APPROACH TO ISLAM: CHARITY OR MILITANCY?

The well-known scholar Muhammad ibn Rushd (known to European history as Averroes), an Islamic philosopher based at Sevilla and Cordoba in Muslim Spain in the twelfth century AD, in his major legal handbook known as Bidayat al- Mujtahid, dealt with Jihad purely as active warfare on behalf of Islam and set out the conditions under which it should be waged, the extent of the damage that could be inflicted on different enemies, and the circumstances in which a truce could be negotiated.

He, like the majority of Muslim scholars of his time, considered Jihad to be a compulsory obligation in terms of the Qur'anic injunction "Fighting is prescribed for you, though it is distasteful to you" (Surah 2.216). Other Qur'anic texts quoted by him in support of the principle that Jihad meant actual warfare are:

When you meet the disbelievers, smite their necks till you have fully subdued them. Surah 47.4

When the sacred months are past, slay the polytheists (al-mushrikiin - "the associaters") wherever you find them. Surah 9.5

Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you, but do not transgress proper limits, verily Allah does not love such transgressors. Surah 2.190

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The modern spirit of Jihad was anticipated in a book written by Brigadier S.K. Malik and published in Pakistan in 1979, titled The Quranic Concept of War. General Zia ul-Haqq in a foreword to this book said it brought out with "simplicity, clarity and precision" the Qur'anic philosophy of Jihad, adding that it prescribed "the ONLY pattern of war" that a Muslim country could wage (the emphasis is Zia's). Malik takes the following text as a licence for terrorism against the perceived enemies of Islam:

I will instil terror into the hearts of the unbelievers: Smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger-tips off them. (Surah 8.12 - Yusuf Ali's exact rendering).

The author, commenting on this text, gives the following impression of Islamic Jihad - an impression boldly stated by the late President of Pakistan to be the "only" way jihad can be prosecuted:

Terror struck into the hearts of the enemies is not only a means, it is the end in itself. Once a condition of terror into the opponent's heart is obtained, hardly anything is left to be achieved. It is the point where the means and the end meet and merge. Terror is not a means of imposing decision upon the enemy; it is the decision we wish to impose upon him. (Malik, The Quranic Concept of War, p.59).

Malik concludes that such terrorism is to aim not only at the enemy's retreat but to destroy him completely. "It can be instilled only if the opponent's faith is destroyed ... To instil terror into the hearts of the enemy, it is essential, in the ultimate analysis, to dislocate his Faith" (p.60).

. . . . Article taken from - http://www.answering-islam.org/Gilchrist/charity.html