The History of Jihad- From Muhammad to ISIS

by Robert Spencer

  Islam is the only unifying factor of the Palestinian factions: “When the PLO adopts Islam as the guideline for life, then we shall become its soldiers, the fuel of its fire which will burn the enemies.”101

  Significantly, Hamas identifies itself in its charter as “one of the wings of the Muslim Brothers in Palestine. The Muslim Brotherhood Movement is a world organization, the largest Islamic Movement in the modern era. It is characterized by a profound understanding, by precise notions and by a complete comprehensiveness of all concepts of Islam in all domains of life: views and beliefs, politics and economics, education and society, jurisprudence and rule, indoctrination and teaching, the arts and publications, the hidden and the evident, and all the other domains of life.”102

  The charter quotes al-Banna: “Israel will rise and will remain erect until Islam eliminates it as it had eliminated its predecessors.”103 In keeping with this guiding idea that Islam must be and will be the force that ultimately eliminates Israel, and that Islamic principles must rule all aspects of life, Hamas states that “the Islamic Resistance Movement consists of Muslims who are devoted to Allah and worship Him verily.… As the Movement adopts Islam as its way of life, its time dimension extends back as far as the birth of the Islamic Message and of the Righteous Ancestor. Its ultimate goal is Islam, the Prophet its model, the Quran its Constitution.”104

  Hamas sees its Islamic mission as part of the universal Islamic mission of jihad: “Its spatial dimension extends wherever on earth there are Muslims, who adopt Islam as their way of life; thus, it penetrates to the deepest reaches of the land and to the highest spheres of Heavens.… By virtue of the distribution of Muslims, who pursue the cause of the Hamas, all over the globe, and strive for its victory, for the reinforcement of its positions and for the encouragement of its Jihad, the Movement is a universal one.”105

  Also, in contrast to the PLO’s taste for negotiations as a means to wring concessions from Israel and its allies, Hamas disdains peace talks: “[Peace] initiatives, the so-called peaceful solutions, and the international conferences to resolve the Palestinian problem, are all contrary to the beliefs of the Islamic Resistance Movement. For renouncing any part of Palestine means renouncing part of the religion; the nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its faith, the movement educates its members to adhere to its principles and to raise the banner of Allah over their homeland as they fight their Jihad: ‘Allah is the all-powerful, but most people are not aware.’ ”106

  Hamas and other Palestinian jihad groups have continued the practice of murdering Israeli civilians, justifying this action as defensive jihad, hoping thereby to weaken and demoralize the Jewish state, while characterizing all of Israel’s defensive efforts as disproportionate, unwarranted, and unjust. It is a jihad of the pen and the tongue combined with that of the sword, wielded as much in the court of public opinion as in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and other areas of Israel.

  In keeping with Muhammad’s dictum “War is deceit,” Palestinian propagandists worked assiduously to create a picture for the international media of a beleaguered Palestinian people menaced by a remorseless and ruthless Israeli war machine. Numerous Israeli atrocities were manufactured for eager consumption and propagation by the international media, the most notorious of these being a video purportedly showing a twelve-year-old boy, Muhammad al-Dura, wantonly murdered by the Israeli Defense Force in 2000. In reality, there was no murder—and may not even have been a Muhammad al-Dura. Before that was definitively established, a Palestinian intifada, or uprising, against Israel killed around a thousand Israelis.107

  The Palestinian propaganda barrage was a magnificent success. Global opinion, once strongly on the side of Israel, turned so sharply against the Jewish state that by the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first, Israel had become the chief target of United Nations human rights condemnations, and the primary target of demonstrations on campuses in the United States and elsewhere in the West. It was a new and highly successful jihad tactic, recognized by few as such but nonetheless unmistakably just that: all part of an effort to isolate, destabilize, and ultimately destroy Israel so that it could be replaced by an Islamic government.

