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War and Peace in Islam: The Uses and Abuses of Jihad
Written by a number of Islamic religious authorities and Muslim scholars, this work presents the views and teachings of mainstream Sunni and Shi’i Islam on the subject of jihad. It authoritatively presents jihad as it is understood by the majority of the world’s 1.7 billion Muslims in the world today, and supports this understanding with extensive detail and scholarship. No word in English evokes more fear and misunderstanding than "jihad." To date the books that have appeared on the subject in English by Western scholars have been either openly partisan and polemical or subtly traumatized by so many acts and images of terrorism in the name of jihad and by the historical memory of nearly 1,400 years of confrontation between Islam and Christianity. Though jihad is the central concern of War and Peace in The Uses and Abuses of Jihad , the range of the essays is not confined exclusively to the study of jihad. The work is divided into three War and Its Practice, Peace and Its Practice, and Beyond The Practice of Forbearance, Mercy, Compassion and Love. The book aims to reveal the real meaning of jihad and to rectify many of the misunderstandings that surround both it and Islam’s relation with the “Other.”
554 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 2013
About the author
Ghazi bin Muhammad
27 books87 followersH.R.H. Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad bin Talal (born in Amman on the 15th of October 1966) is the nephew of the late King Al-Hussein bin Talal of Jordan. He received his BA from Princeton University in 1988 Summa cum laude; his first PhD from Cambridge University, U.K., in 1993, and his second PhD from Al-Azhar University in Cairo 2010. Prince Ghazi has held many official positions in Jordan including: Cultural Secretary to H.M. King Hussein; Advisor for Tribal Affairs to H.M. King Hussein; Personal Envoy of and Special Advisor to H.M. King Abdullah II, and Chief Advisor for Religious and Cultural Affairs to H.M. King Abdullah II. He has also served as Regent of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. In 1996 Prince Ghazi founded the Al-Balqa Applied University, and in 2008 he founded the World Islamic Sciences and Education University. In 1997 he founded the National Park of the Site of the Baptism of Jesus Christ, and in 2001 he established the Great Tafsir Project (www.Altafsir.com), the largest online project for exegesis of the Holy Qur’an. Prince Ghazi is also Chairman of the Board of Trustees of The Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought; he was the author of the historical Open Letter ‘A Common Word Between Us and You’ in 2007, and the author of the World Interfaith Harmony Week United Nations General Assembly Resolution in October 2010.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 15, 2019
War and Peace in Islam is a volume with a dozen or so different authors and accordingly, the qualitfy of content and scholarship varies depending on the author and the book covers such a wide array of topics related to both war and peace in Islam (and in the Qur'an in particular) that an extensive discussion of the content is simply not possible here on goodreads.
I want to go through a couple of things though. First of all, I want to say that this is a good book and much of its content indicates great, in-depth understanding on the side of both author and editor. This is the right book particularly for anyone looking for extensive, direct Qur'anic citations and direct discussion of surahs, related to both war and peace, and particularly in regards to addressing some commonly held misconceptions about Islam.
That being said, one of the general problems of this work - it not being composed by a single author - is its immense propensity for repetition. There are several (admittedly key-)concepts, such as jihad or mujahideen, that are being discussed, at times verbatim, at least a half dozen times throughout the book. That in itself wouldn't be much of an issue but the authors even keep referring to the same set of surahs and hadiths, making a large junk of the book more or less redundant. A book such as this one might not be intended to be read cover to cover but a better coordination of the separate authors content would have avoided much of these repetitions, particularly when it comes to translations and explanations of basic terminology. A list of key concepts after the introductory chapter might have cut a good 10-20% of the book's content.
Beyong the format though, the book at times comes across as overly dogmatic and hence unscientific to the point of seriously jeopardizing the entirety of its scholarly credibility.
1. On page 34 it says:
Do they? There's a good chunk of authors including Muslims such as Maajid Nawaz, ex-Muslims such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and religious scholars such as Reza Aslan who would not only disagree but who take many Muslims' inability to do just that as the basis of their call for reform of the community.
