The History of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS

by Robert Spencer

  Both sides finally agreed to arbitration based on the Qur’an. However, a third party in this dispute registered disapproval of the entire process. The Khawarij, or Kharijites, were an especially fervent and violent party of Muslims who had initially supported Ali but ultimately broke with him. At this point, they complained to Ali that Muawiya and his supporters had “always rejected our appeals when we summoned them to the Book of God.”91 Thus they considered Muawiya and his followers heretics who “should be killed or repent,” pressing Ali on what they considered to be a violation of the Qur’an’s command, a contradiction of his promises to abide by the word of Allah’s Book.92 The Kharijites were saying that Muawiya should not be negotiated with but simply fought—as the Qur’an commanded. They were angry with Ali for submitting to arbitration instead.

  The arbitration was inconclusive anyway. Muawiya returned to Syria and maintained an uneasy peace with Ali. But the Kharijites, enraged at what they considered to be the deviation of both parties from obedience to the Qur’an, murdered Ali in 661 (they tried to kill Muawiya and Amr as well but failed). At that point, Muawiya became caliph.

  The story is full of legendary elements. This battle and the subsequent arbitration are supposed to have taken place only eight years after Uthman codified the contents of the Qur’an and distributed the standardized copy to the provinces. It is extremely unlikely that Muawiya’s men would have had so many copies of the Qur’an, in an age when every book had to copied out by hand, that they could raise them on their lances, and unlikely that they would have risked damage to the books by doing so. However, Tabari’s account shows that by the ninth century, when the historian was writing his account, Islamic warfare was considered wholly in terms of obedience and disobedience to Islam.

  MUAWIYA AND THE UMAYYAD CALIPHATE

  With the death of Ali ended the period of the “Rightly-Guided Caliphate.” After Ali was killed, the people of Iraq hailed his son Hasan ibn Ali as caliph; Muawiya made Hasan a gift of five million dirhams, and his rival renounced his claim.93 Muawiya was not magnanimous in victory; he told his lieutenant al-Mughira: “Do not tire of abusing and insulting Ali and calling for God’s mercifulness for Uthman, defaming the companions of Ali, removing them and omitting to listen to them; praising, in contrast, the clan of Uthman, drawing them near to you and listening to them.”94

  Someone in Muawiya’s camp composed a hadith in which no less an authority than Muhammad himself declared that Ali’s father and Muhammad’s guardian, Abu Talib, was burning in hell: “Perhaps my intercession will be of use to him at the day of resurrection, so that he may be transferred into a pool of fire which reaches only up to the ankles but which is still hot enough to burn his brain.”95 Muawiya’s opponents, not to be outdone, invented their own hadith in which Muhammad refers to Hasan and his younger brother Husayn as his own children and says that they were “Imams whether they stand up or sit down”—that is, whether they actually ruled over the Muslims or not.96

  Muawiya was the first caliph who was not a Companion of Muhammad; he had been but a youth when the Prophet of Islam was alive, and once almost became the recipient of Allah’s curse. Muawiya’s father, Abu Sufyan, was commander of the Quraysh during some of their wars with Muhammad and the Muslims. Once, when a captive Muslim, Khubayb ibn Adi, was being tortured, he cried out: “Allah, count them well. Kill them all, one by one, and let not one escape!” Abu Sufyan and young Muawiya were standing nearby; Abu Sufyan immediately threw Muawiya to the ground and held him there facedown, so that when Allah passed by to curse all the enemies of the Muslims, he would not be able to tell who the boy was and would, therefore, not know whom to curse.97

  Muawiya thus survived long enough to become caliph. Befitting the man who first took jihad to the seas, he ordered the construction of ships and mounted the Muslims’ first siege of Constantinople around 670. Having taken down the Persian Empire, the Muslims were determined to destroy the Byzantine Empire as well. A hadith depicts Muhammad promising “the first army amongst my followers who will invade Caesar’s city [Constantinople] will be forgiven their sins.”98 This statement was almost certainly put into Muhammad’s mouth long after the first Muslim siege of Constantinople, but there is no doubt that it reflected an aspiration that those early jihadis shared, for to destroy Constantinople in 670 would have meant that the Arabs had defeated both of the world’s great powers within the span of three decades.

