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The Crusades and Jihad: Theological Justifications for Warfare in the Western and Islamic Just War Traditions

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The Crusades and Jihad: Theological Justifications for Warfare in the Western and Islamic Just War Traditions The Crusades and Jihad: Theological Justifications for Warfare in the Western and Islamic Just War Traditions Author: Christopher L. Izant Persistent link: http://hdl.handle.net/2345/1560 This work is posted on eScholarship@BC, Boston College University Libraries. Boston College Electronic Thesis or Dissertation, 2010 Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted. BOSTON COLLEGE THE CRUSADES AND JIHAD Theological Justifications for Warfare in the Western and Islamic Just War Traditions A Senior Honors Thesis Submitted to The College of Arts and Sciences Arts and Sciences Honors Program and Islamic Civilization and Societies Program By CHRISTOPHER L. IZANT Advisor: Professor Ali Banuazizi May 2010 © copyright by CHRISTOPHER LUKAS IZANT 2010 Table of Contents Acknowledgments iv A Note on Transliteration v Introduction 1 Chapter One: 10 The Just War Tradition in Christianity and Islam Chapter Two: 27 The Crusades: Justifications and Motivations Chapter Three: 45 The Muslim Response: Jihad Doctrine in Statecraft and Jurisprudence Chapter Four: 65 Jihad Jurisprudence in Modernity Chapter Five: 90 The Islamic Resistance Movement: Ideology and Pragmatism Chapter Six: 113 al-Qaeda‟s Jihad: Global Terrorism and Islamic Law Conclusion: 132 Justice and Morality in Modern Warfare: The Role of Religion Bibliography 143 iv Acknowledgments This thesis would never have been possible without the assistance of my advisor. Even during his sabbatical, Professor Ali Banuazizi made the time to offer valuable advice and feedback at every stage of the writing process. His expertise, insights, and sense of humor made my thesis experience both challenging and enjoyable. I would also like to thank Professor Franck Salameh for his guidance and feedback early on in my research and feedback on my first two chapters. Additionally, the years of Arabic instruction I‟ve received from him and through the Department of Arabic Studies as a whole have enabled me to understand source materials in ways not possible with the English translations alone. Equally deserving of thanks is my academic advisor and Senior Thesis Seminar director Professor Kathleen Bailey, whose enthusiasm and dedication to her students continues to inspire me. I would also like to express my appreciation for the enormous support – both emotional and academic – of the other students who sat with me at that seminar table. In their company I felt no misery. I will always be grateful for the lessons guidance of Professor Mark O‟Connor, who taught me how to read, write, and reflect. I also need to thank CDR Youssef Aboul-Enein for delivering the lecture that sparked my curiosity for the central themes of this study. Finally, my deepest thanks go to my friends and family for their constant encouragement and assistance. I cannot express how indebted I am to my parents in particular, who have always supported me in pursuing my interests and passions at the personal cost of gray hairs, sleepless nights, and the promise of more to come. v A Note on Transliteration Arabic names and terms have been transliterated to the spelling that is most prominent in similar scholarship and literature without using letters or marks outside of the English alphabet. Most transliterated Arabic words have been italicized to visually distinguish these words and highlight foreign vocabulary. As much as possible I have allowed for words to take their English form. Some of the Arabic terminology has, in fact, been incorporated as official words of the English language, yet I have chosen to differentiate these words with italicization nevertheless. By re-representing words like jihad as foreign, though it may be found in the English dictionary, I hope to symbolically divorce such a term from the connotations it carries to encourage a rediscovery of its meaning in its original contexts. Some Arabic words particularly pertaining to Islamic jurisprudence carry a weight that is often lost in translation. Where it has been possible, I have examined original sources in Arabic such as the Qur‟an and the Hamas Charter to point out vocabulary that is central to understanding the significance of text beyond what is conveyed in translation to English alone. While there are no capital letters in Arabic, certain proper nouns in Islamic terminology have been capitalized to indicate veneration in the same way we capitalize God and the Bible. 