A Critique of Islamic
Jihad
by jed pensar
PART 3
Four, no concept of jihad at all, which for me is the
best solution of all. Jihad as a word-concept seems to have fallen in
disuse among the Bahais, who came out of Iran in the middle of the 19th
century CE,2 ironically as an offshoot of the Shiite Muslims who are
generally more radical than the Sunnis. Superficially, the Bahais are to
the Muslims as the Christians are to the Jews. The mother religions in
both cases, Islam and Judaism respectively, accept theological violence
in their sacred scriptures, the Koran and the Tanakh (Old Testament).
The daughter religions, the Bahai Faith and Christianity, are
theologically remarkably peaceful, and both historically start with new
prophets proclaiming new Teachings based on the old ones, as epitomized
by the Bab and Baha Ullah for the Bahai Faith and John the Baptist and
Jesus Christ for Christianity. The new religions are instantly met with
hostility, persecutions, and even executions, and both initially spread
not through theocracies and theocratic laws but through slow
proselytizing of individual converts.
The Bahais seem to be the ultimately peaceful Muslims.
If the concept of jihad does not exist, it cannot be used. Although
Muslim theologians in general consider them as heretics or even as
non-Muslims, especially since the Bahais read the Scriptures of other
religions in their services and believe in prophets that came after
Muhammad, they are Muslims insofar as they regard Muhammad as a prophet,
read the Koran, and do God's will.
The Bahai practice of reading the Scriptures of the
various world religions in a religious service is a sublimely wonderful
idea. It must lead to tolerance as the listeners learn about the
viewpoint of various religions and learn that they are not much
different in their basic beliefs from each other. The Faith of Abraham
in an omniscient Creator God is so obviously the same faith of Jews,
Christians, and Muslims.1,4,6 To a lesser extent, we can apply the same
to the Hindu Trimurti (the single Godhead manifested in Brahma the
Creator, Vishnu the Preserver and Shiva the Destroyer),2 and the
Bhagavad Gita, in my opinion, portrays Krishna as an incarnation of the
same monotheistic God.13 Although Buddhism does not explicitly mention
the word "God," the Buddhist Greater Journey seems to describe the
journey to Him.7 It is a wonder those who have faith in the same God
fight over the specific and differing theologies that surround this same
Faith. The basic Faith teaches similar truths in all the major world
religions. In a detached manner, one may consider a person converting
from one world religion to another as changing his or her allegiance
from one theology to another while retaining or rediscovering the same
basic faith.
As discussed above, the existence of a disruptive
theological concept such as "jihad" can seriously strain the
relationships of these world religions. Society should allow the
individual freedom in choosing which, if any, theological doctrines to
follow - in other words freedom of religion. In spite of its
exhortations on behalf of Islam and its virtual demonizing of Jews and
Christians in innumerable passages, the Koran also says: "There is no
compulsion in religion," and that believers among the People of the Book
(Jews and Christians) can be saved. These passages on religious
tolerance are about as forthcoming as a sacred scripture can get. There
are no real theological counterparts to these passages in the
Bible.
For instance listen to these two passages: "Believers,
Jews, Christians, and Sabaeans - whoever believes in God and the Last
Day and does what is right - shall be rewarded by their Lord; they have
nothing to fear or regret." "There are among the People of the Book some
upright men who all night long recite the revelations of God and worship
Him; who believe in God and the Last Day; who enjoin justice and forbid
evil and vie with each other in good works; these are righteous men:
whatever good they do, its rewards shall not be denied them." Two more
passages (and ones similar to them) that can, with a little stretching
of the imagination, be taken as supporting religious tolerance announce:
"Your mission is only to give warning; it is for Us (God) to do the
reckoning." "We have ordained a law and assigned path for each of you.
Had God pleased, He could have made you one nation; but it is His wish
to test you according to what He has bestowed upon you. Therefore vie
with each other in good works, for to God you shall all return and He
will clarify for you those things which you now disagree about."
In some private Catholic schools in Mindanao, Muslim
students are not required to attend classes about Christianity. On the
contrary, I believe that Muslims should attend Christian classes and
that Christians should attend Islamic classes, starting at an early age
before the bigotry of adulthood sets in, and on the condition that
teaching religious love, peace, and freedom is given priority.