  The invaders had not, however, reckoned with the mysterious weapon known as Greek Fire, which the Byzantines wielded against any Arab ship that got too close to the great city. The Muslims tried sporadically to breach the city’s defenses, but they proved too formidable; ultimately the jihadis had to admit that they were defeated, an unusual occurrence in the seventh century, and they retreated.

  KARBALA AND THE SUNNI/SHI’ITE SCHISM

  Muawiya found more success in dealing with internal enemies and uniting most of the Muslims under his authority. He conducted campaigns against the Kharijites and prevailed upon Hasan ibn Ali’s wife, Jada bint al-Ashat, to kill her husband by poisoning in 670, establishing a precedent that would be repeated many times in the coming years with rulers of the shiat Ali.99

  The jihad also continued elsewhere. The Muslims took Crete, advanced in North Africa, and won great victories in central Asia, pressing beyond Persia into Afghanistan. One of Muawiya’s most notable achievements, meanwhile, was that he made the caliphate into a family dynasty, which became known as the Umayyad Caliphate (after Umayya ibn Abd Shams, patriarch of the Umayyad clan of Mecca). The immediate reaction to this development was not uniformly positive; it touched off another period of civil war, the Second Fitna, as some of the Muslims refused to accept the hereditary accession to the caliphate.100

  Ultimately, the dispute came down to two hereditary successors: in 680, when Muawiya’s son, Yazid I, succeeded him, the second son of Ali, Husayn, was not willing to accept Yazid’s authority. He gathered supporters and stood at Karbala in Iraq against Yazid’s forces, which vastly outnumbered the shiat Ali.

  One of Muawiya’s men at Karbala, Abdullah ibn Umayr, expressed impatience with all of this infighting. When he saw troops being assembled and was told that they were going to fight Husayn, Abdullah exclaimed: “By God! I was anxious to make holy war [jihad] against the polytheists. I hope that making holy war against these people, who are attacking the son of the daughter of the Prophet, will be no less rewarded with God than His reward would be to me for making holy war against the polytheists.”101 He fought for Husayn at Karbala.

  Both sides at Karbala justified their fighting against other Muslims by declaring them not Muslims at all. As the battle raged, several of Muawiya’s warriors got close enough to Husayn to ask him if he expected to burn in hell when he died.102 One of the followers of Husayn fought while repeating: “I believe in the religion of Ali.”103 A follower of Muawiya attacked him, crying: “I follow the religion of Uthman.”104 The response: “Rather you follow the religion of Satan.” The follower of Husayn then killed Muawiya’s man.105

  At Karbala, Husayn and his two sons, one who was just six months old, were killed—but Husayn’s followers refused to accept Yazid’s authority, and the split in the Muslim community became permanent: the shiat Ali, that is, the Shia, and the majority Sunnis went their separate ways, with both sides condemning and cursing the other as heretical, and sporadically waging jihad against each other. The Shi’ites followed not caliphs but Imams, all descended from Ali and believed to be imbued with prophetic infallibility and a portion of Muhammad’s prophetic spirit. The history of the Imamate, as might be expected, is one long story of Sunni persecution.

  CONQUERING NORTH AFRICA

  While much of Yazid’s attention was taken up with subduing Husayn and his followers, he did not neglect the larger jihad against infidels. In 682, he sent the general Uqba ibn Nafi with ten thousand jihadis from Damascus into North Africa. Like his uncle Amr i
bn al-As, Uqba marched forward fearlessly, winning victory after victory. Entering the former Roman province of Mauritania Tingitana, Uqba found its native inhabitants to be desperately poor—too poor to provide much in the way of spoils of war besides their girls, who were renowned for their beauty and who ultimately fetched a thousand gold pieces each in the caliphate’s sex-slave markets.106

  Pressing on as far as he could possibly go, Uqba ultimately reached land’s end. Flush with victory, he rode his horse out onto the beach and into the waves, where he stopped to exclaim that he wanted more: “Great God! If my course were not stopped by this sea, I would still go on, to the unknown kingdoms of the West, preaching the unity of thy holy name, and putting to the sword the rebellious nations who worship any other Gods than thee.”107

  But his course was stopped not just by the sea. The native North African Berbers were unwilling to accept subjugation and Islamization and rose up against the invaders. The Byzantines allied with the Christian Berber king Kusaila in hope of preventing a Muslim conquest of the great ancient city of Carthage. Uqba, heading westward, was ambushed in 682 at the town of Vescera (Biskra in modern-day Algeria). The Muslims were defeated, Uqba was killed, and the Muslims were driven out of the Berber lands of modern-day Tunisia. The warriors of jihad suffered losses so extensive that they were forced to withdraw also from Crete and Rhodes.

  But the losses proved to be temporary. In 698, the Muslim general Hasan ibn al-Nu’man defeated the Byzantines at Carthage and took the city for Islam. Hasan could not, however, complete the Muslim conquest of North Africa; he was defeated at Meskiana in Algeria by the Berber queen Dahya, to whom the Muslims referred with a mixture of contempt and fear as al-Kahina, the soothsayer. It was only by her black arts, they said, that she was able to defeat the Muslims. Some said that she was Jewish, a claim that many a jihadi would make about his foes throughout the history of Islam.108 Since the Qur’an declared that the Jews would be the worst enemies of the Muslims (5:82) and depicted them as scheming indefatigably against Allah and his messenger, all their most determined and resourceful foes had to be Jewish.

  Hasan was determined as well. In 700, he returned to North Africa, defeated Dahya and her forces, and put an end to her independent Berber kingdom. The stage was set for the Muslims to spread Islam beyond North Africa, as Uqba had exclaimed was his hope to do as his horse tramped amidst the waves.

  As all of this was going on, the infighting among the Muslims continued as well. After Yazid’s death in 683, rival claimants to the caliphate waged jihad against one another. The Khawarij remained a nagging problem. There were ongoing troubles from the Shi’ites as well.

  SUBJUGATING THE CHRISTIANS

  But amid it all, the jihad advanced, and the jihadis were determined to keep what they seized; they worked assiduously to Islamize the lands they now ruled. In the late 680s, the Muslim rulers of Egypt issued a series of orders for the Christians in their domains: churches could no longer bear crosses, and all crosses that could be publicly seen must be destroyed. All churches had to post signs on their doors reading: “Muhammad is the great apostle of God, and Jesus also is the apostle of God. But truly God is not begotten and does not beget”—that is, Jesus was not the only begotten Son of God. The Muslims were forcing the Christians to deny the faith on the very doors of their houses of worship.109 The caliph Muawiya II (683–684) began a persecution of Christians in Iraq and destroyed many churches after the Catholicos of the Assyrian Church refused his demand for gold. The persecution continued under his successor, Abd al-Malik (685–705).

  This persecution was transforming the conquered lands by making conversion to Islam an easy option for relief from discrimination, harassment, and constant threat. By the end of the seventh century, the Muslims controlled and were rapidly Islamizing an immense area stretching from North Africa to Central Asia, all of which they had won in a period of six decades. It was an extraordinary achievement, and much more jihad was to come.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE JIHAD COMES TO

  SPAIN AND INDIA

  Jihad in the Eighth and Ninth Centuries

  I. THE JIHAD IN SPAIN BEGINS

  Count Julian’s rage

  Once North Africa was secured for Islam, the ancient Roman province of Spain, now under Visigoth rule, was within reach. Here again, the available accounts contradict one another and are overlaid with legend, but a general outline of events can be known, and even some of the legends are illustrative of both the mindset of the day and some lingering tendencies.

  The jihad in Europe, still raging today, began in 711, when Musa al-Nusayr, the governor of the Muslim provinces of North Africa under the caliph Walid, sent Muslim forces under the command of a freed Berber slave named Tariq ibn Ziyad to cross the narrow strait that separated Africa from Europe and take the land for Allah.

  According to one Muslim chronicler, the Muslims came to Spain at the invitation of an enraged Christian who was hungry for revenge. Ibn Abd al-Hakam, writing in the ninth century, said that Tariq “with his female slave of the name Umm Hakim” arrived in Tangiers some time before Walid sent him to Spain, and “remained some time in this district, waging a holy war.”1 He eventually made the acquaintance of a Christian, “Ilyan, Lord of Septa,” Count Julian of Ceuta, who had a proposition for him.

  Count Julian was a ruler of some of the remaining Christian domains in North Africa, subject to Roderic, the reigning (and last) Visigothic king of Spain. According to Ibn Abd Al-Hakam, Julian was “the governor of the straits between this district and Andalus” and “also the governor of a town called Alchadra, situated on the same side of the straits of Andalus as Tangiers.”2

  Tariq established contact with Count Julian. According to Ibn Abd al-Hakam, Tariq “treated him kindly, until they made peace with each other.” Eventually Tariq won Julian’s confidence to the extent that the count told him of his personal sorrow. Julian, per Ibn Abd al-Hakam, “had sent one of his daughters to Roderic, the Lord of Andalus, for her improvement and education.” Like many a powerful man presented with a comely intern, however, Roderic had taken advantage of the girl, and “she became pregnant by him.” When he learned of the violation of his beloved daughter, who became a vivid and controversial figure in Spanish legend under the name Florinda La Cava, presented variously as victim, seductress, and even prostitute, Julian was enraged. He was determined to take revenge upon Roderic. It didn’t take him long to come up with a plan: Roderic had destroyed his daughter, so he would destroy Roderic’s kingdom. “I see for him no other punishment or recompense, than that I should bring the Arabs against him.”3

  Julian contacted his friend Tariq ibn Zayed and offered his help for a jihadi invasion of Spain. Tariq was skeptical, telling Julian: “I cannot trust you until you send me a hostage.”4 Julian had no problem with that, and sent Tariq his two daughters; apparently, the prospect of their becoming the sex slaves of a Muslim ruler didn’t trouble him as much as Roderic’s behavior. In any case, the reception of the girls convinced Tariq of Julian’s sincerity, and the plan went forward.5

  Julian also met with Musa ibn Nusayr and got his approval. Then the traitor provided the Muslims with ships to carry the warriors of jihad across the strait that would not arouse the notice of any Spanish sentries. These were preferable to the Muslims’ own ships for being familiar to the Spanish people. Ibn Abd al-Hakam explained: “the people of Andalus did not observe them, thinking that the vessels crossing and recrossing were similar to the trading vessels which for their benefit plied backwards and forwards.”

  As he crossed the strait himself, Tariq spotted an island and left his female slave, Umm Hakim, there with a division of troops. These troops immediately sent a message to the people of that island, and to all of Spain, that the invaders would not hesitate at any brutality. Finding no one on the island except a group of vinedressers, they took them all prisoner; then they chose one of them at random, whom
they killed and dismembered. Then they boiled the pieces of his body, while meat was boiling in other cauldrons. Out of the sight of their prisoners, they threw out the boiled pieces of their victim’s body, and then, as their prisoners watched, began eating the meat they had been boiling. The vinedressers were convinced that the Muslims were eating the flesh of the man they had killed, and the Muslims freed them to spread this tale far and wide, so as to “strike terror in the enemies of Allah.” (Qur’an 8:60)6

  Tariq’s boats

  Tariq and his men landed at the Mons Calpe, a rock formation at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula; ultimately, the conquering Muslims would rename it Jabal Tariq in his honor—the mountain of Tariq, from which is derived the word “Gibraltar.” It has become part of Tariq’s legend as an indomitable warrior that he ordered the Muslims to burn the boats that Count Julian had supplied, that had just carried them to Europe. The Muslims were going to take Spain from Islam or die there, but there was no going back. Tariq posed this choice to his troops:

  Oh my warriors, whither would you flee? Behind you is the sea, before you, the enemy. You have left now only the hope of your courage and your constancy. Remember that in this country you are more unfortunate than the orphan seated at the table of the avaricious master. Your enemy is before you, protected by an innumerable army; he has men in abundance, but you, as your only aid, have your own swords, and, as your only chance for life, such chance as you can snatch from the hands of your enemy.7