2. On page 91 it says:
Since this is an assertion on which much of the current debate around Islam hinges it would have really important to supplement it with a citation. There is none and so we are left wondering what the author bases this figure on. Because while things might very well be that way I could also quote a study mentioned in When Islam and Democracy Meet: Muslims in Europe and in the United States according to which up to 25% of American Muslims "follow Wahabi" doctrine. Another poll conducted for the BBC in Britain found that 1 in 4 Muslims living the UK has sympathy for the attacks on Charlie Hebdo in Paris 2015 and that violence against them is/was justified.
The thing is, I'm not saying it's one or the other. But since the author (Dr Caner Dagli in this case) throws out this number it would just seem important to substantiate such a claim for it to stand reliably within the grander debate.
3. On page 93 the same author asserts:
Since Dagli defines Secular Fundamentalists as Muslims for whom religion is "at maximum [...] a private affair, and should have nothing to say about human relations" it is entirely unclear what is meant by this quote.What lives do the Secular Fundamentalists want to sacrifice and in what way? We're left in the dark.
That same chapter ends with the sentence: "The author wishes to state that his views have developed further since writing this essay." Then why on earth would you reprint it the exact same way again? Would this have been a good time for revision??
4. The entire Chapter 7 presents a comparative analysis of mass killings throughout history and relates those killings to religious affiliation, illustrating how much less violent Islam has been throughout the ages that, say, Christianity. While the overall numbers do indeed to a certain extent speak for themselves, the authors commit a rather large fallacy by completely disregarding the number of killigs as percentages of total populations. So while "Sinic" wars account for just more than half the killings commited by "Christian" wars, it is nowhere discussed that the mentioned Three Kingdom Wars (for instance) whiped 40 million people of the face of the earth - during a time when the total world population was around 200 million (quoting the authors own figures). In a similar vein the authors disregard that Islam only entered the picture more than 600 years after Christians had begun waging their wars, meaning that the analysis ultimately hinges on two entirely different time periods (the Christian period being 1,5x longer than the Islamic). These, and a number of similar examples illustrate some rather dubious scholarship, exacerbated by the fact the authors, despite the volumes overall rather scientific language, do not shy away from calling their own findings "startling" toward the end. The reader is left with the impression that the authors intended to come to a given conclusion and adjusted parameters and language accordingly for maximum effect. What's worst is that there is an argument to be made, because Christianity has, in fact, tended to be a much more violent religion throughout history. But presenting their findings in the way they did, the authors' credibility suffers considerably, as does the rest of the volume.
5. Almost the entire third part of this book is written by one author and seems like an endless repetition of much of what has already been repeated several times throughout the book. Since this part, too, does continue the books overall tendency to excessively quote the same surahs, one is left wondering what the exact point of these chapters was, since there seems to be little qualitative contribution to the content to the book.
Having focused on some criticism, it remains to be said that this is an extremely interesting and often well-written book. Despite some of the aforementioned weaknesses, most authors display great scholarly dilligence and execute the task of their chapter well. If anything, the book occasionally comes across as overly biased and apologetic. A slightly more serious consideration of common criticisms of Islam would have greatly benefitted this work. But then again, maybe there's simply another book to be read for that.
I want to go through a couple of things though. First of all, I want to say that this is a good book and much of its content indicates great, in-depth understanding on the side of both author and editor. This is the right book particularly for anyone looking for extensive, direct Qur'anic citations and direct discussion of surahs, related to both war and peace, and particularly in regards to addressing some commonly held misconceptions about Islam.
That being said, one of the general problems of this work - it not being composed by a single author - is its immense propensity for repetition. There are several (admittedly key-)concepts, such as jihad or mujahideen, that are being discussed, at times verbatim, at least a half dozen times throughout the book. That in itself wouldn't be much of an issue but the authors even keep referring to the same set of surahs and hadiths, making a large junk of the book more or less redundant. A book such as this one might not be intended to be read cover to cover but a better coordination of the separate authors content would have avoided much of these repetitions, particularly when it comes to translations and explanations of basic terminology. A list of key concepts after the introductory chapter might have cut a good 10-20% of the book's content.
Beyong the format though, the book at times comes across as overly dogmatic and hence unscientific to the point of seriously jeopardizing the entirety of its scholarly credibility.