In the hypothetical Philippine Federation mentioned
above, there should be Federal laws requiring the teaching of various
theological ideas in a philosophy-class setting, with a straightforward
and objective exposition of theological doctrines, and without any
attempt at conversion. Violent and coercive religious doctrines should
be deliberately debunked, and religious love, peace, and freedom be
taught. In such matters, do not think of such laws as infringing on
freedom of religion; rather think of them as purging freedom of
violence. All other solutions, including political autonomy or economic
development are half-baked; you can still have a society that is largely
politically autonomous and mostly free from economic dependencies, but
is simultaneously violent, repressive, and totalitarian. The reverse is
also true. The educational curriculum can teach all about religious
love, peace, and freedom to the individual citizen, but with a sinking
economy people will always think of their stomachs first. Try as you
might, you will never be able to fool empty stomachs with heavenly
thoughts and religious ideals, and people who think that they can erase
unjust social structures with personal religious enlightenment must have
misread their scriptures somewhere.
The Marxists use a very harsh hyperbole in paraphrasing
this: "Religion is the opium of the people." Good political and economic
solutions should always be accompanied with the light of personal
learning, and vice versa. You do not have to delve deeply into
literature in order to come to this commonsensical conclusion; you only
need to use your brains. Each regional state should have a large degree
of political and economic autonomy, as implemented by autonomous
executive, legislative, and judicial bodies, as in present-day Federal
countries such as the U.S.A. The local languages and histories should be
officially taught in local schools, as in present-day Federations with a
plurality of native ethnic groups, such as Switzerland. Almost all of
the taxes raised from local economic activity should be retained by the
regional state. Each regional state might roughly corresponding to a
present-day "province" with proper boundary modifications, preferably
ones that further decrease its size in order to approximate the ideal of
a participative democracy.
Interestingly, Marxists seem to have the same social
goal when they say that at the end of Communism, "the state will wither
away." But their doctrines of state socialism and democratic centralism
always concentrate all economic and political power in a totalitarian
state, and so in the end they arrive at a situation completely opposite
their given ideal. The philosophy of the anarchists (not the bomb
throwers and chaos makers of urban legends), which overtly tries to
dismantle huge social structures in favor of smaller ones, is more
consistent with the ideal of participative democracy. Small is
beautiful. All these will guarantee the preservation of the identities
of the various Filipino ethnic culture groups (both Muslim and
Christian), respect regional political freedom, and allow each small
regional state to chart its economic progress with a large degree of
autonomy from the Federal center. Political and cultural oppression and
economic poverty, which encourage violent social movements such as
"jihad of the sword" as mentioned above, thus can be addressed in a
satisfactory manner by the local peoples themselves.
Again, there should be laws requiring the teaching of
various theological ideas in a philosophy-class setting, with a
straightforward and objective exposition of theological doctrines, and
without any attempt at conversion. Violent and coercive religious
doctrines should be deliberately debunked, and religious love, peace,
and freedom be taught. The importance of this becomes apparent when we
examine how the Koran itself sees Christianity and Judaism.
Reading the Koran will give an unexposed and
disinterested reader a strong bias against Christianity and Judaism.
Time and time again, the Koran warns against Christians and Jews and
their beliefs (or unbelief). There is even a Koranic passage that tells
Muslims not to befriend Christians and Jews because of the danger of
becoming one of them! "Believers, take neither Jews nor Christians for
your friends. They are friends with one another. Whoever seeks their
friendship shall become one of their number." Here is a similar one.
"You will please neither the Christian nor the Jew unless you follow
their faith. Say 'the guidance of God is the only guidance.' And after
all the knowledge you have been given you yield to their desires, there
shall be none to help or protect you from the wrath of God. Those to
whom We have given the Book, and who read it as it ought to be read
truly believe in it; those that deny it shall assuredly be lost."
Naturally, a Christian who knows of these passages will
tend to see them as outright bigotry and tell the Muslim not to follow
them. Unfortunately for the Christian, there are many other Koranic
passages that in so many ways proclaim the Koran's own infallibility.
The second passage above, aside from warning Muslims not to please
Christians and Jews and threatening Muslims who do so (for "lost" can be
theologically interpreted as damned), also refers to the Koran's
infallibility. The second chapter of the Koran, right after the
Exordium, starts with the statement: "This Book is not to be doubted."