  V. JIHAD AND THE PARTITION OF INDIA

  After World War II, as the sun was setting on the British Empire, India was partitioned into a majority-Hindu area, known as India, and two majority-Muslim areas, known as East Pakistan (later Bangladesh) and West Pakistan. The name Pakistan was an amalgamation of the names of the regions that made it up: Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Sindh, and Baluchistan. “Pak,” however, also means “pure” in Urdu and Persian, and for many Muslims, Pakistan, a land created specifically for Muslims, was to be the land of the pure expression of the faith.

  The seeds of the partition were planted with the first jihad invasion of India in the eighth century, which was a manifestation of Islam’s hatred of and contempt for the infidels. Centuries of bloody oppression led to significant levels of resentment of Muslims among the Hindu population of India. In the aftermath of World War I, the Khilafat movement among Muslims in India protested against the secular Turkish marginalization, and subsequent abolition, of the caliphate. In doing so, it promoted the idea that the Muslims of the world should be united in a single state, although this had not actually been the case at any point in history except, arguably, in the age of the “Rightly-Guided Caliphs” before the Sunni/Shi’a split became formalized, but the new propagation of this idea undermined prospects for Indian unity.108

  Although Pakistani leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah was not a doctrinaire Muslim and did not found Pakistan as a state ruled by Islamic law, the proponents of jihad and Sharia backed the partition because it was unacceptable to them for Muslims to live under infidel rule. The partition itself was acrimonious, with over a million people killed and fifteen million made refugees.109 Almost immediately, the new state of Pakistan began waging jihad against India, in September 1947 arming militias fighting against Indian rule in the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir.110 Arif Jamal, a historian of the jihad in Kashmir, notes that “Jinnah had signed a stand-still agreement with the Maharaja [ruler] of Jammu and Kashmir, and jihad by tribesmen violated that agreement. The Maharaja then invited Indian troops to defend the state, which led to the first war between India and Pakistan and the division of Kashmir by the end of 1948.”111

  A historian of Kashmir, Talat Bhat, notes that the drive for Kashmiri independence from India grew progressively more jihadist in character toward the end of the twentieth century, thanks to Pakistani government interference: “Kashmir’s independent movement began in 1948 and kept gaining strength in Indian-occupied areas until 1985, a year after the hanging of the separatist leader Maqbool Bhat in 1984. His Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) party declared war on India in 1988, which also led to a popular independence movement. But in 1991, Pakistan’s ISI created Hizbul Mujadeen (HM), an Islamist militant organization, to counter secular JKLF. Between 1991 and 1993, most JKLF commanders were either killed or jailed by HM or Indian troops. In 1994, JKLF declared unilateral ceasefire but Islamabad sent more Islamists, who had fought the war in Afghanistan, to Kashmir.”112

  Pakistan and India have remained in an ongoing state of war since the partition, due to Pakistan’s jihadi intransigence and fanaticism, with 9,47l outbreaks of actual violence in 1947, 1965, 1971, and 1999. In a telling incident in 1964, the government of Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru sent the Kashmiri Muslim leader Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah and his lieutenant, Mirza Mohammad Afzal Beg, to Pakistan for talks with its military ruler, Field Marshal Ayub Khan. Nehru’s offer was audacious: the reunion of the subcontinent.

  Ayub Khan would have none of it. He later complained that all Abdullah and Mirza Afzal Beg had brought him was an “absurd proposal of confederation between India, Pakistan and Kashmir.” Ayub recounted: “I told him plainly that we would have nothing to do with it. It was curious t
hat whereas we were seeking the salvation of Kashmiris, they had been forced to mention an idea which, if pursued, would lead to our enslavement.” What most annoyed Ayub was that “a confederal arrangement would undo the Partition and place the Hindu majority in a dominant and decisive position.”113 This was intolerable, as it contradicted the Islamic imperative to dominate and hold political power over infidels.

  The Hizbul Mujadeen commander Burhan Wani has emphasized that his organization’s “jihad is for a Caliphate.”114 As always.