1. On page 34 it says:
While Muslims hold the Qur'an to be God's literal, definitive and final revelation to humankind, they recognise that it is not intended to be read as a systematic legal or moral treatise. They understand it to be a discursive commentary on the stage by stage actions and experiences of the Prophet Muhmmad
Do they? There's a good chunk of authors including Muslims such as Maajid Nawaz, ex-Muslims such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and religious scholars such as Reza Aslan who would not only disagree but who take many Muslims' inability to do just that as the basis of their call for reform of the community.
2. On page 91 it says:
In reality the modernists and the puritanical literalists (the 'fundamentalists') represent only a small percentage of the population of the Muslim world, perhaps less than 10 percent combined. The majority of people - 90 percent - in the Islamic world fall within a range which should be called 'traditional' and which itself encompasses a certain range of religiosity [...].
Since this is an assertion on which much of the current debate around Islam hinges it would have really important to supplement it with a citation. There is none and so we are left wondering what the author bases this figure on. Because while things might very well be that way I could also quote a study mentioned in When Islam and Democracy Meet: Muslims in Europe and in the United States according to which up to 25% of American Muslims "follow Wahabi" doctrine. Another poll conducted for the BBC in Britain found that 1 in 4 Muslims living the UK has sympathy for the attacks on Charlie Hebdo in Paris 2015 and that violence against them is/was justified.
The thing is, I'm not saying it's one or the other. But since the author (Dr Caner Dagli in this case) throws out this number it would just seem important to substantiate such a claim for it to stand reliably within the grander debate.
3. On page 93 the same author asserts:
This utalitarianism allows the secular fundamentalist to declare, without a hint of irony, that freedom (the lives of some) must be sacrificed for the sake of freedom (the liberty of others).
Since Dagli defines Secular Fundamentalists as Muslims for whom religion is "at maximum [...] a private affair, and should have nothing to say about human relations" it is entirely unclear what is meant by this quote.What lives do the Secular Fundamentalists want to sacrifice and in what way? We're left in the dark.
That same chapter ends with the sentence: "The author wishes to state that his views have developed further since writing this essay." Then why on earth would you reprint it the exact same way again? Would this have been a good time for revision??
4. The entire Chapter 7 presents a comparative analysis of mass killings throughout history and relates those killings to religious affiliation, illustrating how much less violent Islam has been throughout the ages that, say, Christianity. While the overall numbers do indeed to a certain extent speak for themselves, the authors commit a rather large fallacy by completely disregarding the number of killigs as percentages of total populations. So while "Sinic" wars account for just more than half the killings commited by "Christian" wars, it is nowhere discussed that the mentioned Three Kingdom Wars (for instance) whiped 40 million people of the face of the earth - during a time when the total world population was around 200 million (quoting the authors own figures). In a similar vein the authors disregard that Islam only entered the picture more than 600 years after Christians had begun waging their wars, meaning that the analysis ultimately hinges on two entirely different time periods (the Christian period being 1,5x longer than the Islamic). These, and a number of similar examples illustrate some rather dubious scholarship, exacerbated by the fact the authors, despite the volumes overall rather scientific language, do not shy away from calling their own findings "startling" toward the end. The reader is left with the impression that the authors intended to come to a given conclusion and adjusted parameters and language accordingly for maximum effect. What's worst is that there is an argument to be made, because Christianity has, in fact, tended to be a much more violent religion throughout history. But presenting their findings in the way they did, the authors' credibility suffers considerably, as does the rest of the volume.
5. Almost the entire third part of this book is written by one author and seems like an endless repetition of much of what has already been repeated several times throughout the book. Since this part, too, does continue the books overall tendency to excessively quote the same surahs, one is left wondering what the exact point of these chapters was, since there seems to be little qualitative contribution to the content to the book.
Having focused on some criticism, it remains to be said that this is an extremely interesting and often well-written book. Despite some of the aforementioned weaknesses, most authors display great scholarly dilligence and execute the task of their chapter well. If anything, the book occasionally comes across as overly biased and apologetic. A slightly more serious consideration of common criticisms of Islam would have greatly benefitted this work. But then again, maybe there's simply another book to be read for that.
August 2, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews