Friday night, in what I can only assume was an attempt to
see if my head would explode, one of my colleagues from the OSU Philosophy
Department sent me an e-mail containing a link to a YouTube video from a gentleman
named Dr. Bill Warner from the Center for the Study of Political Islam. One might think that given the title of “Doctor”
and the official sounding name of his “center” that Dr. Warner has advanced
training in Islam or politics or both.
In fact, according to his biography on his website, Dr. Warner has a PhD in math and
applied physics. He is self-taught in
Islam which always concerns me because “self-taught” in this case almost always
means “I’ve taught myself what I wanted to learn with no self-awareness or
appreciation for my own biases.” That
certainly appears to be the situation here.
The video is only 5 minutes, but I’ll do you, gentle
readers, a favor and summarize:
Dr. Warner begins by suggesting that Muslims and Muslim apologists
(that would be me) dislike talking about jihad and would much rather pivot
toward the Crusades and take on Christians behaving badly. He then explains that he has identified 548 battles
in the “jihad” which he has plotted on a map.
The map spans from 632 CE (the death of Muhammad) to 1920 CE (the fall
of the Ottoman Empire and end of the era of Muslim empires) and is titled “Destruction
of Classical Civilization.” With no
attempt at nuance or political, economic, or military alternative explanations,
Dr. Warner characterizes all 548 of these battles as acts of “relentless jihad.” He states that all of this was war against the
“Kafir” and is scandalized that Europeans were enslaved and brought back to the
Muslim empires. He characterizes the
Inquisition as Christians “pushing back” against Islamic conquest in Spain and
classifies the Crusades as defensive wars to protect Middle Eastern Christians
against the persecution of the Muslims who had overtaken their lands. In an attempt of sorts to be even-handed, he
plots all of the major battles of the Crusades, noting that there are many
fewer of them. He concludes by saying
that the Crusades ended centuries ago and that jihad is still ongoing.
This video is a prime example of the problem with trying to
draw conclusions about anything in a vacuum.
By itself, his argument appears to be quite logical and well thought
out. However, if you dig a little
deeper, or zoom out a bit, things start to fall apart. Let me see if I can bring some context to
this discussion.
1. I am not sure to
whom Dr. Warner is referring when he says that Muslims and Muslim apologists don’t
like to talk about jihad. I can, of
course, only speak for myself, but I talk about jihad all the time. It’s one of the foci of my academic
study. However, Dr. Warner, like many
other “self-taught” scholars of Islam, ignores the rich, multi-layered history
of the term. The word “jihad” appears
exactly twice in the Qur’an. The more
frequently used terms are qital (fighting) or harb (war). That’s because jihad means all sorts of
things aside from fighting and war. The
root (J-H-D) means “to struggle or to strive.”
The Islamic legal term ijtihad which is the use of independent reasoning
when interpreting sharia is also derived from this root.
While it’s undeniable that jihad has a
military meaning, it would be inadvisable to assume to that jihad means
unrestrained warfare. In fact, as David
Cook notes in his excellent book, Understanding
Jihad, from a historical and legal standpoint, jihad embraces the necessity
of a competent authority to declare war, announcement of the terms for
resolution prior to the commencement of hostilities, respect for non-combatant
immunity, respect for prisoners and the dead, and restrictions on the types of
weaponry allowed. In this way, jihad
looks quite similar to the Christian just war tradition. Even many of the “founding fathers” of modern
Islamism believed that Muslims were duty bound to respect certain parameters
regarding jihad. Hasan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, believed
that because jihad was the most sacred duty of Muslims, it should be undertaken
with reverence and caution. Sayyid Qutb,
often called the father of modern jihadism, wrote of jihad in his magnum opus, In the Shade of the Qur’an, arguing that disrespect for non-combatant immunity and the defiling of the dead were barbaric practices
that had no place in Islam. He elsewhere
(This Religion of Islam) argued that
crops and livestock should not be harmed in the waging of jihad.
2. On its face, 548
battles of the “jihad” seems like a lot and quite widespread. However, if one considers the timeline for
the “Destruction of Classical Civilization” (632 CE-1920 CE), and divide that
time frame (1288 years) by the 548 battles, it averages out to 0.43 battles per
year. In that same time frame, other
empires were expanding, often violently, in all parts of the world. One can’t help but wonder what a similar map
of the British Empire might look like for the same time frame. My guess is the average battles per year
would be equal to, if not greater than, 0.43 and in a MUCH bigger geographical
area. However, Dr. Warner did not want
to provide such a balanced account, only one that fit his narrative. Furthermore, he assumes, rather uncritically,
that all 548 of these major battles was a battle against the “kafir” or
infidel. This ignores any potential
economic, security, or political motivations which were certainly present. It also ignores the fact that empires
throughout Europe were likewise expanding and contracting, sometimes because of
religion, sometimes because of economic, security, and political
motivations.
3. Dr. Warner would
like his listeners to believe that the Spanish Inquisition was merely European
pushback against the Islamic conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. In fact, the situation is, not surprisingly,
much more complex than that. The Arab
armies conquered southern Spain in 711.
Some 200 years later, the Caliphate of Cordoba was established and
lasted only one century. However, in
that 100 year span, Cordoba became a model of faith and learning as well as
interfaith peace and cooperation. The
library boasted nearly a half million volumes, and the city was a hub of
intellectual innovation. However, with the
Reconquista (the Spanish attempt to reclaim Iberia) an ever-present threat,
Cordoba and the peaceful coexistence of Muslims, Jews, and Christians within
the city were not long for this world.