  VI. IRAN’S ISLAMIC REVOLUTION

  The Fall of the Shah

  On October 8, 1962, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the Western-oriented shah of Iran, whose father, Reza Shah, had admired Kemal Ataturk and set Iran on a secular path, granted women the right to vote in elections for local councils and gave permission for those elected to take their oaths of office on any sacred book, not just the Qur’an—which meant that they didn’t have to be Muslim.115

  In response, a little-known ayatollah named Ruhollah Khomeini and his colleagues instructed Shi’ite clergy all over the country to denounce the government. Several weeks later, the shah relented: his prime minister, Assadollah Alam, announced that candidates for local councils would have to be Muslim, that oaths must be sworn on the Qur’an only, and that the Majlis would decide the question of women’s suffrage.116

  Then, in January 1963, the shah announced a series of reforms he called the White Revolution, including distributing land to the poor and allowing women not only to vote but also to run for office. Khomeini declared, “What is happening is a calculated plot against Iranian independence and the Islamic nation, and it is threatening the foundation of Islam.”117 He and other Shi’ite clergy called for demonstrations, which so unnerved the shah that on January 24, 1963, during a presentation on the glories of land reform, he gave an impromptu speech attacking the ayatollahs and their allies as “a stupid and reactionary bunch whose brains have not moved…stupid men who don’t understand and are ill-intentioned…they don’t want to see this country develop.”118

  The “stupid and reactionary bunch” didn’t give up, and over the years, tensions increased. The shah exiled Khomeini, but that didn’t calm the situation. In exile in Iraq in 1970, Khomeini articulated a view called velayat-e faqih (guardianship of the jurist). Islam, Khomeini argued, had not just given mankind a set of laws. “A body of laws alone,” said Khomeini, “is not sufficient for a society to be reformed. In order for law to ensure the reform and happiness of man, there must be an executive power and an executor. For this reason, God Almighty, in addition to revealing a body of law [that is, the ordinances of the Sharia]…has laid down a particular form of government together with executive and administrative institutions.”119

  Where were these divinely ordained executive and administrative institutions to be found? Khomeini argued that clerical rule, which many dismissed as an unacceptable innovation in Islam, was mandated by the example of Muhammad himself, whom the Qur’an declared to be the supreme model for Muslims (33:21): “The Most Noble Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) headed the executive and administrative institutions of Muslim society. In addition to conveying the revelation and expounding and interpreting the articles of faith and the ordinances and institutions of Islam, he undertook the implementation of law and the establishment of the ordinances of Islam, thereby bringing into being the Islamic state.”120

  So, Khomeni argued, following the example of Muhammad, modern-day Shi’ite clerics should rule Iran and make it an Islamic state. He explained: “The fundamental difference between Islamic government, on the one hand, and constitutional monarchies and republics, on the other, is this: whereas the representatives of the people or the monarch in such regimes engage in legislation, in Islam the legislative power and competence to establish laws belongs exclusively to God Almighty.”121

  The unrest in Iran grew, and repressive measures from the shah only made matters worse. Finally, on January 16, 1979, after riots and numerous calls for him to go, a tearful shah and his family left Iran.122 Two weeks later, on February 1, Khomeini returned to Iran after fourteen years of exile. He announced the formation of a new government, declaring: “This is not an ordinary government. It is a government based on the shari’a. Opposing this government means opposing the shari’a of Islam and revolting against the shari’a, and revolt against the government of the shari’a has its punishment in our law…it is a heavy punishment in Islamic jurisprudence. Revolt against God’s government is a revolt against God. Revolt against God is blasphemy.”123

  On November 4, 1979, a group calling itself Muslim Students Following the Imam’s Line (that is, Khomeini’s line) entered the U.S. embassy compound in Tehran and took hostage the skeleton staff of sixty-six that was still serving there after the fall of the shah.124

  Khomeini was delighted, dubbing the hostage-taking “the Second Revolution.”125 He told a reporter, “I regard the occupation of the American Embassy as a spontaneous and justified retaliation of our people.”126 He explained that the hostage crisis would assist the Islamic Republic in consolidating power: “This action has many benefits. The Americans do not want to see the Islamic Republic taking root. We keep the hostages, finish our internal work, then release them.”127 Fifty-two of the American hostages remained in captivity for 444 days, until January 20, 1981.128

  Khomeini continued to ensure that the Islamic Republic would be Islamic, and nothing but. He declared, “What the nation wants is an Islamic Republic. Not just a Republic, not a democratic Republic, not a democratic Islamic Republic. Do not use the word ‘democratic’ to describe it. That is the Western style.”129 Indeed, there was nothing democratic about his regime. Khomeini embarked on a reign of terror, executing his political foes in large numbers and shutting down opposition newspapers and magazines.130 He told secularists, “The ‘clog-wearer and the turbaned’ have given you a chance. After each revolution several thousand of these corrupt elements are executed in public and burnt and the story is over. They are not allowed to publish newspapers.…We will close all parties except the one, or a few which act in a proper manner.… We all made mistakes. We thought we were dealing with human beings. It is evident we are not. We are dealing with wild animals. We will not tolerate them any more.”131

  The Sharia state that Khomeini constructed gave Iranians neither democracy nor equality of rights under the law. In 1985, Sa’idRaja’i-Khorassani, the permanent delegate to the United Nations from the Islamic Republic of Iran, declared that “the very concept of human rights was ‘a Judeo-Christian invention’ and inadmissible in Islam.… According to Ayatollah Khomeini, one of the shah’s ‘most despicable sins’ was the fact that Iran was among the original group of nations that drafted and approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”132

  Khomeini thundered that fighting was an Islamic duty: “Jihad or Holy War, which is for the conquest of [other] countries and kingdoms, becomes incumbent after the formation of the Islamic State in the presence of the Imam or in accordance with his command. Then Islam makes it incumbent on all adult males, provided they are not disabled or incapacitated, to prepare themselves for the conquest of countries so that the writ of Islam is obeyed in every country in the world.… Islam’s Holy War is a struggle against idolatry, sexual deviation, plunder, repression and cruelty.… But those who study Islamic Holy War will understand why Islam wants to conquer the whole world.”133 The goal of this conquest would be to establish the hegemony of Islamic law.

  Khomeini had no patience for those who insisted that Islam was a religion of peace:

  Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those [who say this] are witless. Islam says: Kill all the unbelievers just as they would kill you all! Does this mean that Muslims should sit back until they are devoured by [the unbelievers]? Islam says: Kill them [the non-Muslims], put them to the sword and scatter [their armies]. Does this mean sitting b
ack until [non-Muslims] overcome us? Islam says: Kill in the service of Allah those who may want to kill you! Does this mean that we should surrender [to the enemy]? Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to Paradise, which can be opened only for the Holy Warriors! There are hundreds of other [Qur’anic] psalms and Hadiths [sayings of the Prophet] urging Muslims to value war and to fight. Does all this mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim.134

  Under the Islamic Republic, Iran became a totalitarian Sharia backwater and a chief financier of global jihad terrorism. Iran was the embodiment of a notorious statement of Khomeini’s: “Allah did not create man so that he could have fun. The aim of creation was for mankind to be put to the test through hardship and prayer. An Islamic regime must be serious in every field. There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humor in Islam. There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun and joy in whatever is serious. Islam does not allow swimming in the sea and is opposed to radio and television serials. Islam, however, allows marksmanship, horseback riding and competition.”135

  The Party of Allah

  There was no fun in Islam—or in Iran, either. Through its proxy, the Lebanese jihad terror group Hizballah (Party of Allah), the Islamic Republic pursued jihad against the United States. On October 23, 1983, Hizballah bombed military barracks in Beirut, murdering 241 American servicemen (including 220 Marines) and fifty-eight French military personnel. Hizballah and Iran denied involvement in that bombing, but there was considerable evidence to the contrary—not least the fact that the truck carrying the over twenty-one thousand pounds of TNT that exploded at the barracks was driven by Ismail Ascari, an Iranian national. On May 30, 2003, U.S. District Court judge Royce Lamberth found Iran and Hizballah responsible for the bombing, which he called “the most deadly state-sponsored terrorist attack made against United States citizens before September 11, 2001.”136