1 INTRODUCTION Transnational terrorist attacks of recent decades have brought Islamist militancy to the forefront of the world‟s security concerns. Radical Islamist organizations like al-Qaeda that advocate violence as a means for establishing an Islamic state dominate public perception of Islam in Western societies. After the al-Qaeda attacks on September 11th, 2001, there exists a tendency to judge the legitimacy of the Islamic message by the terrorist attacks of al-Qaeda and the jihad preached by Osama bin Laden. This assumption coincides with the common misconception that jihad translates to a “holy war,” to kill or convert all nonbelievers. This brand of holy war, combined with the modern legacy of the Christian equivalent, the Crusades, has propagated the theory that Judeo-Christian societies of the West are inherently at odds with Islamic societies of the East in a “clash of civilizations”.1 On the other hand, such attention has 1Samuel Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs 72:3 (1993): 22-49. 2 led to genuine desire to learn about and understand Islam in this context. I have found myself among those asking what is Islam? And how does Islam advocate destruction, murder, and war? Over the course of the last decade, scholarship on militancy in Islam has taken off in attempts to answer such questions. An attempt at understanding the ways in which Islam promotes militancy requires an examination of the Islamic tradition as well as its fruition in modern and historical conflicts. Furthermore, in such a study, one is immediately reminded that the concept of religious campaigns of violence and war is not unique to Islam. Indeed, the rhetoric of contemporary Islamists is rich with historical allusion to the Crusades that began at the end of the 11th century. My personal experience during my studies in Jordan further elucidated this element of the collective memory of Muslims in the Middle East. While I was enjoying a leisurely Thursday afternoon floating on the Dead Sea, a boy called out to me from the shore. Excited by the opportunity to practice the colloquial Jordanian Arabic I was studying, I returned his greeting appropriately and we struck up a conversation. When he eventually asked me if I was Muslim – a common question I faced as a foreigner studying in the Middle East – I told him no, I am mesihi, a Christian. He didn‟t understand. Yehudi? he postulated, asking if I was Jewish. I told him no, repeated myself, mesihi, and added an attempt to explain using the Arabic name for Jesus. At his next guess I was pretty taken aback, salibi? Literally meaning “person of the cross,” I recognized this as the Arabic term for a crusader. For lack of a better way to communicate my religion, I told them yes, but explained that mesihi was a better word. The rest of our conversation was nothing out of the ordinary in my experience making small talk with Palestinian children: They ask me where I‟m from, I reply 3 that I‟m American, they ask why my government is friends with the Jews and hates Muslims, I offer a vain attempt at diplomacy in my limited vocabulary, and we go our separate ways. At the end of my semester, I came home with a very favorable impression of a society that hated the American government (almost exclusively for its pro-Israel stance), but welcomed the American people. However, among Palestinians, whose displaced or refugee families account for over half of Jordan‟s population, I found traces of a deeply pervasive view that Islam is under attack today, and has been continually since Pope Urban II first called for the Christians of Europe to take back the Holy Land from the Muslims in 1095. Being called a “crusader” by a child demonstrated to me that “a Muslim does not have to be an extreme Islamist to hold the view that the west is still engaged in crusading.”2 Observing the ubiquitous nature of this lexicon for myself gave me a personal desire for understanding the Crusades as both a historical series of events and as a compliment in Christianity to my interest in the relationship between religion and violence with regard to Islam. As both jihad and crusading are commonly conceived of as the concepts of Holy War in Islam and Christianity respectively, I believe it is relevant to examine the degree to which they fit the criteria of Just War. How do the Crusades and Counter-Crusades qualify as legitimate within their own religious doctrines and corresponding concepts of Just War? And, in the same regard, how does religion not only define circumstances in which violence can be considered justified, but also act as an ideological stimulus or driving purpose for waging campaigns of violence? How has religion, the foundation of the Just War tradition, become inspiration for the terrorist attacks of al-Qaeda? In the medieval period, the Crusades and Counter-Crusades provide 2Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades, Christianity, and Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 76. 4 examples of religious justifications for violence in two different contexts. While both campaigns contained elements that were reactionary in nature, the extent to which the Crusades can be considered defensive is questionable. Making the distinction between waging a proactive war based on a theologically conceived sense of purpose and taking defensive measures in circumstances that qualify violence as legitimate is important in understanding how the theory of Just War applies in contemporary conflicts as well.
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