best and noblest He put in us, namely the correct gnosis of Him. Amen.

 

 

 

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