Here is a particularly jolting passage: "God has instructed you in the
Book that when you hear His revelations being denied or ridiculed, you
must not sit and listen to them unless they engage in other talks, or
else you shall become like them." Passages such as these, that
dogmatically insulate the Muslim from the beliefs of Christians and
Jews, would make it extremely difficult to hold dialogue with an
extremely fundamentalist Muslim. How can you hold dialogue with someone
who believes you should not be friends with each other or who is not
really listening to you because he believes that you are 'denying' or
'ridiculing' God's revelations? A cunning extremist can also pretend to
be listening and holding dialogue, while all the time adhering to
physical jihad of the sword.
A good way to correct this built-in bias in the Koran
is to show Muslims how Christianity or Judaism truly sees itself,
ideally to hear the teachings of Christ out of the mouths of Christians,
or the teachings of Moses out of the mouths of Jews. Here is a Koranic
passage that most Christians will think as peculiar, if not downright
heretical. "They (Jews) declared: We have put to death the Messiah Jesus
the son of Mary, the apostle of God.' They did not kill him, nor did
they crucify him, but he was made to resemble another for them." Now,
pay close attention to this Koranic accusation and condemnation. "Do not
say 'three.' God is but one. God forbid that He should have a son!" This
passage apparently accuses Christians of worshiping three separate gods.
The statement "God forbid that He should have a son!" is also repeated
again and again in various forms throughout the Koran, leading the
reader to believe that Christians practice idolatry by worshiping Jesus
as a separate god.
The Koran repeatedly and consistently condemns the
Christian belief in Jesus' divinity, denoted by passages referring to
him as the son of God. Because of such Koranic passages, Muslims who are
raised in a strict Koranic culture and are completely ignorant of the
doctrines of other religions probably will always tend to believe that
Christianity is a polytheistic religion that practices idolatry by
worshiping three gods. Such Muslims might be surprised to hear from a
learned Christian's mouth that monotheistic Christianity is all about
the transcendent but at the same time immanent God who can become a man
and walk the earth like us by His own will; whom people could touch in
the flesh; who teaches grace and peace, truth and freedom, faith, hope,
and love, and the basic equality of all people irrespective of
nationality and gender; who gives life to all creatures, who can speak
through people like us, and who is ever present all the time in all of
us. The transcendent, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent God, the
creator of heaven and earth and of all that is seen and unseen, is also
the immanent and loving God. This paragraph describes the persons of the
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit united in one God in accordance with the
Bible and the Nicene Creed, professed as authoritative by most of
Christendom. Unfortunately, some Koranic passages can be interpreted as
accusing Christianity of polytheism and idolatry, deeming Christianity's
Triune God as two or three separate gods.
Again, there should be laws requiring the teaching of
various theological ideas in a philosophy-class setting, with a
straightforward and objective exposition of theological doctrines, and
without any attempt at conversion. Violent and coercive religious
doctrines should be deliberately debunked, and religious love, peace,
and freedom be taught. If this is not done, the only picture that
Muslims will see of Christianity and Judaism is that found in the Koran,
which is the Muslims' starting point, and the Koran unfortunately
pictures Christians and Jews as heretics and falsifiers of the Faith of
Abraham, which Jews, Christians, and Muslims all openly share. Without
such laws, this ugly view of Christianity and Judaism will tend to
spread unchecked and uncorrected.
A Muslim whose starting point is the Koran and who is
ignorant of how Christians and Jews see themselves will always look upon
Christianity and Judaism unfavorably. The Christian reader should be
familiar with such built-in Scriptural biases because the New Testament
itself has many passages that severely criticize Jews, which in the past
have contributed to horrific evil done by Christians on Jews.
Fortunately, Christians share the same Old Testament ("Tanakh") with
Jews, allowing easy dialogue on common grounds, and in fact, many
Christians believe that the Jews are God's chosen people as described in
the Old Testament. Unfortunately, this sharing of a common sacred
Scripture in Christianity and Judaism is not true in Islam.
The Koran claims that the Torah, the Psalms of David,
and the Gospels are genuine revelations from God, but relates Biblical
stories and characters differently from the Jewish and Christian
Scriptures. As a prime example, the Koran regards Jesus as a prophet and
apostle, and condemns the Christian belief in his divinity. Thus,
serious Muslims, whose starting point is the Koran, tend to believe that
the Jews and Christians have falsified the original Scriptures given to
them by God.6 The Koran in fact explicitly accuses the Jews: "They have
perverted the words of the Scriptures." This belief is further
reinforced by a passage in the Koran that claims that Jesus predicted
the coming of Muhammad, a prediction that is nowhere found in any copy
of the New Testament. "Tell of Jesus, who said to the Israelites: I am
sent forth to you by God to confirm the Torah already revealed and to
give news of an apostle that will come after me whose name is Ahmed
('the praised one,' another name of Muhammad)."