Religion infiltrated the warfare on both sides, creating a toxic
environment in which both sides claimed to be on the side of God against the
infidels. By the time the Muslims were
formally ousted from Iberia in 1492, the Inquisition was well under way. Under the authority of the Pope as well as
the Spanish crown, any Jews or Muslims (but especially Jews) who remained were
forced to choose conversion, exile, or death.
Those who converted to Christianity often maintained their previous religious
practices in the privacy of their own homes.
They were often treated with suspicion by the ruling authorities and
many were arrested and forced to either publicly proclaim their loyalty to the
Catholic Church or be turned over to the secular authorities (since the Church
can’t kill people) to be executed, typically by burning at the stake. This was not the only or even the first
example of blatant anti-Semitism in Christendom against Jews (kafirs if you
will), and it goes completely untouched in Dr. Warner’s treatment of the complex
tangle of Islamic interaction with Europe.
4. Dr. Warner argues
that the Crusades were a defensive battle against the persecution of Middle
Eastern Christians by Muslims. This
argument, as well as his map of the Crusades and the conclusion he draws from
it, is disingenuous at best. First of
all, the map of the Crusades shows many fewer battles in large part because the
timeline is MUCH shorter—only about 100 years.
It also neglects the impact of the Crusades against European
populations, such as the Rhineland Jews who were slaughtered by the Crusaders
on the way to the Holy Land as well as heretical groups like the Cathars in
southern France who were victims of the Albigensian Crusade. Second, the domestic situation in Europe was
one of intense rivalry not only among various Catholic kingdoms, but also
between the Pope and secular authorities.
The Investiture Controversy occurring nearly simultaneously to the Crusades
speaks clearly to this. The Great
Schism, or split of Christendom into the Catholic West and Orthodox East, was
also an important factor.
All of that
said, it is true that the Fatimid dynasty of Egypt had, in fact, sacked
Jerusalem, set fire to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and was actively
preventing pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
However, this sort of disruption was not necessarily uncommon and
Europeans had never responded in such a way before. That suggests that, at the very least, there
were some other factors involved in the Crusades, perhaps the ones outlined
above. Third, the behavior of the
Crusading armies in Holy Land was quite reprehensible in many ways. Upon taking Jerusalem, the Crusaders
slaughtered everyone they came across (in the name of God and fighting the
infidel it should be noted). This
included Muslims, Christians, and Orthodox, or “schismatic,” Christians. The treatment of the inhabitants of Jerusalem
under the Crusaders is starkly contrasted with the treatment of the Crusaders
when Saladin recaptured Jerusalem nearly 100 years later. Saladin showed kindness to the Crusaders,
allowing many of them to leave without paying the demanded ransom, then invited
Jews and Christians to return to the city for pilgrimage, provided they were
unarmed. Indeed, Saladin is revered in
Europe as a model of chivalry and wisdom.
Again, this information somehow fails to make it into Dr. Warner’s quick
and simplistic treatment of the Crusades.
5. Dr. Warner makes
mention of the fact that Europeans were enslaved (mostly by the Ottomans) and
transported back to the heart of the empire.
He presents this as proof of the uncivilized nature of Muslims. This critique strikes me as particularly
historically tone deaf. Yes, it’s
true. The Ottomans would take young
Balkan boys from their families, raise them with strict military training, and
commission them as members of the Ottoman army.
The belief was that a slave army was less likely to revolt as it was
dependent on the sultan for survival (this was never really as successful as
the Ottomans hoped it would be).
However, to express outrage about this while not acknowledging that
Europeans regularly enslaved conquered peoples in Africa, selling them to slave
traders who brought them to the United States and elsewhere is particularly specious.
It has now taken me 6 pages in Microsoft Word (double
spaced) to refute the simplistic arguments of a single 5-minute YouTube
video. The takeaway here is that there
is nothing, not ONE THING, historically, religiously, politically,
economically, socially, or culturally that can be explained away quite so
neatly or simply. Religion does not
occur in a vacuum. It is inherently tied
up in a variety of other factors, though the mix is quite dynamic and changes
from one place (or time) to another.
Islam is blamed for violence in the Arab world, but in other places,
Muslims are heavily persecuted, often the name of religion (see: the Rohingya
in Myanmar and the conflict in the Central African Republic). So is Islam the problem or are there other
factors at play? I submit that the
latter is more likely the case. However,
given the stunning lack of global awareness or even curiosity about the world
around us, many of those nuances are ignored if not outright dismissed. This kind of Manichean worldview makes it
possible for the Islamophobia network to paint a picture of Islam as entirely
evil, ignoring that the problem of Islam in the Arab world is intimately
connected to political and economic corruption, civil war, and an
over-developed security state that tightly controls all forms of expression and
dissent. It also ignores that Arab
Muslims are actually a distinct minority (less than one-third) of the global Muslim
population. 60% of the worldwide Muslim
population resides in Malaysia and Indonesia, which are not countries that
often make the news on account of radicalism in the name of Islam.
A wide-angle lens view of the conflicts that confront us in
the Arab world acknowledges the centrality of Islam or, at least, one
particularly odious interpretation of Islam while also acknowledging that such
an interpretation is neither the only interpretation nor, many would argue, the
correct one and acknowledging that numerous non-religious factors also play a
role in the civil wars in Syria and Libya, the rise of ISIS, and other major
conflicts.
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