Although the conclusion that Jews and Christians have
falsified the Scriptures sounds weird to a Christian or a Jew, it is
entirely consistent from a Koranic point of view. Discrimination by
Christians and Jews against Muslims is not automatic and depends on
specific cultures and situations, but Muslim discrimination against
Christians and Jews is more intrinsic, dogmatic, and permanent because
they are specifically identified and their religious beliefs condemned
in the Koran. Even if a super extremist and fundamentalist Islamic
movement totally obliterates Christianity and Judaism from the face of
the earth, in accordance with such passages as "Make war on them until
idolatry is no more and God's religion reigns supreme," Muslims will
still discriminate against the very memory of Christianity and Judaism
and will make sure that these religions will never see the light again,
because of Koranic condemnation of the People of the Book. This
paragraph will surely strike many people on one end as offensive and on
the other end as quaint (much shaking of heads will ensue), but let us
be honest and frank in pointing out one of the root causes of evil,
which is ignorance, and a way to remedy this with corrective laws that
spread the light of learning. Ignorance often gives birth to and
nurtures intolerance. (The Koran itself speaks of the "bigotry of
ignorance," and in Buddhism the root of all evil is ignorance.)
At this point, let us pause and you the reader should
think through possible solutions to the intrinsic scriptural bias of the
Koran against Christianity and Judaism. There are several solutions, but
the particular solution proposed above, and at the end of this
paragraph, is based on the logic that since the Koran in effect
dogmatically and permanently legalizes discrimination against Christians
and Jews through passages that portray them as heretics and falsifiers
of the Faith of Abraham, or explicitly condemns their beliefs, society
should also permanently legalize ways by which Christians and Jews can
explain their side to Muslims via an enlightened educational curriculum
formally supported by state laws. Without such permanent laws that allow
Christians and Jews to permanently air their side to Muslims, there will
never be permanent peace between the Muslims and the Christians and
Jews, for the Koran specifically identifies Christians and Jews and
permanently and dogmatically discriminates against them. Again, there
should be laws requiring the teaching of various theological ideas in a
philosophy-class setting, with a straightforward and objective
exposition of theological doctrines, and without any attempt at
conversion. Violent and coercive religious doctrines should be
deliberately debunked, and religious love, peace, and freedom be
taught.
On the other hand, the Federation must not tolerate
individuals and organizations that advocate violence in the name of
religion, and these should be outlawed and sequestered away from society
as soon as detected. There is no violence like religious violence, when
violence becomes sacred. Given freedom to propagate, these groups
quickly attract like-minded followers and coerce weak-minded fools to
join in, and civil war soon follows. They become the medium for the most
abominable and horrific kind of evil. Tolerating their intolerance is
the folly of follies.
As a corollary, Federal laws must allow the individual
freedom to choose his or her religion. Religion and state must be
strictly separate and individual freedom of religion guaranteed. Laws
that are based solely on a particular theological doctrine without the
use of plain reason (which the Creator has so obviously given to us
humans in gracious abundance) should be held with suspicion. For
example, a law requiring all Muslim women to wear a veil over their
faces should be considered unconstitutional, but an individual Muslim
woman by all means should be allowed to wear a veil if she wants to,
respecting her freedom of religion.
A more extreme hypothetical example is that of a Sunni
Tausug Muslim who wants to convert to the Bahai faith. The traditional
Shariah penalty for this is death for apostasy. This "death for
apostasy" rule cannot be constitutionally condoned. The individual has
freedom of religion. It is always worthwhile repeating the Koranic
passage that states "there is no compulsion in religion." On the other
hand, by all means teach Tausug as an official language in Basilan and
Sulu. This will guarantee the survival of the Tausugs as a unique ethnic
Filipino culture group. The same thing applies to other Filipino ethnic
culture groups, such as Visayans (the Cebuanos, Ilonggos, and Warays
whose ethnic identity is the direct legacy of the first great Malay
empire - the Sri-Visaya), Ilocanos, Bicolanos, Kapampangans,
Pangasinenses, the Cordillera peoples, and the various Muslim,
Christian, and even polytheistic Mindanao tribes.
The Unitarian system of government in the Philippines
is an unjust legacy of the Spanish and American colonial period, when
political control was centralized in Manila for the sake of easy control
of the whole Philippines by the colonial masters. The more political
power was centralized in Manila, the better the colonial masters could
keep things under control. It might surprise many Filipinos to learn
that many Third World countries, especially in Africa, South America,
and Asia, newly emerging in independence from European colonial rule (to
the extent that their economies, still heavily dependent on European or
American economy, allowed them), have encountered the same problem.3
External colonialism by Europeans and Americans, mediated by a colonial
center within the territory of the colony, was replaced by internal
colonialism, wherein the colonial center was largely left behind usually
to be run by a distinct culture group that now functioned as the new
colonial master.3
We should adopt a political system such as a Federation
to replace the Unitarian system. The basic principle is: What can be
done by a smaller unit is done by the smaller unit, while cooperating
with other units, promoting peace for all and the land. The Hebrew
"shalom" often translated as "peace" is a positive term, referring not
only to an absence of war but also to a generally prosperous and just
"land," to use Old Testament parlance.9 In my opinion, the combined
modern concepts of both human society and the ecosystem can be roughly
translated as "the land" (read through Ex 29:45-46, Lev 19:29-30, 33-34,
Lev 25:1-55, Nu 35:31-34, Dt 21:22-23 to get a flavor of what the land
meant to the Israelites). God delivered the Israelites to the promised
land, but the land, or ecosystem, had belonged and still belongs to
Creator (see Lv 25:23, Nu 35:34). Any religious concept of "peace on
earth" has to take into account a sound ecosystem and a just human
society.
The Federal system works out very well in many
countries all over the world and those who fear it (mostly those based
in Manila) are only being misled by their own culturally chauvinistic
attitudes or partisan interests. By land area, half of the world is
Federal, including the following countries: Russia, Germany,
Switzerland, Ethiopia, United Arab Emirates, India, Canada, U.S.A.,
Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, Australia, and our nearest neighbor and
fellow Malay country Malaysia. The whole continents of North America and
Australia, the subcontinent of India, half of South America, and a large
chunk of Europe and Asia is Federal.
In the hypothetical system proposed above, children
learn the truths about other religions early on and thus learn to
appreciate and tolerate them. The Bahais, known worldwide for their
religious tolerance, are in effect doing this very thing in their
religious services. Rigidly dogmatic theologians will fear this system,
but then again, we should teach about the similar truths of the various
world religions for many of them are derived from the same Truth, and
the Truth shall set you free.
Listen to this passage of the Koran called the verse of
light,4 which surely reveals a truth. "God is the light of the heavens
and the earth. His light may be compared to a niche that enshrines a
lamp, the lamp within a crystal of star-like brilliance. It is lit from
a blessed olive tree, neither eastern nor western. Its very oil would
almost shine forth though no fire touched it. Light upon light, God
guides to His light whom He wills." Such a beautiful passage to
Christian ears! There are many more similar passages from the Koran.
Alas, much of the Koran also talks about hellfire and jihad, and anger
freely flows out of its pages without the Christian corrective of
love.
The Bahai faith is derived from an earlier religion
called Babism founded in 1844 by Mirza Ali Muhammad, also called the Bab
or "gateway". An earlier Iranian persecution killed the Bab in 1850 and
20,000 Babists shortly after. One of the Bab's disciples, Mirza Hoseyn
Ali Nuri also called Baha Ullah or "Glory to God" founded the Bahai
faith in 1863, after which he was exiled by the Otoman Turks upon
instigation by the Iranian government to Acre, Palestine (which was part
of the Ottoman Empire then), now Akko, Israel. Like Judaism, the Bahai
faith has its spiritual center in Israel.2
The Bahais are presently under persecution by the
Islamic fundamentalist government in Iran, their country of origin,
where they are considered as heretics, and so their ultimate survival in
that country is questionable. Ironically, it is Iran that also produced
the medieval Assassins and the first successful modern Islamic
revolution in 1979.2 Interestingly, some Muslim fundamentalist groups in
Mindanao are heavily influenced by Iranian fundamentalists. If they had
allowed themselves to be influenced by Iranian Bahais instead, then
Mindanao would be a much more peaceful place today. In many Muslim
fundamentalists, the Assassin sect still lives on.
I consider the Bahais as very Islamic in the sense that
they do the will of God by being so compassionate, merciful, and
peaceful. So it says in the beginning of every chapter in the
Koran.
End.
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED,
1999-2001
Jed Pensar and Herb Mantawe. Manila,
Philippines.